 with today, it's my good friend Zach Kiffin. Hi, everybody. What's up, brother? Welcome to Paul's Garage. Yeah, what are we gonna do today, my friend? Well, you caught me in my happy place because we have a brand new bicycle. Whoa! It's new bike day! Oh, new bike day! Yep, and it's pretty much good, it's just got out of the box, and so all we gotta do is we gotta fix it real quick. What do you mean, it's brand new? Well, no, but it's, I mean, it's definitely got some things that need to happen to it. First and foremost, I'm seeing that this frame here is just way too stiff and rigid and so... Well, I mean, it's a brand new bike, you know? It's a brand new brilliant bike with the carbon belt drive, you know, part of the priority family. I mean, I love every aspect of this bicycle, especially the fact that it's brand new, but this whole stiff frame thing, that's not for me. I need a lot more playful of a bicycle. What are you holding, Zach? It's called a cut-off wheel on an angle grinder. It's one of my very favorite toys. What are you gonna do? Ah, you know what's gonna happen, Ryan! Ah! There's not hardly anything that I like more than cutting up bicycles, other than cutting up brand new bicycles. So, Zach, what are we doing here today? What are we making? What are you making? Well, you caught me. I'm making a swing bike, and if you don't know what a swing bike is, I don't blame you. Basically, a swing bike is a bike where you take the frame, you modify it, and you insert a headset from another bicycle. See this little piece here? Okay. I already cut it out of this track over here. Oh, nice old bike here. Yeah, that's what you need. In order to build a swing bike, you need two bicycles. You need a good bicycle that's gonna turn into the actual swing bike, and you need a junker bicycle that you can steal the headset from. And then you need a grinder, a welder, probably some isopropyl alcohol so you can clean off the bearings and the old headset. So, I've already done that. And now, all that's left to do is to chop up the brilliant bicycle here and insert my headset as such, right? And then we're gonna weld it all back together, and at the very end, we're gonna have a beautiful brand new swing bike, and it's gonna have the carbon fiber belt drive, which I'm really excited about. It's gonna have the internal three-speed rear hub, which is totally key. And then we're gonna take this thing out tonight. Oh, it's Thursday. Yeah, I wouldn't be just be doing this for no reason. We're going on the cruiser ride. Yeah, we're going to cruise in. So I know a lot of you right now are thinking, how do I know this guy? Tiny House Nation, all new, Monday at nine. And he's the host of Tiny House Nation, a very popular show, where he's built tiny houses all over the country. And one of Zack's special traits is that he always comes up with some very cool contraption in the house that's some sort of space-saving device. I don't think Zack even knows how to build something that doesn't do 10 other things. Just pull down on the lever. Holy crap, look at this. And the last piece of the equation, automatic ball-dispensing machine. His brain works in ways that most humans' brains don't work. He's one of my best friends. I've known him since I was a young boy and we're gonna have some fun today. So a lot of people kind of only know me as a home builder, you know, building houses, building tiny homes, and I'm a total wood geek. But what they don't completely realize is that a lot of the kind of techniques that I use for the projects that you see on Tiny House Nation, really all come from my experience as a bicycle builder. Because back in the day, when I was just cutting wood, there was this epiphany that happened to me where I wanted to build a swing bike and I didn't know how to weld. And so I said, well, the time has come. I'm gonna have to do it. Just teach myself how to weld. I did that. I started building these bicycles and all of a sudden my mind just went, bosh, because all of a sudden, now I can use steel for projects. I can build things mechanically. And because I'm a wood geek, I would always kind of incorporate some kind of wooden elements from that. And so when I think about what I do on Tiny House Nation, I definitely know it's not, it would never have been possible if I hadn't started building bicycles, learned how to weld, and then started enjoying the kind of combination between kind of steel mechanics and then beautiful woodwork. So I still don't think the audience understands what a swing bike is and what the point is. Oh. When you ride a swing bike, what's it like? For anybody who understands the joy of the G-Force of a turn. So that could be a surfer, that could be a skier, a skateboarder, anybody who understands what it's like to get high speed and then lay it over and then just enjoy the kind of injecting that G-Force's and have it return you to your other edge and go back and forth. That's what a swing bike's about because it's essentially, it's a bicycle with 26 inch tires that you can carve. Here's a fun fact. One of the very first videos I ever made on my YouTube channel was a video of Zach in this garage building a swing bike. I think it was back in like 2006 or 2007. Swing bikes are the best form of transportation I've found. And why is that? Well, because they take a normal, flat stretch payment and it makes it this entertaining, fun thing to do so that on your way to work or wherever you're gonna go, you're having fun at the same time as you're getting there. Thanks for helping me launch my YouTube channel, bud. Oh yeah, and don't forget about the time that we skied down Sugarloaf or the time that we turned Paul's truck into a rail that you