Recumbent bikes and chicken transporters

We put in a bit more work on the recumbent bikes over the weekend. On my bike we concentrated on getting the rear triangle set up. It was relatively straight-forward.

Here's the rear triangle being tacked into place.










Now that we've got everything tacked together and verified that it's all straight and true, it's time to weld it permanently in place.











It's finally starting to look like a bike!
Note that I've got my BionX electric-assist wheel on the back. Since this bike will be a commuter, it'll definitely have my electric-assist system on there.







Here's a "test fit". It's a bit uncomfortable right now as I'm sitting on a piece of plywood, leaning back against the boom that is still hot from the welder. And with no pedals or handlebars, it's very tippy.








Next up, getting the rear triangle setup on Mike's Marauder. This was a real challenge, as the forks had to be tacked into place in two parts and manually aligned. The design calls for chopping the forks off a donor bike and attaching them to the boom without any jig or supports to ensure correct alignment. We spent a LOT of time eyeballing it, adjusting, moving, cursing, breaking tacks and re-tacking. Finally we got it level with judicious use of a level, a long threaded rod to show any mis-alignments and a good amount of force applied to the forks.



Next up, the chickens. This year, we got enough meat birds to justify the cost and effort of taking them to a place to be slaughtered for us. Last year we did them all by hand, and proved that we know how to do it, and most importantly that we CAN do it. Now since we don't have anything to prove, we got 35 chickens and 8 turkeys. We're going to take them to a place about 45 minutes away to be processed for us.

Of course, this led to the challenge transportation. I just recently got a trailer hitch installed on the Jetta (we seem to be gradually turning our diesel sedan into a work truck). I borrowed my friend's Costco trailer (which I like a lot, because it's light enough that the trailer itself doesn't consume a huge portion of my car's admittedly small towing capacity). Then I used scrap lumber and sheeting we had laying around from other projects to build a "get the birds to market" trailer.




All four compartments are hinged for easy access to the birds. The front compartment is twice the height of the back, for transporting the turkeys. They're quite large these days.









Lots of stuff going on in the ol' Homestead.

Cheers,
Grant