Okay, so I got excited and bought a giraffe frame off ebay. It was my first purchase and I got it for $27 CAD. Its just the frame with cranks. Now questions.
Is anyone from the states either coming to Ontario or Nova Scotia anytime soon? Import fees are ridiculous and I can get it shipped directly to your door. There may be something in it for you.
What type of wheel does it take? Uni or bike? Could I take a freewheeling bike wheel and weld it so it doesn’t freewheel? Am I gonna need uni bearings and the such?
What kinda chain do you buy? Just like a BMX one? Do I need tensioners?
Its a no-name likely a cyclepro, so what size seatpost will it take? I plan on putting a viscount on it. What kind of bolt pattern do they take?
2., It takes a giraffe wheel, a standard bicycle wheel will not work, though as you may have herd there is the problem with standard giraffe wheels, if you do alot of backward ridiing, or some times not even that much, the bolt thiny-ma-bob unscrews and you are on a freewheeling giraffe, this can cause very bad ingury too. So what some people have done is do a tack weld welding the bolt to the gear and the bolt to the axle, this wil solve that problem but you can not take the gear off if you do tack weld it on. i also think that tere was a shwinn wheel that kinda fixed that prob, i dono, search for it.
3., It takes a longer chain than a bmx or a mountain, you can either buy one on UDC or you could take 2 bmkx chains and get a chain tool and attatch them and maybe take off a couple to get it the right size.
4., this calls for a ruler, messure the neck ID then buy a seatpost the right size, viscounts take the KH bolt pattern.
You’ll need to adapt a bike rear wheel for your giraffe. Yes, you will need to weld the cog onto the hub to stop it from freewheeling. Make sure it is well attached, because if the welds break it will result in a very quick (and possibly painfull) dismount. Try and find a cog with a similar number of teeth as the existing cog on the crank. One or two teeth more or less will not matter - in fact its quite a good idea to have one tooth more or fewer so the tyre wears more evenly (the tyre will move round when idling).
Buy a heavy duty BMX type chain. These typically stretch less than regular road or MTB chains. (Chain stretch on a giraffe is not a good thing). You may need to put two chains together to get the required length. If the frame does not have tensioners, you will need some of these to eliminate chain slop.
SEatpost size - maybe try out seatposts from your other unicycles and see if any fit. If they don’t you may need to go to a bike shop and have them measure the ID with vernier calipers - a ruler will not be accurate enough. Then adapt a bike seatpost of the correct ID to a unicycle seatpost or get a shim made (you might need to go to a local engineer to do this.)
You can indeed use a bike wheel with the cog welded in place. What Evan is talking about is giraffes with cogs which screw on to their hubs. These hubs are designed for bikes (which are generally only ridden forward) which tightens the cog onto the hub. Not all giraffe wheels are built this way - in fact the better ones have their cogs welded in place.
Re: Re: General Giraffe building questions (I got a frame)…
When you say cog do you mean sprocket. I got a BMX bike and an old wheel and a sprocket set for free behind my LBS today cause they were going to the dump. I got the bike for a BC wheel for my cousin and the wheel for the giraffe. And is a lock ring like a washer with the thing sticking out the side?
Also would the sprocket set come apart or will I have to buy an individual one? I only looked at it briefly but it seemed like they were put together solidly. How would I get them apart?
Finally 1" is that 22.2 mm (bedford frame/miyata) 25.4 mm (GB4 universal (big i think) or 27.2 mm (KH).
Thanks for your help, so it wont have like bearing holders it’ll be the bike kind of setup?
I have a frame, cranks and bottom bracket type thing, but I’m wondering what is needed to attach a wheel. I don’t actually have the frame yet so I don’t know what the attachment part looks like and I’m just trying to figure it out.
Do you have a picture of the frame you bought? Or did you buy it without seeing a pic…I guess If you had a picture of it you would’ve posted it by now.
There was a guy selling two on ebay, Evan linked to it it in a thread looking fo a giraffe frame. There was a pic of the two of them side by side but I can no longer access it. It was just silver and your avg giraffe frame I guess.
