ZEPHYR CYCLES: The rest of the front tri, short of the main pivot.

I have been really busy this past week and a half.

I did the two cuts on the seat tube brace, and it took quite a bit of fiddling and filing to get the two mitres equal and tight, but got there, drilled the vent holes, sanded and cleaned the joint, fluxed it up and brazed it in place.

Still more filing this joint took a while to get right.

This photos not the best, but you get the idea.Check the next one down.

This was pretty interesting the tubes where pretty thin and I took a lot of care not to flame them up to hard, and the beads came up good (the photos don't do them justice). Although the seat tube itself took a bit of a battering from the heat of the torch and has gone a little banana shaped, will sort that out next time the torch gets lit, I have to straighten it before the reamer goes down, other wise the cutter will go through the tube wall.

Got some motivation going and took the plunge on the downtube, I cut the mitre on the head tube and it took a lot of filing to get it right, square, centered and tight. Then I cut the end of the down tube for the tube joint at the bottom, this took a little bit of work to get lined up, I had the "eyecrometer" out to get this sorted and it came out pretty good, although I cut it a little long so I had some room to move.
I brazed in the tube to the end and cleaned it up, and it came together pretty square.

Next for the gusset, I cut this the same as the first, out of an old tube that I had lying around. Shaped it and squashed it to fit, then fluxed it and tacked it on.
I did it differently this time round because I didn't feel like I had alot of control of the heat on the gusset last time. So I chose to tack the gusset on the tube, then tack and check the junction, then do the tinning pass and fillet and then come back to the thin gusset, with all the residual heat around it wouldn't take much extra heat to draw the brass into the gusset area.
So next I set the frame up flat on its centre lines and put the down tube in and checked it for alinement, sanded the junction, cleaned it, fluxed it, then put some heavy weight on the tubes, started sweating! and lit the torch!
I was worried that as soon as I started heating the joint, that it would pull and move all over the shop but I put two tacks down, top and bottom. I let it cool and checked it with machinists square and it checked out good! Sweet! So I then proceeded to the park stand and brazed the joint, did the top of the joint first, then onto the bottom, then sides and finally the gusset area. This worked better than the first time so was pretty happy.

Next it was time to make the junction for the bb>square>dt. Got it kinda lined up on the drawing and marked it out with an old bit of tube the same diameter as the bb, then broke the angle grinder out with the cut off wheel and "roughed it " to size.After this a lot of filing was done to get them matching nicely.

On to the brazing after spending a lot of time sanding and cleaning the parts, fluxing then brazing.
The square took a lot of heat to get to temp and I was worried about the bb being pulled by this, it fared ok but not the tube that joins the square and the downtube, its pretty oval now!but its all good and i'll live with it.

So now on to the clean up I got excitied with the torch so now there are a lot of joints to finish off, slowly but surely!
Also have figured out where the lower shock mount is and made the mount itself hand filed and cut, it looks good. It will be the last thing to go on when the whole bike is mostly assembled. It took a bit of working out, and I hope that the angle of the shock is not to steep should be nice and plush though!