Cruising Tempelhof airfield

Here are some pics from a few days ago,

showing us and the velocar driving at the Südstern and Tempelhof airfield in Berlin.

This time just for fun and meeting friends.

The weather was dry at least and

 the sun showed up for a few minutes in fact.

And here is Michele from Copenhagen,

who made a long travel to visit me at home.
Originally from Italy and a superb pizza baker, you can learn more about him at
www.bikeandbake.dk

Nice to meet you all,

Kai

Maker Faire Berlin 2016

After a busy week I have enough time to write a few words about

our last weekends exhibition in Berlin.

Preparations in the final week before the faire:

I was too optimistic about my building speed.

It needed several attempts to get the drivetrain working properly.

also I had massive problems with the paint I choosed for the front fenders.

It's the worst paint finish I've ever done, I'm really ashamed. 

I'll never buy bloody cheap paint again, in the end it's much more expensive!!!

Next time, I have to get all the paint off again.

But then I will use epoxy resin as a first coat and a 2-component paint,

which doesn't shrink and has way better gap filling characteristic.

All in all, the velocar was just in one seater mode, when we leaved for Berlin.

The Maker Faire:

It's not the best idea to attend an exhibition as a single exhibitor,

because this is a full time job.

From 10 to 18 o'clock I had very small opportunity to drink or eat.

I was really knackered at saturday evening and my voice was almost gone then.

I had a lot of childs at my stand, just for test seating or occasional drives around the plaza.

I piloted the velocar myself only , due to the missing rear brakes 

and the crowded place allowed just walking speed.

Here are a few impressions so far:

 Observation by the experts

 In improvised business card holder

 Myself at the "helm" (this was at day2, when I removed the doors to prevent damage)

 36inch direct drive bicycle and in fact driveable

 A lucky nerd with two young girls

A short round view and exhibition test ride

Driving kids around

 Carrying equipment of my neighbor exhibitor

 Finally on the transporter again.

A big Thank You to Gloria from the next stand, for helping me out when I needed to take a break.

She transforms music into knitting art

http://gloria-sophie.de/ 

 Also Thanks to all the interesting people I met.

Cheers, Kai

Building update September

Hello,

I was a bit lazy with maintaining this blog.

No posts since two months.

But, because I was not that lazy in building, there's a lot of progress.

I have built the front hood, the steering system, the front brakes, pilots drivetrain

 and spent several hours refining the bodywork.

The front hood

Fenders painted and Banshee as test payload

My front braking system is somewhat odd

The alum tube which goes through the hole is the steering column

and the front brakes are operated by pulling the handlebar/column back

Front part of drivetrain

Looking inside the left side box with the two idlers at left

 and the jackshaft at right side

The jackshaft 

View to the rear wheel

And finally I was able to drive the velocar, although barely
Just minimum eqipment: Pedals, chains, front brakes and a handlebar.
No shifting cable yet,so I shifted the NuVinci hub to slowest gear directly at the hub interface.
The slack side of the chain is still not exactly aligned with the frame holes where it goes through.
You can hear it rattling loudly, the hollow plywood frame behaves like a guitar corpus.
So, no speed trials today...
Just testing the suspension and turning circle, which is - by the way- impressingly small !
Next steps are proper seats and door locks, these clamps are going on my nerves.

And please excuse the bad quality video, it was just recorded with the cell phone

 

Future color scheme

Hello,

Christian, a guy from the local steampunk community made some color simulations for me.
Quite useful, I think.
Better than paint it first and hate it afterwards.
He also suggested to change the grille from oval to a horseshoe shaped one.
Now it looks more like a Bugatti or Morgan.
My wife just giggled, when she saw the photo, so I have to go for it.

 The curved windshield is also suggested by him, but the real one will be a bit higher.
His website

Bordeaux is our favourite color now

Bugatti blue is on second place

British racing green is another option (for one of the next builds)

I'm still thinking about a 2 tone scheme, all colors above can be combined with creme white.

So, looking forward to my next steps...

Front fenders

Hi folks.

Currently I'm working on the front fenders of the new velocar.

First step was the making of a side panel in the projected shape,

then glueing curved girders, which meets the sweeping lines of the panels perfectly.

This time I had to glue a much tighter bending radius, than ever before.

(front half of the fenders)

A dry batten would break if bent so hard, 

so I used boiling water to make them flexible and that worked perfectly.

Next tricky step was the unrolling of the front and top panels of the fenders.

These are bent and curved in all directions,

but again it was easier than it seems.

Now all panels are dry fitted and ready to be glued together.

This will be done tomorrow.

As always a few pics, showing the steps of my work

 Side panel cut out and screwed in place

Aft part of the fender tops

 And finally the front panels cut out and dry fitted.

Now the "face" is almost ready built.

I still have to decide the design for the cowl and grille.

My inspiring examples are these two great cars.

 Jaguar XK120

Delage D8 Aerosport Coupe

Cheers

Old & New

Hello,

Here are new photos just for fun,

to give you an impression of the differences

 There's still some work on the new velocar...

Kai