BIKES

=Cycle for Success= Bio-diesel is out, Bikes are in!! The Bio-D room has been renovated into a bike repair shop. We're planning some bike power, bringing back the smoothie bike, and maybe even a community bike repair shop! Stay tuned to see what we will do. If you have any suggestions, comments or questions feel free to email me at **scbowman2000@gmail.com**. ==
 * Week of 5/9**: The work on the bamboo bike has continued. We have finished the epoxy, and joining of all of the members. After this, we have to assemble the drive shaft, put the chain back on, and reattach the brakes. In addition, we will be working on aligning the rear wheel. After all of this, we will be excited to show it off at the tour de newton at the Newtonville shop. As well, work on the smoothie bike has continued. A smoothie bike was donated to us but our own personal one is very close to being finished. For the donated smoothie bike, we will add limiters or sleds in order to prevent belt derailment. The refurbished bike has been going well but some parts have given us some problems such as the front derailleur and back brakes have given us difficulty. The brakes stop the bike while in motion but it takes a while for it to slow down. On the plus side, we have attached the brake lights and a switch to control them which is successfully setup and connected on the bike, and the back derailleur is now properly tuned and seems to be working well. Our first attempt to attach the big battery on was not successful due to the weight of the battery and the size of it. We originally attached the battery by zip-ties, which obviously didn't work. When we went over a bump, the battery slipped out of the zip-ties and fell off the bike. We then decided to make a bracket for the battery. We bent the metal to many times that the metal split. So, we went back to zip-ties, but the battery is secure this time. We are planning on doing more research on the blinkers and we will be doing more testing of the bike.
 * here are some pictures of the refurbished bike**

P.S. Why does Spencer put his email on this thing?
 * Week of 3/14**: We are sorry for the long delay in posting but we have been very busy. We have started some new projects while we wait for the epoxy for our bamboo bike. We have started construction on a pedal powered blender. This is powered using a high traction wheel that spins a shaft to power the blender. We have built the general frame for the blender bike and made the mount for the blender. We still have to work more on adjusting the distance of the wheel compared to the tire and minimize the cantilevering of the shaft. To do this, we are adding a bearing. This will reduce friction well also allowing the shaft to be held firmly. This will alow us to make the wheel very tight on the tire without the shafting bending. This will maximize the conversion of the y-plane rotation provided by pedaling the bike to the z-plane rotation needed to power a blender. Once again sorry for the long delay, but as was said above we have been extremely busy with new projects. While you already know about the pedal-powered bike, and how we have started to tune up other people's bikes while we haven't done much with other students bikes we have made tremendous progress in refurbishing one of our own bikes. The picture below from 2/8 showed the progress we hade made with this bike here is the most recent picture taken only two days ago. As you can see plenty has been done to give this bike a new and better look. What is important to remember is that this was not just a simple tune up for bike maintenance but rather we completely took apart this bike stripped all the paint off of it repainted it and are now in the process of putting it back together. So if you do want your old bike to be refurbished to look like this know that it will take time, but we will try our best to be both quick and efficient. As well, we have started a bike shop in which we tune up peoples bikes. This is a great way for us to improve our skills, get our name out and improve bike ridership. If you have an bike that is in need of a tune up, just leave it in the greengineering room. If you have any questions or concerns you can email me at **scbowman2000@gmail.com**. If there is no one in the room then you can try coming back later. We will fix your breaks, front and back, as well as both of your derailleurs. In addition we will clean and re-grease your chain and lubricate all of the moving parts on your bike.
 * Week of 3/14:** We have finished painting all parts of the bike, and we are now assembling it back together as you can see in the picture below. Most of the brake components have rusted on the top layer, so we took the dremel and sandpaper and shaved most of the layer off, bringing back a new-ish look? Not really, but you can see the shine coming. However, it isn't necessary for the function of the bike because the brake pads are intact. We have almost the front brake on and are working on the back as well. Then we will put the gear shifter back on and chain so we can ride the thing. It will be amazing, and that paint job looks nice, right? Took way too long, but the reward was great. Plus with Matteo's mural, the shop is finally coming together. After essentials, we are going to put brake lights and blinkers onto the bike and hopefully add a battery powered by pedal power. That would be nice. Thanks for coming on this journey with us! -WaffleJason

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 * Week of 2/8:** We have placed an order for all of our necessary parts for the bamboo bike. Well we wait, we have continued work on our sanded bike.The sanding is finished and we have started to prime. The frame of the bike has also been painted. In addition, the primer leaves a very cool misty white color. We are thinking about keeping the fork this color for a nice contrast. After we finish painting, we plan to reassemble the bike. This will be a good practice as we will have to re tune the front and back derailleurs. Overall it has been a great week. Again, if you have any questions or suggestion, feel free to email me at scbowman2000@gmail.com . Also, if you would like a free bike tune up, you can drop by the geoengineering room during school hours. You should also email me beforehand so I can make sure someone will be in the room.

