This is the history of my 1997 Gary Fisher bike

So here is the deal:
I wanted to bring my bike on a train and a ferry, which didn't allowed bikes. The train was the trans-siberian railway from Moscow to Vladiwostock. The ship was from Vladiwostock to Japan. I wanted to do 12 days of riding to lake Baikal, and another 40 days in Japan.

I had the idea of getting a 90ies full suspension bike, and detaching it completely and packing the bike into a bag. Luckily I found a used one for 130 Euro.
 I just needed a rear and front rack to carry my stuff when riding.
So here is the bike with the racks ready to ride:

Here we have the bike detached before the flight:

And here packed and ready for the trip:

Here we are at lake Baikal , after some days of riding through the Russian forests. The full suspension was nice to have there, but the unpaved roads and forest tracks were still hard to ride.

Back at home, I modified the rack again, to be able to hold some waterproof Ortlieb rear panniers for doing multiple day trips in the alps. 

This one did not hold too long, because I overstressed the bike too much. I had a new fork and a new rear shock attached, both with a lot more travel than originally. I rode this 90ies XC bike so hard on my local trails, that this happened over a year:

Now I am more into bike-packing than XC touring anyways, so I am over my loss.

36'' wheels

I just stumbled upon this thread of the MTBR board. I love this bike, for beeing that unusal. Beside the 36'' tires, the front hub was made from two hubs and a CNC connection piece. 

I just rendered my future bike

This is how I imagine the frame of the bike will look like, when I am building it. 

Sorry for the shitty texturing, but I had to do this as an assignment to get an idea of 3D editing and the time ran out. It is also hard to texture it with all the primitives merged together.

How to remove a seatpost beeing stuck in the frame.

In the next 3 months, I can not produce much original content, because I fractured my spine.
I will post several things from the web instead:

A new method to remove a Seat Post 

Redditor treopolis had a nice idea on removing a stuck seatpost from a frame.
There are some cases were every other method fails and you need to throw the frame away. It happens almost everytime when a steel frame and an aluminum seatpost are connected without grease over a long time. Wet conditions and a lot of riding seems to support the process.

Here is the link to the gallery:
 LINK

[Reddit original thread]

Building a Full Suspension Mountainbike Frame

Here is my newest and biggest project:

I am going to build a Full Suspension mountainbikeframe by myself.

Why? - Because building stuff is fun, and I will hopefully get my dream bike. It also saves a lot of money. There are also no comparable bikes on the market. 

What? - A Enduro Style MTB, but with a geometry which allows switching to a smaller fork and damper to do cross-country touring. As you may have seen in my other blog, I am into bicycle touring, especially in remote Asia. 

How? - With brass brazing and MAG welding. The main part of the frame is based on an old MTB Steel frame. I will cut the frame on the edges and modify the geometry. The rear swing will be made by me. 

Highlights:

• Travel 160 mm front and rear
• Switching Suspension - you can change to a light 100mm fork and a 160mm damper, and the bike will still be rideable.
• Steel
• 4,7 Kilo is the goal
• The frame will have a similar geometry as my touring bike
• Indestructible a swing bearing. - It is the bearing from a front hub. 
• Rear Rack for touring support.
• Frame shifters for touring

Making a bearing out of a front hub

For my mountainbike building projekt, I needed a reliable bearing for the rear suspension. After researching a lot, I came up to modify an old front hub. Front hubs can take a lot and are well sealed. 

I used my drilling machine and an angle grinder to lathe the hub int the correct shape:  

When I was approaching the correct diameter, I used a file tool for the last corrections. It took about 2 hours until the diameter was correct. After putting the hub into the freezer, I hammered it into the steel pipe. This pipe will later be brazed into the frame and hold the rear suspension.

I think it is a nice idea, how to make a reliable bearing without any advanced tools. There are several other applications I can think about, like making a wind turbine, or a connection for a self build bicycle trailer.

Cheap Disk Brakes are indeed unsafe!

I always try to be as low budget as possible, so for the rear brake of my new MTB building project, I purchased the cheapest disk brake as possible.

I got this crap for about 3 dollar from Ebay:

The other brake seemed in better condition, so I decided to try it out.

Before I could mount it, this fell out of the brake:

My new roadbike

So I wanted to have a touring roadbike.

After several years of collection old bike parts, I finally built this one out of 6 used bikes. 

The whole drive train consists of mountain bike components. I simply didn't want to purchase expensive road bike components. In my country there are also some steep climbs, impossible for me to climb with a road bike gear ration. The crank has 22 teeth on the smallest and 48 on the biggest gear. 

I hate lights and reflectors, but I also want to do some 24 hour biking, so this bike is my first bike legal to ride on the street. ;) 

Bikes may use the full lane. - My favorite traffic sign has to be on my bike:

Bikes may use the full lane

The whole bike including lights is about 12 Kilogramm.

Mounting a rear MTB rack on a road bike

Today I finally got my road bike a rear rack.

The lightest rack I had was from an old Specialized mountain bike.
Since my frame has no mounts for the rack, I had to get creative:

First I got a steel plate, like every hardwarestore has:

I cut out the following parts. Drilled holes, bent and painted them.

The bigger plate is screwed to the rack.

Now I placed the two smaller plates between the quick release and the frame. I used the brake screw to connect the long bended plate to the frame.

 So thats my bike. Forgive me all the lights and reflectors, but this is the setup for a 24 hour ride.

Bicycle Handlebar Rack Modification

Since the URL of my blog is weldandbraze.blogspot.com, this project fits in perfectly:

It is a modification for my handlebar to hold a bike pannier on my full suspension bike:

At first let me tell you that it really works, and it's perfectly save and and the bike remains stable!
I have to tell you, because it seems bad to have such huge weight on your handlebar. I already did a two day tour in the western alps and had a lot of fun. With "fun" I mean I jumped, did drops, rode bumpy trails with huge speed.

So how did I build it?
At first I got myself a steel handlebar. That was easy, because I just needed to go to my basement and get one. My basement is full of bicycles and  parts because I steel bikes at night people gave them to me in order to get rid of them.

Next I cut some steel from a hardware store and brazed and welded them together in this way:

I did the welding in my local community bike workshop, where everyone can work on their bikes.
Because I am not a talented welder, I brazed the steel to the handlebar, in order not to damage it.

Now it is possible to mount an Ortlieb bike pannier or similar on my handlebar.

The whole handlebar modification weights about 1.1 kilo and will not break. I tried with the full force of my arms to bend it, and I remained stable.

Derailleur fix during a tour

I want to start my new blog with an article, which got a lot of attention in my other blog:

Pretty nice place to spent the night, isn't it?

This place is located in northern India, at the beginning of the Spiti Valley, so fairly in the middle of the Himalayas. The altitude is about 4300 meter.

I couldn't enjoy it so much, because I was busy:

A chainsuck twisted the derailleur into the spokes, and made me curse for while

So what to do? Could be worse, one of the few cars on this road is a daily bus, but bike touring trip would be over. So I decided trying to fix it, though I didn't  believed in it.

Let's do it:

Making the surface rough, using sandpaper and a pocket knife:

This was the best I could do:

Applying two components glue and fiberglass.

First time, I actually did this.

Those fibers were sticking everywhere.

Finally the second layer is finished

The finished work:

And on my bike:

Time to move on and enjoy this fantastic area. 

 Against my expectations, the derailleur lasted the whole remaining trip (5 days), and is still intact.