My second AZ bike

[BPACH]

Last year I built the Deltawolf and found that I didnt like to be that low to the ground. This year I decided to give the Wildkat a try. I am not positive that I will like the USS, but what the heck, I wont know till I ride it. I have the donor bikes all chopped up and I hope to start welding today.

[trikeman]

Hi Brian. Good to see you back on the forum. Let us know how that USS works out for you. I have thought several times about doing Brad's USS mod to my DW.

[SirJoey]

Last year I built the Deltawolf and found that I didnt like to be that low to the ground.

So... how much do you want? :D


http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/4687/sirjoeysigsmallmg5.gif

[BPACH]

The DW is gone. chopped, hacked, and parted out. Some of it will rise again in the WildKat. I do know that square tubing was a lot easier to line up then this round stuff. I am having a heck of a time making my fish mouths.

[trikeman]

Maybe one of these would make it easier, but if you are only building one, it may not be worth it.

http://www.recumbents.com/WISIL/jig/bike_jig.htm

I assume you are using one of those little tube mitering programs that you can print out the cuts with?

[SirJoey]

...I assume you are using one of those little tube mitering programs that you can print out the cuts with?

Those work great, BTW. Good suggestion, Trikeman.

BPach, in case you don't already have it, the program can be downloaded from http://www.ihpva.org/tools (http://www.ihpva.org/tools) - which has a list of cool utilities. http://www.ihpva.org/tools/tubemit3.html (http://www.ihpva.org/tools/tubemit3.html) is the documentation for it.



http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/4687/sirjoeysigsmallmg5.gif

[BPACH]

I haven't used one of those programs before. I will take a look at them an see how much easier it will make my life. My biggest problem is physically cutting the fish mouths so they are relatively round. I used a drum sander and that works out pretty well.

[trikeman]

I haven't used one of those programs before. I will take a look at them an see how much easier it will make my life. My biggest problem is physically cutting the fish mouths so they are relatively round. I used a drum sander and that works out pretty well.

I haven't built a bike with round tubing yet, but when I was first learning to weld, I used those programs to print out those fish mouths and cut them out and taped them on the EMT. Then I rough cut a bit oversized with a hacksaw and finished with an angle grinder or a file. I don't know if you ever saw this link I once posted, but it shows how easy it is for a professional frame builder to do it. He is using a lug for a template, but you can just as easily substitute the program printout.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIxCdTRkRHo

Some of the pipe welders on the welding forum say they make templates out of plastic to use more than once.

[BPACH]

That is a good video. Along with the miter program, life is good. Thanks

[BPACH]

The frame is finally together. I need to do some grinding. Somehow my welder turned into a crap splatterer on a few of the joints. It had to be the welder, it couldnt have been me. I am surprised on how light and strong the conduit makes it. I was really expecting some flex and the isnt any.

[trikeman]

What size tubing are you using? Its amazing how light a well constructed diamond type frame can be. Welding round tubing is always challenging for me, since it keeps moving away from the wire or stick as you travel around the tube. Can't wait to see the pictures. I don't recall seeing a round tube diamond frame in the forum before, so it will be interesting to see what you did.

[BPACH]

I am using 1" conduit. I might post some pictures of the frame, but I promise there wont be any closeups of the welds.

[n9viw]

Could be that the welds went to heck because you didn't get all the galvanized coating off. Some conduits are zinc electroplated, others are zinc dipped. The dipped ones, obviously, have zinc on the inside as well. As that burns off, it'll play hell with your weld. I had that happen when I welded a fully-galvanized piece of conduit on a shovel this past winter, and couldn't get a decent weld to save my life.

[trikeman]

Could be that the welds went to heck because you didn't get all the galvanized coating off. Some conduits are zinc electroplated, others are zinc dipped. The dipped ones, obviously, have zinc on the inside as well. As that burns off, it'll play hell with your weld. I had that happen when I welded a fully-galvanized piece of conduit on a shovel this past winter, and couldn't get a decent weld to save my life.

When I first started playing with conduit, I used muriatic acid to remove the zinc. I have pretty much stopped doing that, because it is so nasty, and its easy to just sand the zinc off the outside. That said, I would think dipping the tube in a jar of muriatic to a depth of about 4" should pretty well take care of any zinc in about 30 seconds. Of course using that acid makes stuff rust like you won't believe.

By the way, these welds were done on galvanized pipe with flux core and the little Hobart 125EZ. It was electro-plated zinc on the post.

http://www.hobartwelders.com/weldtalk/showthread.php?t=29938&highlight=side+yard

[TheKid]

When I first started doing this stuff, I didn't know you were supposed to remove the zinc first. Sometimes the welds were good, sometimes they weren't, and it didn't matter whether the tube was hot dipped or electro galvanized. At the time I was using a stick welder with 6013 electrodes. When I got the flux core wire welder, there were times when I rushed and forgot to remove the zinc, and the results were the same - sometimes good, sometimes not.
It's still a mystery to me.

[trikeman]

When I first started doing this stuff, I didn't know you were supposed to remove the zinc first. Sometimes the welds were good, sometimes they weren't, and it didn't matter whether the tube was hot dipped or electro galvanized. At the time I was using a stick welder with 6013 electrodes. When I got the flux core wire welder, there were times when I rushed and forgot to remove the zinc, and the results were the same - sometimes good, sometimes not.
It's still a mystery to me.

Yeah, that is pretty much the way my welding is whether I weld on zinc, or not - sometimes what happened is a mystery to me :eek:

[n9viw]

Trikeman - you and me both! Every weld is a surprise. :o

[SirJoey]

Yeah, that is pretty much the way my welding is whether I weld on zinc, or not - sometimes what happened is a mystery to me :eek:

I know what you mean. I never expected this weld from Chopzilla to come out like this:

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/5553/plateau03er4.jpg


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