also we have been making some good progress in the design of the frame for the bamboo bike. First we begun to experiment with connecting the joints by using a reinforced tape as well as thought of using hemp and epoxy but that made change in the future. We also decided to scrape the bottom bracket of a bike as well as the pedals. We still have quite a bit of work and the joints are proving to be the most difficult in the process, but we are going forward and are hoping that once we finish the first the next one will be easier to recreate.
 * Week of 1/25: **The bamboo bike is still in the building process. We recently made a jig for the big to hold together the pieces of the bike. This will make sure that the bike's angles are preserved and that everything fits snugly. We have also decided to use bamboo for the handlebars. Using rubbing alcohol, we slid on the grips for the biker. It took a bit of effort but in the end it was worth it. In addition, we removed the old handlebars so that we could attach the new bamboo parts. While we are waiting for our order materials, we will try to make more and more of the parts from bamboo.
 * Week of 1/12: **Sorry for not posting earlier, but here it is! We have been working on a side project while we have been working diligently on the bamboo bike. We have disassembled a mountain bike and giving it an upgrade. We stripped the brakes, gears, and wiring off the bike. We started to remove the old paint job from the bike sanding it down to get the metallic color back. So far we have made much progress and have almost completed sanding all the blue paint off. We used a sander, files, sandpaper, as well as the dremel. We order parts such as new blue and orange paint, as well as some other accessories such as a brake light, and blinkers. This picture is out-dated but we will make sure to get another picture up ASAP! Now, almost all of the paint is off the frame, but we still need to take paint off the handle bars and the front wheel mount. We are planning on putting primer on all parts to keep them from peeling, and also paint the rims a cool color. Thanks for the support and go bikes!





**Week of 1/4**: We have been super busy over the last couple of weeks. The designing of the bamboo bike is in full swing. We have narrowed down out attachment method to either carbon fiber or hemp and we will use an epoxy seal for both. Right now we are doing two things. First we have started to heat treat the bamboo. This removes any remaining water from the stalks, increasing the strength while actually making the bamboo lighter. We are also using a dremel to cut out metal pieces for the bike. Well bamboo is awesome, due to its varying sizes, we need to use some metal pieces. This includes the bottom bracket, the fork, and the wheel notches with are used to attach the wheel to the frame. And of course, we will use normal pedals, cranks shafts, wheels and sprockets.

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 * Week of 12/14 **: We have started the design process for the building of a bamboo bike. We decided to use the frame from a bike design from the website waterfordbikes.com. We have been testing and attempting throughout most of the week. This includes stress tests, drill tests, and lots of testing of the ideas of how to attach the bamboo. Right now we are printing L shaped mounts for the bamboo. We hope this will be strong enough but if it is not we will try aluminum. In addition to mounting brackets, we are also experimenting with wrapping the joints in rubber. We have a huge pile of popped tubes and we were questioning what we could do with them. We have tried wrapping the joints with them and the hold is surprisingly tight. We also are planning on using heat to shrink the tubes to create a small and stronger joint. These two methods mentioned are quite experimental. Every video we have watched has used either hemp fibers or carbon fiber cloth with epoxy as a glue. We would like to try something new as that is really the spirit of greengineering but if these methods fail, we will probably use hemp and epoxy.
 * Week of 12/7: ** The bike rebuild challenge is going great. We are almost done with the grey road bike and we have just finished dissembling the blue mountain bike. For the road bike, both tires are back on. Also, the chain and both derailleurs, front and back, have been attached. By the end of last class we got the bike fully shifting but it still needs a little tuning for it to shift perfectly. This process has taught us a lot. I have learned how derailleurs work and have a greater appreciation for everything that a bike has on it. With all of this new knowledge , we should be able to fly through the rebuild of the blue bike. After this, who knows what the future holds for us. There is one thing I know though, it will be awesome.


 * Day 3 **: After the reshuffling of the greengineering room, pedal power started to gear up. We began our introductory challenge today. In order to learn more about bikes and get some first hand experience with them, we have decided to completely disassemble 2 bikes. This will help us if we decide to do a bike shop, removable electric assist or even if we bring back the smoothies. On the left bike, We removed the seat, took off the chain, and are very close to removing the entirety of the shifting system. On the right bike, we removed the seat, handlebars and front tire. There was quite a struggle to get the front tire off the rim, but we worked together and got it off. Next class we hope to remove the brake and shift cables from the handlebars and move onto the sprockets and chain. Our new area is really starting to come together and we have started to think about some projects. Today we also sat down and decided on our impact goal. It is "We want to make a safer, easier and overall better bike community for newton north and newton as a whole". This can take many forms whether it be giving maintenance on site, making bike riding easier with electric assist or improving the bike racks. Again, I know it says this above, but if you have and questions, comments or suggestions, please email me at scbowman2000@gmail.com.




 * Day 2 **: Huge changes came on our second day. The bike shop is no more in the old bio-diesel room. We have switched spots with algae and aquaponics, so the new center for pedal power is out in the main room. Materials and the sewing machines now reside in the classroom. We can not wait to set up our bike shop and get working. Today we moved all of our bikes and equipment into our new area. Everyone is happy as we now have more space and the algae and aquaponics now have plenty of outlets.




 * Day 1 **: During class today, we took apart the bio-diesel tanks and stands to give ourselves more work space. The pedal power team decided to use the connected closet in the new bike room as a storage closet for the old bio diesel equipment and other tools. We are psyched for a great year and can not wait to get started. We haven't finalized what we are going to do yet but we are interested in bringing back the smoothies, removable electric assist and overall trying to foster a more bike friendly North and Newton.

ninetales