Home Made - 4.5" Playbike - NOW 5.5in with DHX-Air!!!

---Matt---

---Matt---

Likes Bikes and Dirt
Click here for the most recent update
-------------------------------------------------------
Action shots are at the bottom!

Well we finally managed to do it successfully! We've been working on this bike for around 12 months now and most of it was on the design but it's finished and I love it! Yes, it does look like an Appalache Real but it's got 4.5" travel and corners like a hoon! It also pedals pretty damn well too! We designed it with the ability to put a different rear shock in there so that with different plates it could accommodate a 6" travel setting too.

Basic specs:
Travel - 4.5" of rearward travel
Chainstay - 15.7" at rest / 16.2" at sag
Head angle - 68 degrees with the Z1's
Top Tube - 22.5" approx

I took it for it's first ride tonight and I think it's awesome... but I'm a little biased.
Anyway, enjoy the pics!













---Matt---
 
Last edited:
|Matt|

|Matt|

Banned
Yeah Matty. Looks sweet, glad to see its together. Hows she ride?

Did your mate still want those fork parts? I still have them lying around.
 
leitch

leitch

Feelin' a bit rrranty
Very, very impressive Matt! You guys are all over the high-pivot-with-idler thing now, aren't you? Looks really really good, and tough as nails, too! I don't expect it to be light, but what are the frame only and complete build weights?

EDIT: My only thoughts are, is there any way you could manufacture it with smaller/cleaner plates? I'm sure with a coat of paint on the rest of it it wouldn't be such an issue, but compared to the thin steel tubing, the plates stick out like the dog's proverbials...

EDIT EDIT: Just had another look - two downtubes? Looks funky, got a closeup?
 
Last edited:
patto_15

patto_15

Wheel size expert
Hawt!! Would have been sik if the seat tube was abit slacker i think... but meh, who gives a'.. Still damn hawt but ;)
 
T

tupper

Likes Bikes and Dirt
Awesome!
though tubing looks a little thin, but i suppose to keep it light,
Keen to see the 6 Inch.
 
Line_Choice_King

Line_Choice_King

Banned
Thats fantasic it shits all over that other home made job with the boxing comming out from the BB. You can tell some hard work and determination has gone into that.

and yer weight?
 
Mo

Mo

Likes Bikes and Dirt
i think it should go into production. so neat it's unreal.
just a sexy linkage plate and voila
 
---Matt---

---Matt---

Likes Bikes and Dirt
I reckon it rides like a dream. Really good over the small/mid sized bumps but pedals over them without any chain-pull either. Only issue we had was the damn rear shock. I got it basically new and within 15 mins we had oil spewing out of the rebound adjuster. We're gonna take it apart tomorrow and see what we can do.

Weights - We didn't weigh the frame only. I guess we were both a little too keen to build it and a little afraid too. An educated guess would say the frame without shock was about 4.5kg. we were aiming for 4kg when we designed it but there's at least 200g of welding filler in it alone, and the steel plates on the swing arm are quite heavy too. So another educated guess would put it complete at about 16.5kg ish.

The aluminium plates are 10mm thick for two reasons. Firstly, it was the only aluminium plate we could get and it was a lower grade alu than what we were thinking of using. 6061 would have been ideal. Also, we thread the shock bolt into it and wanted to make sure we had lots of thread contact.

I was waiting for someone to notice the double downtubes. We did that again, for a few reasons. Firstly we couldn't bend the larger tubes the way we wanted. Secondly, the shock mount had to be lower than we could do with the larger straight tubes. Third, the shock reservoir needed some room. Four, Balfa/Appalache used a CNC'd box to mount the shock in but being steel and with limited resources we couldn't do that and fifth, this was the simplest solution.

Here's the best pic I could find.


And with the seat tube, it's that steep because we needed to be able to mount the pivot in the right location and still have room for the braces on the swingarm and room for the shock to fit. We would have made it slacker if we could have! :p

Cheers guys!
 
FoxRidersCo

FoxRidersCo

Sanity is not statistical
Cool...

Looks like something that would come out of the Brooklyn Machine Works factory.

Good to see some home made frames, you guys should start your own bike company.

:):)
 
fishinabarrel

fishinabarrel

Likes Dirt
Looks very very smooth!!

Congrats on building a frames.. You always hear people talking about ideas for frames, but no one ever really come through..

Something a bit different and if it works... you'll have people staring at it all day asking you "where'd you get the ride from??"..

Sweet as!
 
atsunD

atsunD

Likes Bikes
that looks mean - it's very hard to find a 4.5" travel steel frame
I bet's it's loads of fun to thrash about

I really like the twin downtube too

taking orders? :)
 
---Matt---

---Matt---

Likes Bikes and Dirt
No orders atsunD, sorry. Toooo much work and not enough riding as it is! If you ever see me riding around Melbourne feel free to stop me and have a spin though!

Deaks, I'll have action pics once I get a reliable shock and get out somewhere worthy of riding it :D

Anyone know where I can get a cheap Fox RP23 or ROCO AIR 3PL for it? :p
 
skivi

skivi

Likes Dirt
matt you've outdone yourself and created a monster!

looks like the weight would be beautify central and i dont even mind the twin down tubes. top effort!

maybe you should put it through it's paces at the you-yang's race in April, if I've got the time I'm considering entering and all i have is the rigid SS 4hun!

nick
 
---Matt---

---Matt---

Likes Bikes and Dirt
Yeah... it's not much of a race bike in my opinion. It's a little short in the front end but I might give it a go.

It's running 6.5x1.5 Vanilla R at the moment which I picked up cheap from here so my shock options are fairly limited. As I said before, I could run it at 6" by using a 7.5x2.0 shock with new linkage plates which would take about an hour to knock up.
 
J

JeremyW

Likes Dirt
Looks great, best short travel crmo frame I've seen.

Can see where the hours went designing it. Whats next?
 
---Matt---

---Matt---

Likes Bikes and Dirt
JeremyW said:
Looks great, best short travel crmo frame I've seen.

Can see where the hours went designing it. Whats next?
Click to expand...
Next.... hmmmm lets see... lighter 8" bike than our first one, 24" trials bike, 26" commuter/XC bike... take your pick ;)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top