I never really liked my Schlumpf 36" frame as it was too wide at the top. This meant that the crown would annoyingly touch the backs of my legs with every pedal stroke. Seeing as I’d already built the wheel up as a 29er I thought I’d cut down the frame to match. I figure if I ever want to build a Schlumpf 36" I’d use a Nimbus 36" frame instead. Having nothing to lose, I gleefully took to my not inexpensive Schlumpf frame with a hacksaw!
Specs:
Chopped down 29" schlumpf frame
KH rim
Double butted Wheelsmith spokes
Big Apple tyre
Quax 125mm cranks
Odyssey twisted plastic pedals
Thomson seatpost
KH Freeride saddle
After reassembling the newly shortened unicycle, I took it on a 2 hour test ride. I rode to Cornwall Park and up Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill, doing the circuit which me and Peter Bier use to compare road unicycles in 15 minutes. [Not sure how this time compares to a coker - its been a while since we did the original comparisons. Maybe Peter will chime in here…] Then I rode through Ellerslie and up Mt Wellington then home. The only time I noticed my legs touching the crown was when climbing steep hills. So the surgery was successful.
Nice one. That looks if anything slightly shorter than my 29 Schlumpf was. You’ve obviously got longer legs than me judging from the seatpost length, I found the 29" frame knocked my knees every so often, particularly off road.
By the way, I priced up a very rough approximation of the decent Schlumpf frame top that Roger made me, on emachineshop.com. For a run of 10 it’d cost something like 100$US or more each for the crown, ie. quite a lot.
Errm, not sure how much it’d cost to get done properly, Roger had it done as a favour by a mate, for his coker schlumpf, and I ended up with it because my Schlumpf frame was snapped. Roger reckoned that the cost to get it machined the way that one was would cost you about £200 ($400) in machine time in a typical machine shop. I think the main part was done on a big CNC mill, plus 4 holes drilled and tapped. It has lots of nice touches like smoothed off top edges. The neck of the frame is just clamped in, with a lathed bit round the top of the tube for the seatpost clamp. Using just a slightly thinner tube would probably have done the job there, this was just because it was a first run, and Roger wasn’t sure about how thick it needed to be.
I think if you wanted one doing and don’t have a mate with a cnc mill, the only economical way to do it might be e-machineshop but you’d have to be really sure that the design was right. If you did get it right though, you could surely split the cost between 3 or 4 people to make the costs less insane (the setup cost is about $150, but then you pay like 50$ per part on top).
The furry quadraped is a tortiseshell manx cat, not a bunny.
I find the Schlumpf frame wobbles from side to side, but as far as I can tell it is the bearings moving on the axle, rather than frame flex. This is most evident at high speed which is a bit annoying. It seems that either the ID of the bearings is too large or that there aren’t enough spacers between the bearing and the flange to prevent the bearings from being able to move from side to side. Will have to remove the cranks and see if I can fix it…
i swear it took me less than a second to figure it out:)
, very nice uni you have there my friend. 