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Almost a year or so after building my first regular bike, I felt like making something a little bit different. One day the idea popped into my head for making a rear-wheeled steering bicycle.

The frame is from scrap pipe that was laying around.
The wheels, tires, gears, cranks, headset, and chain were parted from an old (free) garage sale bike.

The "steering shaft" is made from a piece of exhaust pipe tubing, welded to the bottom of a headset stem.

The fork in the rear (and small tire) are from a thriftstore childrens bicycle. It was cut in half at the stem, where I added in square tubing for the steering cable to connect to.

I used plastic pulleys, attached to the frame for the steering cable to run thru.

The seat frame was made from steel tubing, and the seat itself was cut from 3/8" plywood. I was originally going to cover the wood with cushioning and fabric. But I never got around to it.


Some problems I've had:
If there is ever a day I decide to build another one of these contraptions, their are a couple of things I would do differently.

• The steering is way too sensitive. I need to enlarge the "steering shaft" in the front.
  

• The handle bars come in too close to the chest.
  

• In this current version, I eliminated the use of all the gears so that it is a single speed. This was mainly do to laziness. In the future I would keep it multi-speed.
  

• The pedal's are almost too far, anybody shorter has trouble ridding. If it could somehow be more universal.
  

l>

When I first had the idea in mind I pictured being able to make very sharp turns, almost being able to stay in one place. Unfortunately it did not work out this way. There was probably something that could be change for this to be possible.

So if you ever plan on making something like this, keep these things in mind.

Although I don't have any pictures during the build process,(it is basically the same as the cruiser.) I do have a few of the finished bike itself.


(click images to enlarge)



In case the video above does not work, you can download the clip here.