Pretty much done.

After a long period of nothing I finally have some more pictures and information.

I have been riding around town on the cargo trike for the last month with much success, 3km rides twice a day 5 days a week and at least a good 10km ride on weekends on the bumpy Christchurch quake damaged roads, this has been a great test for all aspects.

It took a few rides to get used to the feel of the trike given the camber of the roads etc, the trike handles fantastically with a bit of weight in it and at speeds up to approx 16-18kph depending on road surface. Stability at higher speeds is a little bit twitchy(a dampener will no doubt sort that issue).

Back from the powdercoaters.

One of the more fun parts to do...

I went into the powdercoaters with a black finish in mind, but ended up with this instead...

The Floor of the cargo unit is approx 4mm thick tread plate, Silicone and riveted.

Shimano Square Taper Bottom Bracket

All City 46t crankset and an Easton XC single speed rear wheel

Getting closer :) more updates in a few days.

After another month....it's update time.

Here's an update on some trike parts and a few pictures and details.

The steering arm and stub axle, the stub axle was turned from a 22mm solid rod with a 25mm step at the steering arm end and an internal thread on the outside edge for a 10mm bolt as pictured. The steering arm is going to be a bit hit and miss but there's lots of room for adjustment etc. I cut, drilled (20mm hole for the stub) and welded the large 3mm plate for the disc brake and steering arm mount.

Here's a shot of the wheel/steering mount, fairly crud at this stage but again there's scope for lots of adjustment. Using 10mm rose joints and a 10mm x 90mm bolt. The rubber parts are from a plumbing supplies store and just a temporary solution.

All welded up ready for the 2 frames to be stripped back and powdercoated. 

Finally some progress...

Well after the frame etc being at the welders for what ended up being a couple of weeks my new camera packed up for the second time in as many months and was away getting a new mother board, touch screen and scroll button... there goes another three weeks. So finally armed with my camera and a bit of time I seem to be back on track.

I had a bit of time over the last weekend to make up the steering arms and disc brake mounts and have got the frame ready to strip and powder coat.

I'll post some updated pictures in the next few days.

Playing the waiting game.

I have just dropped off the frame and cargo box to get fully tig welded by professionals as my welding skills are not what you would call great and while I can happily tac it all together I want it to stay together.

Hopefully in a couple of days... depending on how busy they are, I will have the frame back ready to assemble into a semi finished state.

Whats left to do?... lots.

Clean up/remove any unwanted or extra lugs off the frame or excess welds.
Design and build the axles for the front wheels including the disc brake mount and steering arm that comes off the axle.
Shape and drill the steering tube mounts... top and bottom.
Finish cutting and fitting the base plate.
Clad the exterior of the cargo box.
Powder coat or paint the frame and cargo box.
Design and build the light system.
Plus a few things I've probably missed!

Back in a few days with an update.

Steering tube attachment and final back half prep.

I got to spend another couple of hours in the garage today and thought I'd finish off a few things but grinding out the joins etc takes time and a lot of it when its not something you do everyday so I didn't quite get as much done as I hoped.

I woke up thinking about the steering tube attachment this morning... should I weld it to the front half or should I stick to my original plan to bolt it on giving me the added benefit of being able to dismantle it into 2 smaller pieces.

After pondering over it for a few hours I decided to carry through with the plan of bolting it on... for now anyway. I bent up some 3mm steel plate into an L shape a few weeks back with this in mind and had a 38mm hole drilled in each for the steerer tube to fit through and to get welded to. Each L section at this stage is going to be held on by 2 x 10mm bolts... so 4 x 10mm bolts in total. The L sections are going to be hand shaped and will be drilled to house the cable for the front brakes.

This photo is from the inside of the cargo box.

I managed to cut/grind and get the "down tube" ready to tac into place.

A few more bits and pieces.

I had the time today to do a few more wee bits on the trike, namely the head and steerer tubes, and finishing off the back half of the Giant frame cutting and grinding getting it ready to weld with the head and down tubes.

Not perfect but it will do.

Progress is steady at the moment.

Head tube and Steerer.

Ready to attach.

The front cargo box assembly.

I have moved onto assembling the cargo box and the list of materials i'm using is below...

