As you can see, I was very bored one day.
I realised I had 3 similarly-sized BMX frames lying around, so put up a poll on my Instagram about what to do with them. Within a few hours i had more than 200 votes for a triple-decker tallbike, so I got straight to it. I needed to make sure that the frame was built perfectly in-line unlike my Mark II tallbike which eventually broke as a result. I welded in 3-4 supports between each frame to minimise any issues and increase structural integrity. Now to work out steering.... was I going to create a very long steertube and sheath it? It seemed too much hassle, not to mention the fact that I definitely didn't have any tubing of that length lying around that was actually *straight* and not bent. I ended up bolting each fork to the lower frames' handlebar clamp, using a butchered axle or hub from old wheels to secure them in place. Surprisingly, even without any welds, it held quite strongly. The next puzzle was the chain. It couldn't be direct drive, as the rear dropouts were not all aligned and it would rub too much on the frame. I added in wheels of different sizes to each dropout, in the hope that they would connect and I could create a friction-drive design instead. Sadly I didn't have the right variety of wheel sizes, so instead I linked 3-4 BMX chains together, and routed them through all three cranksets and each wheel. The top and bottom rear wheels spun as they should, and the smaller rear wheel spun backwards which made for an interesting display that people would stare at. The central crankset did the same, and annoyingly it was a simple 3-piece crankset which is threaded in, meaning the abnormal process of being used in the opposite direction from usual resulted in it unscrewing every few hours. (this was soon fixed with a lot of superglue). One last issue was that the centre of gravity was too far backwards, causing the rider to fall off the back easily. To combat this I simply replaced the front 20" wheel with a smaller 15" wheel and this solved the majority of the problem. Altogether this bike took around 8-12 hours of work and was immensely fun to build and ride. It's the tallest bike I've built or ridden to this day, but not one I'd use regularly thanks to its questionable wheelbase and gear choices. Video of me mounting and dismounting is on this page (either to the right or below): Note: Although it's listed as mark 6, It's technically mark 9 if you include the smalltalls which are also technically tallbikes :)) If you include the lowrider and other inventions then it's closer to Mark 20 XD. |
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