My friend Jesse suggested we collaborate and make a bike to raffle off and donate the proceeds to CHOC Hospital. Being sort of consumed in my own circumstances lately, I'd forgotten to give back in a little while. I was grateful for the reminder and of course I was game. He's the guy to beat in competitive lowrider bicycle competition, so I'm anticipating a mind blowing paint job and a finish that leaves no stone unturned. Check out @Deltacruisers on IG to see some of his masterpieces.
I've had this idea in my head of doing a lowrider bicycle but different. There's this custom Zephyr that I first saw at GNRS with my son a few years ago and Ive since seen at Donut Derelicts... really amazing car. The way it looks like it's going 100mph while parked and the 30s stream line design aesthetic I wanted to try and transfer into a bicycle... also, to me, that era of late 30's automobiles is unique in its bold curves and long elegant lines. To me, an aesthetic that translates best to a lowrider platform.
So here goes, what started as a phone call with some pictures of parts we had gathered over time turned into mocking those parts up and seeing how they looked together. I'd been hanging on to this amber lensed 30's or 40's aftermarket automotive spotlight that I got from Dan Taylor. Dan Taylor is a master craftsman out of Costa Mesa, CA who has been making my surfboards since I was 18 (30 years ago) and was making surfboards long before that. Dans father was an engineer and fabricator who collected classic cars and had a warehouse full of old rare parts, among those parts were dozens of lights, some streamlined like this one and others older, made of brass with moving parts that fit together flawlessly, reminiscent of a time where the individual part mattered more than the quantity of parts produced for a year. I bought a few of these lights from Dan just because I liked the way they looked. At the time, I had no plan or use for them. I also bought his dads beautiful blue Town and Country that I've converted into a lowrider, surprisingly, much to Dans liking.
I had my buddy Jub elongate these CWC springer forks about 12" over for what I was anticipating to be a Stingray chopper build on a raked frame, but when I placed them with the amber light and a 26" frame the tail dragger started to surface in my head. At first I thought to use a Schwinn double straight bar frame as I have two of them and save those and the single straight bar frames for special builds because they are rare and look cool. It didn't 100% jive with the forks so I grabbed a cantilever frame and it seemed to fit a lot better and we were off to the races.
The rear fender skirt is the most important part of this build. the tail end of it being the vanishing point of where all lines will originate from. Hopefully harmoniously and in the end inspiring some sort of positive emotional reaction. I drew out a half circle and put it where it would go..the position of the fender will likely change along with the shape, slightly, in the end but for now at least the idea is visible.
Every time I see some of these Elgin fender skirts I buy them. I may never come across a Skylark, but these will suffice. As far as streamline design goes, to me it doesn't get much better than these skirts, so I'm finally getting to use a set in a way I'd imagined
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I'm not sold on the stem, something without a reach would be cleaner. Depending on the rest of the bike, the handle bars may need a simpler curve... definitely can't put a traditional seat on this bike or it will mess the lines up so a little pad of sorts will need to be made.
Using a tiny 10" or 12" rear wheel is the only way I could imagine this bike would actually be functional without some serious restructuring of the rear end of the frame. While that would be cool and I can imagine some hydraulics could be applied, I think that would be taking this build too far and would best be an idea saved for the future.
More to come...
