Welcome to clunkerbike

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Clunkerbike is a place to read, or submit for sharing, all things bike hack and "mullet mod." I'll discuss topics like how I converted my cargobike from hub gearing and rear brake to 1 x 9 speed derailleur gearing and a diacomp style centrepull rear brake, and many other hacks besides.

So, sit back, subscribe and submit, and lets build a community of mullety weirdness on 2, 3 or 4 pedalled wheels.

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Popular posts from this blog

What Am I Doing On _MY_ Clunkerbike, Though?

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I'm sick of waiting to die. I'm 61, I have congestive heart failure (diagnosed 2 years ago after a heart attack that "would have killed [me] if [I] weren't a cyclist":my doc said) and insulin managed diabetes (adult diagnosis but hey, my endocrinologist has just declared me a Type 1, at 61!), so I've been feeling pretty damned brittle for the last 2 and a bit years. I have been finding myself getting a bit paniced on the bike when I can't handle a short, uncategorised climb, say Brighton Rd from Inkerman to Alma. I have literally been acting like I'm waiting to die. Then I snapped. "Fuck this shit!" I screamed, "Didn't I once write a song with a chorus that is literally, I want to live forever, or die trying?!" How was this cardio-anxiety any sort of " Gallant Attempt at Immortality "? ( My response has been to hatch, as "Baldrick" would put it, a cunning plan. I have come up with setting myself a chal...
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The Merger Is Complete

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I've now completed migrating my Clunkerbike posts over to ShinyHappyRainbows.com and will now let this blog fold. My bicycle stuff is very design and mullet hack oriented, so I'll still be posting bike and trike things. While I wait for the weather to improve, so that I can get outside and practice a bit of welding for the trike, I've been working like I'm full-time on bike related designs, as well as music designs and projects, along with other artistic musings. (A wooden trike may be built in the not too distant future, as a test for a CNC router I'm planning to build.) The site is probably more intriguing - unless you're a bicycle purist to the level of ignoring all other facets of life. So the original Clunkerbike, this place, is an archive. No new content will be added here, the domain will lapse, but the posts will remain up on clunkerbike.blogspot.com but noting new will be found here. From now on, if you want to keep reading my stuff, come over to S...
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Bicycles Make Everything Better.

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No, they really do! As a weird example, I've been "researching" Arduino-based, robotic drum machines - Heath-Robinson affairs that allow a drum machine to play a real drum kit, instead of stored sounds. How do bicycles make this better? Bowden tubes. "Bowden tube" is the engineering name for the outer sheath of a bicycle's mechanical brake cable. You might call it "the hose" or just the "outer." The whole mechanical brake cable has not been used on one, single robotic drum system I've seen, yet, for the hi-hat, the upper and lower cymbals that a drummer operates with a pedal, as well as hitting with sticks, all have these complex linkages and gadgets and firmware code that gives the effect of half-pedal, rather than an actual half pedal. They using car door lock actuators (solenoids) to do this, these things are on or off, they don't have a half position. Or do they? Spoiler alert, they do, but the solution is mechanical. The...
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