Cargo Bike Photos
Nice weather this afternoon, so I took the Frankenbike to the shops to pick up dog food supplies. Seeing as the light was so good I also took some photos of the bike - named after another Dead Poet, she’s Mary Shelley - for obvious reasons:
Mary Shelley, Frankenbike. Around 3m long and with a 7m turning circle.
From the front
Steering linkage & box detail
Steering linkage & prop stand. Yes - that’s made out of the front donor bike’s handlebars
A little titanium bling on the rear mech. Saving weight is important on this sort of bike!
… and ready to come home. Just 17kg on this trip, though I’ve had 50kg in there before. The weight makes the steering surprisingly positive - you point the bike and it goes in that direction.
With 50Kg in the front it is just as well you saved 37g on the rear…
Exactly. Every little helps.
A ver professional looking rig. How do V-brakes and ultra thin shimano chains hold up to the weight?
You are right about the weight and steering. It’s the same on my Bakfiet, although I sometinmes feel like I’m driving a barge, so wide is the turning circle…
The V-brakes are just fine, and the chain’s not a super-skinny one, so that’s OK too.
The handling is at times a little “interesting” - I think it has three stable positions: straight ahead, or full lock either way. I think this is because the castor angle (the difference between the tyre’s contact point on the road and the line through the steering tube) isn’t large enough. I guess the BMX forks I’ve used are designed to be super-twitchy. Fortunately I think it’ll be fairly easy to modify them with a couple of bolted-on plates to move the front wheel ~1-2″ further forward. In the spring, maybe!
Have you tried doing wheelies yet?