The Athens Bicycle Co-operative

Athens, Ohio has a non-profit organization of volunteers that fix and play with bikes. The intent being to create a community of people who can enjoy bikes to their fullest. To do this we need a very active and savvy bike community. We further this goal by fixing bikes, teaching volunteers about bikes, creating an environment where volunteers can teach themselves about bikes, planning bike related events, and creating ways of getting more bikes to more people.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Mows by Muscle

I made this:





















It's a reel mower/bicycle hybrid. I call it Mose Allgrassin. I landed this reel mower that was all rusty and broken, so I spent a few days combining it with a 24" Huffy that had one of those "spray it like you stole it" paint jobs done to it. It took a few tries to hone the geometry, as a 70ish degree head tube angle turned tadpole trike tends to make the thing lean to the OUTSIDE of a turn. (Great if you wanna fall over with every steering correction.) Instead, the head tube angle has been made near vertical. Even a bit of caster (or anything greater than 90) helps more for leaning INTO turns. Even so, I had a hard time controlling the above version, because of the tall, narrow handlebar, and the hard front wheels that were too close to each other. Also, I needed to have adjustable height. Below is the newer configuration, with the bike's original handlebar added a little lower than its original height, a pair of 10" balloon tires welded outside the rims to widen the mower's stance and add pneumatic suspension, and pivoting sleeve-tubed bracing bars for changing the cutting height.

I'm still getting used to maneuvering  this thing, but it's hella sweet. The old lady next door to me could hardly believe it.

1 comment:

  1. Thinking about making one of these - and this is the first decent write-up on the topic I've seen. If you could start from scratch, what would you do different/?

    ReplyDelete