as promised in my last instructable, here's my attempt to build a 2-wheeler. why? i got infected by the bike-building virus. especially cargo bikes are just awesome vehicles: you meet lots of new people ("hey, what's this?"), you can transport nearly everything you need on a regular basis and it's better than a car if you live in a city like me (no parking fees, no searching for space to park a car, no insurances, taxes, gasoline, healthier & better for the environment,...). so go on and build your own, it's not that hard ;-)
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Signing UpStep 1: Donor frames
(sorry no pic) i got myself two donor frames from the local dump: an old 26'' mountainbike (hardtail) and a 20'' kids bike. the kids bike is just needed for the front fork and wheel, so if you find one where everything else is rusty and broken - take it! the other bike is used as a whole.
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Rap
I was wondering how you've put the outer cups from the headset in the long headtube? (or did you find a tube with the exact diameter?)
I was thinking to get a tube with a bigger diameter than the original headtube, cutting the headtube in half and weld it to the tube with the bigger diameter...
or is there an easier solution??
:-)
BTW don't know if anyone has advice, but I'm brazing everything because I don't have a working TIG welder at my disposal. Seems to work ok, what do you think?
good luck with your project!
Rod end bearings for both ends of the steering rod offer superior resistance in hard knocks [running into curbs/walls under load, etc]
a variation on the bucket style cargo area is the "deck" or "tray" style area with sides that fold down to make a totally flat tray for awkward loads [like old bike frames that have been chucked out ^_^] which can be more versatile. We were initially worried that without sides loads would slide out in corners, but the strange property [and vastly superior nature] of two wheeled cargo bikes is that they'll lean in the corners and most loads, if not really light, will stay right where they are. Of course if you have young children then that all goes out the window.
We also found that using a ladies mountain bike frame meant that in the [no doubt extremely unlikely] event of falling over sideways, the top tube of the frame doesn't tend to take you with it.
On the notion of moving the steering mount point higher on the front fork, it *does* allows your hard lock left to be a lot further left but we needed to do SO much readjusting and fine tuning to make sure that it would clear all the various bits that are so close together in there [we ended up cutting a groove roughly the circumference of a tennis ball into the front of the cargo deck] having said that, I've never ridden a bike without the clearance, and I would imagine it's pretty constricting.
Anyway, as I said, awesome build, it looks really schmick and it's always great to see another nutter on the cargo bike convoy.
Well done.
btw.: have a look at the other pics there. this guy is a genius. i only discovered his work recently.
Anyway thanks to share.
So this is the bike I saw that converts from Bike to Cargo bike, to stroller. It's not really much of a cargo bike, just a child carrier. Of course sometimes when you have something so convertible, none of the individual functions work as well. I have no idea with this product. It does look like you can't cary very much weight with it.
2nd, how long is your box? I'm just trying to get a good sense, I can figure out a good length, just wondering what you used so I have something to go on? Thanks again, I'm really excited to get this thing going.
box length at the bottom is 80 cm. though in the meantime i've come to the conclusion i should have meade it shorter. all in all the bike has a very long wheelbase which makes turning not easy sometimes. i would recommend to build it just as long as you really need it. if in doubt build a cardboard model in scale 1:1. holding it to the bike gives you a good guess.
Rap
Where do you store it?
This is mine:-
http://www.instructables.com/id/Long-John-Cargo-Bike/
and I have had to build a small lean to to keep it in...
Interesting that we both went with Orange...
Figure I've made exactly the same thing two years ago. But someone has stolen the bike! Too sad.
Did you experience stiffness problems? Mine was like a chewing-gum frame, and really heavy (25 kilograms).
I'd be happy to see a video of the bike in use!
Great work.
The mechanism for steering the front wheel reminds me
of Olli Erkkila's forkless cruiser bike.
http://www.ollierkkila.com/Site/?page_id=4&album=11&gallery=70
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qiR7E3dpjk