22.2mm x 1.2mm square tube steel... for the frame
3mm steel plate... for the mounts for axels etc
38mm x 2mm round tube... for the head tube and down tube
28.6mm round tube... for the steerer tube
4mm Alloy checker plate... for the floorpan

I started by drawing a scale floor plan on the garage floor. I cut and laid out the square tube base and welded the tube into place checking that everything was square and true. After double checking all the measurements and alignment I preceded to create another to the same dimensions for the top.

Looking around there were a lot of different heights/depths commonly used for the cargo boxes but I choose to go with a 550mm so I cut the uprights and squared them up and welded them in along with a bit of bracing for the base.

Which wheels are best for the front?

Now that I have made a decision on the cargo box size/shape it's time to move onto the 2 front wheels.

There are a few considerations when it comes to the wheels and they are as follows.

What size?
20" 24" 26"?
What hub type?
What braking type?
Disc or Rim?

After looking at most of the varieties of cargo trikes out there 20" seemed to be the weapon of choice as they offer great strength. The christiania trikes have successfully moved from a 20" to a 24" wheel without any hassles and very few offer 26" wheels.

The biggest problem as I understand it is the lateral loading when cornering, a good set of 20" wheels handle this well and a lot better than the 24" wheels and your standard 26" wheel is likely to fold over. Being that I'm over 6ft I really would have liked something up front that was a bit bigger so I didn't look like I was riding a child's bike.

I toyed with the idea of building up a super strong set of 26"mtb wheels for the front, maybe using some downhill rims etc as weight is not that much of an issue, but after talking to a few engineers (when buying the steel tube for the bike) I opted for the safer more robust option of the 20" wheel size... for now anyway :)

Wheel size sorted, moving along. Hubs and brakes kind of go together, if your using mtb hubs laced to bmx rims you can use disc or rim brakes as opposed to a bmx rim and hub which unless you make or buy an adapter here http://www.atomiczombie.com/DIY%20Parts.aspx  you can only use rim brakes. From the start I wanted to use disc brakes on the front due to having a few sets in the garage already and as I intend on using the trike in all weather I wanted the safety of running the disc in the wet, especially with the extra weight up front. 

So I thought I'd give the mtb hub laced to bmx rim a go only the standard 9mm QR was probably not going to cut it so I've gone for an overkill and am using 20mm mtb hubs.

                                     

Alex 303 wheel and standard hub... Before

Alex 303 rim with a Shimano XT 20mm 32h centerlock disc hub... After.

I was lucky in that the spoke length was correct for the new hubs given that they are slightly taller but also slightly wider. 

Next on my list of things to do is to start assembling the frame.

Turn the box or just the wheels?

As mentioned in the last blog I thought I'd go over a few of the reasons why I went for this particular design.

I guess the main factors to consider were... 
Practicality, stability and simplicity
How well the design works on the road(of which I can't test)
And last but not least how it looks

Seeing as though I have never ridden or even been up close to a cargo trike I can only loosely base my decision on others reviews and their experiences with them, along with my own ideas and thoughts on how these things might work in reality.

As I intend on putting my son in the front and tootling him around town, stability, safety and handling were probably my number one concern followed by cargo space and looks.

I really like the simplicity and squareness of the Haley and Christiania trikes and they seem to glide around corners, even though the weight shifts with the box but the main reason I choose the Nihola style was because of the weight staying centralised and that hopefully translating into a more stable ride... providing I can get the steering geometry correct that is.

Because the style I choose requires the wheels to turn, to get a half decent turning radius the wheels have to be spaced a reasonable distance from the cargo box it'self or at least have the room to turn, so this in some way affects the size of the cargo box. The Nihola has over come this by having the front and rear of the box tapered to allow the wheels to turn in without rubbing against the side of the box. 

So I am going to mix the squareness of the Christiania and the tapered style of the Nihola.

This is using 22.2mm x 1.2mm square steel tube, the length is 900mm and the width at the widest part is 700mm.

What next?

Up until this point I thought I had done a reasonable amount of research on the various types of cargo trikes and ended up having more unanswered questions than when it started... typical.

How much cargo space is too much or too little?
What type of pivot? 
What size wheels for the front?
What type of steering?

