Robert's Bar Stool Racer, Part II

[RobertD]

For this update, I'll talk about installing some steering components and getting the bar stool installed.

The bar stool came along nicely. In my last project report, I had a (more or less) rolling chassis.

My next steps were to:


1) build the steering riser and handlebar
2) get the bar stool mounted to the frame

First I mocked up where the bar stool would sit, and decided on an appropriate height for the steering riser. As I'm a pretty tall guy, I wanted to ensure that my knees would clear the handlebar, and that I had the bar stool in the "right" place.

I decided on leaving around 5-6 inches between the bar stool's front legs and the front axle.

I've seen designs that incorporate a foot rest in front of the front axle, and others that you rest your feet on/just above the front axle. My thoughts were that I didn't want to place the stool too far backward, or forward. I elected to mock it up about even between the front and back axle.

The steering wasn't an easy question. I wanted to use a Pitman arm that was protected from damage in a sheathe of some kind. I'd like to think that I'll never wreck this thing, but in reality, it's better to over-engineer the strength of something as necessary as steering.

My solution was this: I used a 3/8" solid rod for the steering rod. I sheathed it in a 1/2" piece of tubing, which has an inside diameter (ID) of slightly larger than 3/8. This made for a good tight fit.

After the sheath, I welded a piece of 1" square framing tubing around it for strength and stability.

The steering end of the rod was drilled through the frame. The same 1/2" tube was welding through the frame members to act as the final bearing surfaces.

After completing the steering riser, I made up a set of handlebars.

For this I put some 3/4 steel pipe into my pipe bender, and bent a small radius into them for comfort. It's not necessary, but b/c I have a bender, it's a plus.

To mount the handlebars, I drilled a hole through the top and bottom, and slid them onto the steering rod.

I didn't want to drill through the top, and therefore muck up the metal, but I wanted to be able to weld the handlebars to both sides of the steering rod for extra strength.

After I'd completed this, it was time to final-mount the bar stool.

I used some scrap 1/4 stock to act as my stool mounts. I could have probably just used 1/8, but it was around, and we're talking about pain if it fails, right?

So after 4 mounts were welded in, I cut 2" pieces of 1.5" square tubing to serve as the uprights where the bar stool legs fit into.

Finally, I mounted the stool and drilled holes through all the legs/mounts. In these holes I installed cotter-pins to hold the stool in place.