Post 1: I have a garage where I work on old cars and motorcycles and just for fun a couple years ago I decided to put an engine on a bicycle and turn it into a motorcycle (2nd to last picture). The concept as a whole reminded me of the old school board track race motor cycles from the early 1900’s that were also based on bicycles early on. However the big problem with this bike is that it’s loud and slow and also just kinda a death trap, so it never gets ridden and is essentially just an art piece. This also becomes a problem trying to work on other projects in our garage because we end up having to push it around constantly for everything else coming and going. Because of this I want to solve the issue by building a wall mount for this bike. A mount like this adds to the overall hot rod style garage aesthetic we already have where the walls are plastered in things like flags and old equipment. I also think it would be cool to have it leaning out from the wall at an angle so it looks like it’s going around a banked turn. This bike has a very dainty and vintage European look and I want to match that aesthetic as best I can with the design of the mount. It also definitely has ques from old hot rods with exposed welds, popping mis-matched colors, and a little bit of chrome. I want to overall attempt to combine these 2 related, yet different aesthetics into the design of the wall mount.
My thought is to first create a bunch of pie cuts out of 2” tube and weld them together to create an overall radius that matches the contour of the 26” wheels. Then I will cut this pipe down the middle to create a semi-circle cradle and I want to grind down the welds and polish the pipe. After that I plan to make some more robust wall mounts that will attach to the semi circle cuts and will allow it to sit up close against the wall. For this bracket piece I will probably leave it more exposed with visible welds and will probably paint it black. I will repeat this to create a rear wheel mount as well and then the wheels of the bike will sit in these mounted cradles. To finish securing it to the wall I will probably take a bunch of twine and tie it off to the frame and then use self tapping screws to secure the twine to the wall.
Some things I am still undecided on are if it should have some wheel straps to better secure it. In that case I think the style of old Porsche 356 leather hood straps could look cool, and I will have those run around both the wheel and the cradle.
Another thing I think could be cool would be to engrave the cradles themselves. The contrast of polished metal with engravings usually looks pretty cool, but I’m not sure how I would incorporate engraving to match this overall aesthetic.
Post 2: Here is the final version of my bike rack. I decided against using a contoured and pie cut rack for the wheels to sit in. I did this so I can make this rack more universal and reusable in the future. This one is designed to sit at an angle off of the coregated steel wall and will allow the bike to be angled downward. This lets it have almost a dead on side angle to the viewer looking up at it once it’s on the wall. I spent a lot of time figuring out a good way to fixture the metal and then cut and weld the anchoring tabs uniformly on the metal pipe. After everything was attached I went back through and polished the metal along with clear coating it so that it will maintain the polished look. Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to go back home and set up this rack yet, but I still plan on securing the bike to the wall using some sort of twine or rope and self tapping screws. I think it will look very cool once everything is set up.