And for each of these questions there were five more and then 10 more, hmmm and then came what about or what if?

I felt like I was going backwards, so...
                                                            I started with one fundamental decision.

Cargo space... I wanted to be able carry my son home from daycare along with my work gear and his bag plus a couple of extra bags for good measure. I grabbed some chalk from my sons blackboard and started drawing an outline of roughly 900mm long x 700mm wide and what do you know there's plenty of space for all that and more. So with the cargo box at roughly 900mm long and add to that the length of the bike frame the overall length would work out to be just over 2m. I'm happy with that.

On to the next decision or so I thought, I hoped everything else would just flow on from there but alas no. You see the pivot or steering type and wheel size are all connected in one way or another and that's where I found it difficult to make a decision.

Do I want to turn the whole cargo box like the Haley http://www.haleytrikes.com/ and Christiania http://www.christianiabikes.com/ or do I want to keep the cargo box centered and turn the wheels like the Nihola http://www.nihola.com/ and Carryo http://www.carryo.info/de/carryo-bikes

I pondered this for a good four or so weeks before committing to a decision, weighing up all the pros and cons for each style/design. (I'm about 8 weeks into the build since making the decision to build and not buy and at this time I'm writing the blog in a sort of catch up fashion).

As you'll see further down the track I have opted to make a keep the box centered and turn the wheel type... what these are called I have know idea?.

Tomorrow I'll go over a few of the reasons why I went for that design.

Choosing the right frame.

Being that I'm over 6ft5  finding a frame that fits is a bit of a challenging task.

Here's the sort of questions I asked myself...

New or used? Seeing as though the frame is going to be cut and only the back half used it seemed to me used was a good choice.

Steel or Alloy? Given that I intend to weld to the frame and a Tig welder is out of my price range, steel was the choice.

Disc brake or V brake frame? After a good few web pages and reading numerous reviews of different makes & models of cargo trikes it had become apparent that most people only used the front disc brakes for stopping and the rear brake for a park brake. So for me a V brake frame seemed a good option.

MTB or Road Frame? This was an easy decision as I already had a rear MTB hub and 700c rim that I intend to use.

I bought a couple of cheap second hand frames just to play around with an look at the differing geometries  to see if one would work better then the other and settled on a Giant Yukon SE 20" pictured below.

It's not a pretty frame but it has a good solid rear triangle and slightly oversized top tube and seat tube. It's solid and true.

Can I do it?

If you are contemplating building something similar but think you don't have the skill or technical know how you may want to rethink that... I don't have anything more than an average skill set when it comes to bikes and a basic understanding of metal work. 

Some points to consider.

Can I strip a bike and put it back together without having parts leftover... Check!
Can I weld... no but I can learn! Ahhh Youtube.
Can I spend endless hours researching on the net... no but I can spend a few hours a week!
Will I enjoy the process... heck yes!
Will I make mistakes... you bet I will!
Am I going to be an expert when finished... no but I would have enjoyed myself (I hope) and learn't some new skills!

Tomorrow I'll start by showing you how I went about choosing a frame etc.

The beginning.

It started out like most probably, a bit of road riding and a bit of mountain biking, commuting daily. Here in Christchurch New Zealand it's predominantly flat plains but the hills are on our doorstep which makes for a great lifestyle for cyclist's. 

After a couple of years and many different bikes it seems this cycling thing has taken a hold on me and I now wanted more, I wanted to be able to carry a few extras other than just a backpack or satchel. So I started on a journey looking for my ultimate cargo cycle, there's numerous incarnations out there and from what I saw on this interweb thingy most have European origins.


Bakfiets, Panniers, Trailers, Freight Cycles, Carrier Cycles, Cargo Bikes, Cycletrucks, Long Johns and of course Cargo Trikes and much much more. The choice is almost endless.

I spent the better part of 3 months looking at all the options and with that all the pro's and con's for each. The final decision as you can see(or not quite yet anyway) is the Cargo Trike (how I came to this decision is another story all together to be told another day).

Over the next couple of weeks or months i'll post my journey on here. 

When I started researching about building one these cycles I came across a handful of blogs and found them to be very helpful so I thought I'd add my 2 cents. 

Welcome aboard I hope you enjoy the ride.