Good effort so far, but I cant visualise what the end product will be. Your two wheels turn with wind direction, so I cant see how they could be connected by a chain.
Hi Sharky. Thanks for your reply. I'm tempted to congratulate you on spotting the deliberate mistake.
You are quite correct: a chain directly connecting the wheels sprocket to sprocket would be worse than useless; for it would stop them from rotating on their vertical tubes, which would be bad enough but would also damage their ability to spin, which is heightened by their turning into the wind, thanks to the rectangular arm that you can see in the video.
My idea is to remove the arm, first, and then fix another tube, in line with the existing vertical tube, onto the aluminium box section that you can see, which is bolted to the flanged bearing, which sits over the vertical tube. The wheel is fixed to the box and free to spin.
The box is fixed to the bearing which sits over the tube and rotates, taking the box and the wheel with it. It all works very well, the wheels spinning in the slightest breeze, but they rotate more or less independently of each other, I'm not sure why, though sometimes, when the wind blows uniformly, they rotate in unison, and it looks very nice, like synchronised wind dancing.
So nice, indeed, that my intention is to try to make them rotate synchronously all the time. Since I can't make the wind blow in exactly the same direction and with the same force on both of them at the same time, I have to mechanically connect them.
What I have in mind for each wheel is to fix a short tube to the aluminium box, rising above the wheel so as not to conflict with it.
A second bike wheel wind spinner will sit on top of that tube, but horizontally. It will rotate, taking the tube extension with it, the other end of which is fixed to the box. So then the box and flanged bearing will rotate.
If I do that for each wheel, so that there are two pairs of wheels altogether, and if I can get the sprockets for the two new wheels, both of them rear wheels, then I can link them via a chain.
The original two wheels will now be synchronised in the turning on the tubes.
Why, you might ask, do I not buy two new wheels with cassettes or single sprockets for the chain. There are two reasons, the first of which is that cassettes are heavier than single sprockets.
The second reason is that the sprocket would need, I presume, to be as large as possible, so that the wind can easily turn the wheels. Cassette sprockets, even the largest of the set, are not as large as they could be.
What I need to know is whether I can buy a large sprocket that screws onto the hub, perhaps with lock nuts and spacers, of each new wheel, the horizontal one, so that a chain can be attached.
It might be, for all I know, that the new wheels will not spin well enough, or with enough power, to rotate the original wheels, or not if the new wheels are horizontal rather than vertical.
In that case I may be able to install them upright and use bevel cog sets.
But I can't to anything without sprockets. Thanks again.