Read this thread about 6 months ago. Loved the idea Just never had a bike to do it with. Well I had a bike I picked up thinking of flipping come into my stables. Its a 1995 Proflex Arcadia full suspension MTB made out of 4130 CroMo.
The bike is down because the rear suspension is Elastomer spring and the only place that seems to have them is in Scotland. $30 for the bike was well worth it for the full Acera bits and Mavic Rims but add the money for the Spring and it is not worth fixing for the flip when the most I could hope to get out of a old bike like that is maybe $125. I could make the same profit parting it. So I started to think about parting it and using the rims as spares/offroad for my M400 C-Dale. Well this thread popped back in my mind as something this bike may lend itself to.
The good points I see is the rear suspension A frame bolts onto the BB Where most of the home brew bikes in this thread use a hard tail MTB and then uses the original rear drop outs to mount off of. That looks to make for about 16 inches of stretch. In some ways it makes for a lot of clutter and extra weight.
What I am going to do is build a T bracket that will be more like how a Big Dummy is Set up. With the top fork (seat stays) being hinged it is easy enough for me to lean them forward for a low rack height. I can also make the extension any length that I want. I could make it 35 inches if I want. In this case I am actually going to go a little shorter then most of the bikes in this thread and only make a 10 inch extension of wheel base and center the load over the rear wheel more so as not to add a lot of loaded weigh to the front suspension.
I'll make the extension parts out of thin wall mild steel since I can weld that easy enough. I hope to add less then 10lb to the bike's weight. It will be totally reversible if I decide to buy the Elastomer spring.
I don't know when I will get to this as I have a lot of projects in line but I who knows I may have enough steel in the garage to do this sooner then later.