could slide on your skis. To launch the skier or snowboarder here, they were gonna rail slide on the top of the car. Yeah! Table bike. And the picnic table bike. See your biggest hits. I've been a part of at least three of them. Lo and behold, there was a picnic table that was left out on our block with a free sign on it. And Paul and I looked at each other and thought, wow, that picnic table would make a great bicycle. Before we get going too far on this process, I just wanna give everybody a little tip. And that's, even though this is really, really fun, you can't smile while you're doing it because that's a recipe to get sparks in your teeth. So make sure that when you're doing, when you're building a swing bike, you have to keep the frown on. Zach's looking focused. All right, this is another little tip, right? We could completely cut this down tube and then re-weld it and redirect it. However, I've learned over the years that if you leave a little bit of steel on the bottom side and you just cut out a wedge from your tubing, you can change the angle and you'd never actually break that steel connection. You just bend it into place and that helps keep everything nice and straight. So little pro tip, there you go. I like it. Take it or leave it. It's all you. For all you swing bike makers out there. Yeah, because I know this is gonna generate a huge world of interest in swing bikes. Belize, don't tell these guys that I still have their cup. Yeah, gotta wash those sparks out of my teeth. You wanna keep it metal safe because it's hard to put the metal back, but you can always take more off. Good job, it's like cutting cheese. As you can see, I think that I'm not gonna get the angle that I need, right? I think I'm gonna need to cut a little bit more out of that. That's just my prediction. I'm just waiting for something profound to come out of your mouth. I'm thinking here. Thinking, it's been a minute since I've done this. So, if I approximately want my tubing here to be the exact size that I want to bring it over, I can go ahead and just use something as a template and then rotate it down right there. Boom. And that will essentially show me where I need to cut this over for your heart. And then I'll be able to rotate it up right into Pelican. Right over here? Yeah, right where I want it. And recording. Okay, another thing to know is that it's actually okay and kind of desired to cut a little bit of length out of your frame, because once I put my headset back in there, it's gonna extend the entire frame of the bicycle. So we're gonna, I do wanna extend it just a little bit, but I don't wanna extend it like inches. Okay, just so you know, this is absolutely like surgery because the one way to guarantee to see me cry is if I take this cutter wheel and I put it through the carbon fiber belt drive. Yeah, that'd be bad. That'd be the end. Yeah, don't want that. I mean, maybe you guys wanna see me cry, but I don't. All right, all right. No tears today, no tears today. All right, ready for the magic moment here? Yeah. See how I did with my cut? Yeah. All right, we're gonna bend it up. Brrr, brrr, brrr, brrr, brrr. This is where the headset goes. Okay, yeah. And what I need to check is that you see, I'm gonna cut this off a little bit so you don't have so much extension here. But as you can see, I need to get it quite a bit tighter, right? My angle's gonna have to get a little sharper so that I can get my down tube up to a point where I can actually get it in and connect it to my headset. So we want this angle to be a little sharper. So in order to do that, I'm gonna take off a little more steel so that we can bend it up higher. And one thing to note is that you see how the tubes kind of are in alignment? Pretty nice. Yeah. You wanna make sure that you take off some material on both sides instead of just cutting out on one. Otherwise, when you bend them in, one side is gonna be overlapping the other. I just took a little sliver off the one side. Just the tip. Aha! Zack! I love our boyhood humor. Still going strong. Nice, getting better. See that? All right, we're getting close. All right, moment of truth. So now you can see my piece is really ready to line up. Okay, so the next step is that we're gonna actually do some little tack welds on here because we wanna make sure that it's all locked in place before we cut up the bike completely. Before we do that, we gotta get rid of some paint. Why's that? Because I don't like to breathe burning paint. And it also makes for a better weld if you got clean steel. Okay, the last little lesson I'm gonna tell people, pro tip, you really should wear a respirator when you're grinding paint because it will kill your brain cells in a big way. Me, I hardly have any brain cells left. So I think I'm all right. So we're just gonna- You're all right? Yeah, we're gonna keep it all right. Yeah. You don't even say all right. No, I actually really like being filmed during this process because it kind of keeps me accountable. Otherwise I could just start chopping in this but like when there's a camera in my face it means I gotta explain myself and justify my process. And you have a whole audience waiting for the final product. Now you just made me self-conscious. Yeah, no pressure. Oh, geez. All right Zach, what are we doing now? All right, we're attaching the ground. Oh. It's really hard, you go like that. Ha ha ha. Does that mean we're getting ready to weld? Yeah. The sparks are turning into real fire here soon. Best smile. Hi Jojo, how are you? Who's this cute dog? Oh, that's the shop helper. She's the shop helper. She fetches things. Oh, she's taking your stick. So this is why I left the bicycle together and didn't cut it