Brace Yourself

   Everyone's been telling me since I pulled the front fender off Loudbike that I need a fork brace (and they were right, but I'll get to that later) The night before a bunch of us were to meet up for a wrench and a ride I decided to go ahead and get it done.

   I thought at first that I could make it really simply flat across the top, but after trying a few times in Pro-E I just wasn't liking the look of it so I had to bite the bullet and make it a three sided part (cut the bottom, flip, cut the side, flip, and cut the bolt holes) Fortunately I have a bunch of 6061-T6 aluminum to use for just such a project, and free is the only price I can afford at the moment.

   This is the second side running. It took me about 5 hours to get to this point (Originally I thought the whole thing might eat up 4 hours, but mucking about with the design slowed me down a lot)

   An hour and a half later (1:30 in the morning) I've got my finished part. I've just got to cross my fingers and hope that it fits.

   Bam! I can't deny the difference it made, the front end feels a lot more solid and it's not nearly as fatiguing as it used to be. 

Product development...

...on my own dime, and time

I'm now on my third revision of the subframe.

This time I've erred on the complete other side of the spectrum and made it far too skinny and spindly for me to feel safe sitting on it at any kind of speed. So it's back to the drawing board. I have been able to iron out most of the fitment of the components though, and I've still got to figure out some more of it. So, going may be slow but it gets better each time. I am getting mighty sick of scrapping aluminum though.