Old School Chopper Frame Fabrication - Knucklebuster
Old School Chopper Frame Fabrication - Knucklebuster
Old School Chopper Frame Fabrication - Knucklebuster
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This assembly actually represents about 70% of the overall chassis tubing and while it may not look like much in this<br />
condition it represents a tremendous amount of work and very few do it yourself builders get this far on their first project.<br />
If you don’t have a tubing bender you can probably find a chassis or welding fabrication shop somewhere near your locality<br />
to bend the wishbones. You can also try posting a message on one or more of the motorcycle forums and you might find<br />
somebody near your location who has a bender and who'd be willing to help you out. I do not recommend that you attempt to<br />
make these bends with a hydraulic pipe or conduit bender and if you try to heat the pipe and bend it by hand the radius will<br />
be to small and the tube will probably flatten anyway.<br />
If all else fails and you can’t find anybody to make these bends you may be able to successfully accomplish the task by using<br />
a 1” thick-wall (rigid) conduit bender with a long extension handle as the outside diameter of 1" rigid electrical conduit is<br />
very nearly the same as the O.D. of 1.25” ERW tubing.<br />
Part 2<br />
Before we go much further we need to decide what style of connection we want to make between the backbone or top tube<br />
and the seat post. There are three joints that are commonly used. The first, seen in Figure 3 is probably the most common and<br />
the one I personally prefer as it allows easy access for running wiring inside the tube. It seals off the seat post to water<br />
intrusion yet the open end of the top tube is naturally sloped to drain.