apart completely. It's because now I can use just a straight edge and just make sure that my piece is in alignment so that we know that these two bars here are gonna be completely parallel up and down. Which is one of the easiest ways that you can mess this whole thing up. Call that good for now. One of the most important things that we're gonna have to pay attention to is making sure that we put this headset completely in parallel alignment with this seat tube. And the reason for doing that is that I'm gonna actually weld this top piece on to the seat stem so that this whole headset's serviceable. This thing's gonna be kind of in alignment. Some builders might think that this is a little bit sloppy, but we don't really care about those builders. Notice, no smile. No smiling loud. Have you done it? We're into it now. Yeah, you cut it back. There's no going back. Jojo, there's no going back. Hey buddy, Jojo, is that loud for you? Might wanna stay out of here. You're so sweet, aren't you? You wanna become a bike packing dog? You're the perfect size. Okay, bye. Man, I am feeling really good about this. You know, it's not like we're taking our time, but we're doing it right. Yeah. And that's what matters. I'm just documenting it. Oh no, you are here. You are a key player in this whole thing, because you're keeping me honest. That's right. I am going to put little tack welds on the very top and the very bottom, and then that will enable me to bend it around a little bit. You're squinting your eyes a lot, buddy. Well, see, the truth is, is that you can get everything as perfectly in alignment as you possibly can by just keeping everything parallel and straight. But nothing actually really matters compared with making sure that the headset up here and the headset back here is not twisted, right? We need them to be perfectly in alignment. Zach's lining it up. Making it right. Lining it up, checking it twice, making sure that the swing bike's not messed up. Right now, we're cleaning up my amateur welds is what we're doing, because I was told one time by somebody who really knows how to weld, there's two kinds of welders. There's welders and then there's grinders. And the truth of the matter is, I'm a grinder. I might not be that great at welding, but I'm really good with an angle grinder. So we're gonna have to choose our position like this, right? I think that that looks pretty good. And you can see what's so key is that this space stays nice and parallel. Now we got it tacked together, and I'm just checking the alignment, making sure that I didn't mess anything up, which luckily enough, I think it looks pretty darn good. Yeah, buddy. And so the final step is we're gonna weld it together, make sure it's nice and strong. Then I'm gonna take it out on the road, make sure that I like the geometry. And if I need to do anything else, it's gonna be potentially extending the front forks. Gotcha. And so the rear just swings independently now, so let's show the people. So that's, look at that. That's the swing-ness. What? Yep. And just so you know, I did not invent the swing bike. I was gonna ask you about that. No, no. This is not my, it's not my invention in any capacity. There was a swing bike company in the 60s, and I guess the story is that Ralph Nader actually deemed it an unsafe toy. And so it got put into a different category in terms of liability insurance, and this being the country that we are, we outlawed them. Nader ruins everything. Yeah, God. Nader. The smoke, it's a smoking hot swing bike. Yeah, I like that. You see how nice and parallel these guys are? Yeah, okay, let's see. That's not just so that you can service the headset. It actually makes it a really nice geometry for the swing. Oh man, are we ready? Ah, we are ready to test it out at least. Oh yeah, everybody. I only got one front brake rolling, but I think it's gonna be plenty good to test it out. That's feeling good. That's feeling real good. Whoa. Let's get some speed on the street. I'm noticing I'm like a pretty close to my front wheel on this. Look at him cruise. Yeah, buddy. Oh yeah, you're swinging, you're swinging. Wow, it's been too long. I wanna try. All right, Ryan. Oh, that does feel good, Zach. Yeah, right? This is a winner here, Zach, you got a winner. So what do you think in terms of geometry? What are you feeling? I think maybe some big swoopy handlebars. Okay. You think you can do that? I like that idea, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good job, Zach. Okay, well the very first thing that you need to understand is that it's not that hard. You wanna just get on it and start treating it like a normal bicycle. The one thing to watch out for is when you pedal, all of your energy is getting transferred through your rear wheel, which might make it want to go into the swing. Yeah. So you gotta gotta hold it in front of you. So when I, excuse me Jojo, so when I go to pedal, I'm just gonna make sure that the bike is straight, so it transfers my energy straight through the front wheel. Yeah. But other than that, it's just like anything else. Just get on it and don't panic. Let's bring it on the Thursday cruise. We are ready. Cruising. It feels pretty good Ryan, I'll tell you what. You know, just a couple hours ago, we were looking at just a bicycle and now we have a swing bicycle. The super fun swing bike. Well Zach, thank you so much for showing us how to build a swing bike. You know it Ryan. You're the man, we will see you down the road. And all of you out there in YouTube world, please like and subscribe and tell all your crazy friends about my videos. I appreciate it. Zach, any last words? Ole, ole, ole, ole, ole, ole, ole, ole, ole, ole, ole, happy Thursday.