Buy Cycles

"Seat Safety Switch" (seat-safety-switch)
11/26/2015 at 12:13 • Filed to: bicycles

I needed a few bucks one month, so I decided to compromise my principles. No, you’re not reading your sister’s blog. This is about me, and how I started repairing bicycles.

She threw me out. Or I threw her out. Sometimes it just happens that way. Regardless, I couldn’t rely on the DINK nature of our household income to finance my expeditions into high-horsepower, massive-displacement Cadillacs. I decided to pick up a second job. But what job?

My answer came to me as I was watching a television in a shop window, playing commercials endlessly between five-minute slivers of a procedural police drama. A man and his son sat, in the timeless father-and-son garage maintenance milieu, but they were working on some kind of strange two-wheeled car.

Was it one of these “motorcycles” I had heard about? I looked closer, pressing my face against the frosted security glass. Locomotion appeared to be driven by some kind of bizarre crank. In a shock of realization, I discovered this was the lower half of the strange creatures I saw inhabiting the “bike lanes.” I consulted Wikipedia on my phone and learned quickly that “bi-cycles” existed, and people often spent lots of money to maintain them without knowing anything about the true nature of labour. A light went off in my head, and it didn’t stop burning until I hung out my shingle.

Customers came fast and furious. One day, I would hold the hand of a weepy hipster after pronouncing time of death on the fixie he gave a name to, taken from us too soon under the twenty-two-inch polished faux-gold wheels of a texted-and-drove QX80. The next, I would burn a pack of pall malls as I brapped the steering head tube apart with my 3/8 lipo impact on a Cannondale, being waited on by an angry Lance Armstrong cosplayer in spandex. Business was good. The ease of the work - these people didn’t even own a Phillips screwdriver at home - loosened me up to spend time chatting. Each person who walked in my door was intricately broken, and I would need gentle persuasion and a mini-sledge made of compassion to put them back together again. I appreciated the challenge of dealing with the problems of my customers , not just of their machines.

My greatest challenge, however, came today. That’s when you came to me. You showed me there was something better than the degraded existence I had been groping blindly through, the depths of my depression immediately evident to you. In your hot grasp was a brochure printed by the city government, regarding the displacement limits acceptable for a “motor bicycle.” You asked me to build you as much horsepower as possible into 50cc of engine, and then you looked at me as if your demand was impossible.

I asked you to join me in the back room, where the turbochargers lived. Together, we would fix everything.

DISCUSSION (16)

vondon302 > Seat Safety Switch
11/26/2015 at 13:01

They just get better. “dink” lolz

CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) > Seat Safety Switch
11/26/2015 at 13:18

I don't understand the electric bicycle. It's really dangerous, as it has a bunch of Li-Po batteries which are widely unstable, and are super heavy. If I could, I'd just sell them electric motorcycles. I only know of one person who has a legitimate reason to use an electric bike because of a medical condition. Else than him, it's all fat Freds and people who pretend to exercise.

Seat Safety Switch > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist)
11/26/2015 at 13:29

Well, also my local municipality lets me drive one without a license, possibly intoxicated, in a special lane.

Also they let me have a bigger electric motor, which makes more torque than the equivalently-legal gas motor.

But it don’t make that two stroke sound :(

Lipos are pretty light. Imagine if those guys were rocking NiMH or (god forbid) lead acids like they used to in the 80s-90s.

tromoly > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist)
11/26/2015 at 13:32

LiPo is really only dangerous if abused, running the voltage too far down and forgetting to balance charge once in a while (resulting in a cell with too little voltage) are the biggest problems, aside from straight-up puncturing one that is. That’s not to say they don’t go up in flames, they can and do, but those are 90% of the time due to being mishandled. The other 10% is drawing too much current or shorting the battery, in that case any battery would explode so it’s not limited to LiPo.

Spoon II > Seat Safety Switch
11/26/2015 at 13:35

These things are awesome! That last line....goosebumps!

Tohru > Seat Safety Switch
11/26/2015 at 14:43

I’ve seen a local riding an old Huffy MTB with a 5HP Briggs and Stratton with a friction drive mounted to the seat bracket.

GhostZ > Seat Safety Switch
11/26/2015 at 14:45

Being able to zip around without licenses, parking fees, insurance, or liability for damages is a big reason for electric bicycles. It’s basically taking the one shitty part about owning a bike (it takes work and is slow) and removes it for a bit of extra cash.

Seat Safety Switch > GhostZ
11/26/2015 at 14:58

I would say it greatly improves the bicycle experience by adding more shit with which to tinker with and/or break.

Seat Safety Switch > Tohru
11/26/2015 at 14:59

This sounds great, but for your homework tonight consider ways in which this implementation could be improved with an IHI RHB5 and injections of environmentally-friendly corn methanol.

Tohru > vondon302
11/26/2015 at 17:18

Dual income, no kids. Dink

Tohru > Seat Safety Switch
11/26/2015 at 17:26

With strong enough head bolts you could run three turbos sequentially, but injecting meth is bad - I saw your previous article about it.

You’d want to have a front-mounted radiator with a water-air intercooler, a customized Megasquirt using a GM 1 barrel throttle body injection and running Sunoco 110 octane.

Coincidentally, there's a station that sells 110 octane 16 miles from my house. It cost me $94 to fill up my Ram 50 with it.

Seat Safety Switch > Tohru
11/26/2015 at 17:35

Man, I bet you could get a monoblock setup if it was a small-bore 2-stroke thumper. No head bolts to worry about lifting, but then I guess you’d have to worry about whatever it is the boosted 2-stroke guys worry about. Maybe valve backflow.

vondon302 > Tohru
11/26/2015 at 18:32

Yeah I know I am one. I thought we were the only ones that used the term

Satoshi "Zipang" Katsura > Seat Safety Switch
11/26/2015 at 20:13

Aren’t RHB5 turbos found on UK Escorts?

Seat Safety Switch > Satoshi "Zipang" Katsura
11/26/2015 at 20:29

Yeah, but Geo Metros use them with a lot of lag.

Turbo lag is essential to safe commuting.

Satoshi "Zipang" Katsura > Seat Safety Switch
11/26/2015 at 21:29

NOBODY LOVES TURBO LAG, OKAY?!