Started off with a lil research and inspiration…
Then designed my bike with a free online design program called, Onshape.com
Found a fat tire bike for $75 on my local classifieds…
Chopped it into pieces…
Pulled a swing arm hinge off another bike…
And made it fit on the fat tire crank…
Extended the swing arm…
Rebuilt the enitre frame…
and extended the fork…
I built a mount for the gas shocks that would have three different positions for different weight riders. An inch or two makes a huge difference. I ended up using a commbination of 100 + 150 lbs. gas springs from McMaster Carr.
Next came the locking mechanism to keep the bike tall or short. I went with a pin sliding on a ring type dealio. It worked great until….
It bent the frame in half! haha
So I rebuilt the swing arm with stronger material and designed a new locking mechanism…
A few tweaks later it worked…
There we go…
Some quick paint…
And she’s ready to go!