Thursday, July 26, 2018

Suspended at work

Some things don't fit the work stand. There are several recumbent trikes in the area, but they don't come in often enough for me to have devised a foldable trike stand, or to need a permanent one. So I rigged a three-point lifting sling and used the e-bke hoist to raise this one to a comfortable working height.

The fact that it swings around imprecisely suits the feeling I get from working on it. There are no quick jobs on a trike. If it needed a chain, we'd have to graft together three or four of them. If you want to take the front wheels off, you have to remove the brake calipers. So everything is either okay or major surgery.

This particular trike has a SRAM Dual Drive rear hub, but doesn't have the official SRAM shifter for it. The internal gearing is controlled by a Shimano barcon. For some reason, it has a click in the second gear position, so you can adjust the hub properly...I think. The website for the company has no manuals for this old model, so I have not been able to dig up authoritative guidance. But this particular trike gets ridden only on basically flat ground at low speeds.

In other unusual requests, a customer appeared in the back stairwell during a slightly busy moment last Thursday with what I thought at first was a kid's bike made to look like a motorcycle. Instead it turned out to be an actual motorcycle.

The customer wanted us to fix the flat tire on the front. It's a 16-inch, but a bit wider than our standard tube. We told him that our 16X2.125 might not hold up, but he agreed that it was better than nothing. That bike went on the e-bike hoist as well. I weighed it after the job: 93 pounds.

An electric scooter with fat 12-inch tires waits in the basement for its turn.

2 comments:

RANTWICK said...

Things are getting heavy, man. - Yer pal, Nate in the Car

cafiend said...

The motorcycle belonged to Mitt Romney's grandkids. Whatever else you might say about the guy, he's in excellent physical condition: he dragged that tank up the back stairs like it was nothing.