Years ago, in the early 1970s, I cut up an old Schwinn Phantom that I had since it was new in the early 1950s and built a tandem bike. It was crude, patched together with parts of two frames, and it was heavy. When I sold my house in 1982 I got rid of a lot of things including the tandem bike – it was not one of my favorite possessions.
In the mid 90s I built a recumbent bike, cut and pasted together from a couple of road bike frames, vaguely similar geometry to the TourEasy, with a crude seat and handle bar arrangement. It is heavy, 34 pounds, but is a comfortable cruiser on level ground, definitely not good for climbing hills. Makes a good conversation piece.
In about 1998 I decided to build a comfortable cruiser for myself, and after considering all the suspension options, I decided on a Cannondale headshock for the front and a Softride carbon seat beam for the rear. I had to build my own head tube, since all the Cannondales were aluminum, so I took a piece of steel tube, slightly undersize for the Headshock bearings, and used an expander at the local exhaust shop to stretch it to size for the upper and lower bearings. The rest I pieced together using an old road bike frame and various components, mostly purchased from a place called Recycled Cycles in Seattle. I copied the fairly relaxed geometry of the old Peugeot bike I had been riding, and this bike is a very nice cruiser, rides like a Cadillac.
