Rigging a Jig

The Geek has been thinking for some time of a way to bend the fork to make the front end of N2's chopper bike lower. She even considered running over the forks with a car, but decided that was not a reliable method.

So, on Saturday, she came up with a jig.
The 2-ton jack is sitting in a notch cut out of an old piece of 2X8 with a bolt holding the pivot points in place, and another bolt holding the front dropouts in place.

After jacking the cylinder to the full length, the forks bent a little but she found the bolts were bending instead of the forks; she found a bigger bolt.

She put it on the bike to see how it looked,

and tried again. The forks bent some more, and then the jig suffered a critical failure.

Thankfully the Geek was satisfied with the results

and the bike is ready for painting.

However, later that night, N2 called the Geek and asked if she could put gears on this bike. She tried to persuade him that chopper bikes don't have gears, but he was unconvinced. We are now on the search for an in-hub gear to build into a smaller wheel; a derailleur would be safe that close to the ground.