Grand Canyon Expedition.

After a few weeks of gathering materials and deciding how to proceed with my frame redesign I ended up using a professional shop to just bend 2 new pieces of aluminum tube instead of cutting and welding my old ones to make my frame wider. The shop used materials I supplied and did a fantastic job of having everything come out to my spec. I supplied them with materials and was able to reuse all my old aluminum fittings and all the long sections from my old frame to save money on the build. (A new frame of this size is $1900 from a custom frame shop). I ended up all in under $450 by going this route. Plus I was able to reuse my old decking as well.

setting up the frame


Adding the old decking to determine the cross bars length.

and finally cutting and adding the cross bars in.

 

The end hoops connect to the old frame via a swedge joint and then get pinned. You can see the new end hoops with the swedge joint before I put everything together.



All the other pieces of the frame use Hollander fittings and set screws.