Add wheels to your luggage!

Do you not have wheels on your luggage? Do you wish you did? Well, maybe this can help!

The basic idea behind this project is that you want to put a metal plate with some casters on it onto your bag. You'll want the plate to make sure the casters are properly aligned and to provide stability. Otherwise, the casters might just push into the luggage, and then you'd just be dragging your bag across the floor. Not cool.

For this project, you'll need the following things -

Wheels - I'm using some hardwares store casters. You may want to pick the rubber ones, since
they're probably quieter, but I really dug the look of the solid iron ones.

Metal Plate - Or really any flat, solid, hard material. You could use wood, or plexiglass. I'm using aluminum, since it won't rust, is nice and shiny, and I got this piece for free.

Marker - For Marking!

Nuts and Bolts - Otherwise, the plate and wheels will fall off.

Grommeting kit - This will help you reinforce the holes you put in your bag, so the plate won't fall off either.

Luggage - This project is really hard to do without this.

Step 1 Drill!

The first step in the project, once you've assembled all your materials, is to drill out holes in the plate of metal you are using.

Place the casters on the metal, then use a pen to mark the holes on the metal. Then mark a couple other places on the metal you'd like holes to be. Ideally, you want these holes to be on the edges of the plate, so the plate is best secured to the bag and won't be sticking out everywhere when the bag flexes.

Then take your plate over to the drill press, or if you have to, take the drill over to the plate, and drill out your holes! For those of you who have never drilled into metal before, it's best to start with a small bit, like 1/8" or so, to make a 'pilot hole', and then re-drill into that hole with a bit that is the size of hole you want. In this case, I'm using 1/4" bolts, so I need 1/4" holes.

Comments

[sarawelder]

does it leak? or do you have rubber washers too. I often thought of adding wheels ... the aluminum plate is a great idea.

[guy90]

Thank you for the upload :)

[randomhat]

If you put the plate on the inside of the bag, you wouldn't get any strange looks by airport security either.

[LasVegas]

If you want your instructable noticed, you should include a picture of the finished product and use it for the Intro page. Step 1 should be the acquiring of tools and supplies.

[lemonie]

Looks very solid, much better than the plastic things you often find on luggage. How much weight does this add? L

[alan.chatham]

All in all, I probably added about 4 pounds to my bag, the bulk of that coming from the solid iron wheels. The aluminum plate is quite light itself, so if you used that and maybe just rubber wheels, you could probably keep this down to 2 pounds or so extra weight.

[lemonie]

Thanks for the reply. Wheels are great until they break. Here you can be sure of carrying the extra 4 pounds without failiure, at the expense of a small disadvantage in lifting. L