Hoofddorp Barn, BSA folding Bicycle

[Alex van de Wetering]

Work on the chainwheel and cranks.

My bike came with a non-original chainwheel and cranks whihc took a good amount of abuse during it's lifetime. A few friends of mine surprised me with a newly milled BSA chainwheel, spare crank and bushings, rods and washers to recreate the pedals. Initially I wanted to modify my current chainwheel by having letters "B, S, A" lasercut and wedling them into the existing chainwheel. But the crank was in the wrong orientation regarding the chainwheels as well. Anyway, the surprise parts were a great thing and saved me a lot of time.

Pictures below is the chainwheel and crank that came with the bike, the newly cut BSA chainwheel and a picture of three stages of crank modification to the appearance and measurement of the BSA ones.

The last picture of this post is the start of the chainwheel modification. The non-BSA one was seperated from the crank, which was a little harder than I anticipated. During production the crank was forged to the chainwheel, so I had to sand down the centre of the attachment until I saw the little tooth keeping the crank and chainwheel in the correct orientation. It took some serious hammering to get the two separated. In the picture the new BSA chainwheel is lossely positioned onto the crank.