JP Bike Research

I thought i’d post some more pictures of the xtracycle trailer setup.  It works great and the only downside is that the kids are so far away that I can’t really talk to them while we ride!

My twin girls are 4.5 years old and a few years ago, I saw a tandem trail-a-bike on craigslist for $40. It was being sold ‘as-is’, and when i got there, i knew why it was only $40. But since I was willing to put the work into it, and a new one costs over $300, I was quite excited. Immediately after I got it, I tossed the rusted-solid chains and removed the wheel, scrubbing all the rust of it, repacking the bearings and making it all nice and smooth and shiny. Then the thing sat there.

Over the summer, I went to the Larz Anderson Bike Swap Meet and got a bunch of little things that i thought would work great with the trail-a-bike to pimp it out, including some old english three speed bars and some pink pedals and most importantly, for me a brooks b-17 for $50.  I ended up being wrong on some of the measurements, but a trip to the LBS, and I got new seatposts, new shiny silver chains, and pink grips!  About a month ago, I decided to pull down the frame, finish taking everything off, clean and repack the bottom brackets and put it back together.  I destroyed my crank puller (the cranks are equally hard steel and the threads were stripped), but again the LBS helped out.  Finally, after procuring a replacement seat-post-connector, we were ready to ride.  The girls were unsure at first and I had to lower everything down to the lowest setting, but here you go: a little test ride around the neighborhood.

I have given them a Dahon 20″ rear rack and a cute Dutch saddle bag I got off ebay for them to store their backpacks on the way home from school.  Also on the rack is a blinky light.  More pix soon.

Right before I had built this up, i also decided to try putting the stoker bar onto my xtracycle, and the girls seem to love that too, but the current configuration (and my confidence in them) only allows one kid.  I might have to fix that as it’s easier than the trail-a-bike.

This was just a pose -- we didn't actually ride with both yet

Zipping along!

See, both girls got a chance. This was me going to pick up the gear for the trail-a-bike

In my last post, I was talking about how crazy the camping was this year.  well, the craziness didn’t stop.

We got all the bikes packed up with all of our gear — we were able to bring EVERYTHING for our family minus the food and cooking equipment thanks to the trailer and xtracycle combo which worked out wonderfully!  We met everyone along one of the major bike trails in Boston and got everyone together.

Here's a nice long view of some of our gang.

We had an adventurous 8 mile ride with 10 bikes and almost as many trailers going through downtown Boston during rush hour traffic.  We just took the lane and held steady and made it without incident to the Ferry Terminal.  The folks on the ferry were very accomodating to our large amount of stuff and people and made us feel very welcome.

Upon arriving in Provincetown, we got some lunch and then proceeded to ride to the campground.  The road is fairly flat with rolling hills, and even though I was carrying much more weight that I had in previous years, I felt totally comfortable and was in the lead group the whole time.  We set up camp, went to the beach and enjoyed the absolutely perfect weather.

Saturday is usally the day where we pack up again and go on a longer bike ride through some pretty hilly terrain down to a beach on the bayside fo the Cape, where the water is a bit calmer and warmer.  I woke up with some intense stomach cramps, so I ended up not going, which got me pretty depressed.  I slept and tried to chill out all day, but by the time the friends came back, the pain was worse.  We finally opted to borrow one of the cars of the people who had driven and go to the hospital 1 hour away.  (Even though I was a bike camping purist, I’m now grateful that there were cars there!!). Long story short: I had appendicitis and this was the end of my bike trip!  My wife came down after putting the girls to bed and stayed with me the rest of the night and day while I recovered from surgery.  Our neighbor from Boston drove 2 hours out to come pick me up and take me home — what a life saver.  This also meant, much to my enjoyment, that the wife and kids got to continue their camping/biking fun.  The biggest worry was who was going to ride my extra-sized xtra-cycle.  It’s a 25″ frame, which fortunately one of the guys with us could fit on a ride home.  When he pulled up on monday evening he said, “wow, that’s a lot more comfortable to ride than I thought i would be!”  Damn straight.

I think we’ll try one more bike camping trip in October whne the wife is away in Florida, but for now, there’s no biking for me for another few weeks.  sigh…

This is what my steed looked like this year.

Here are some pictures of the ride that I’ve finally got up and running. I took it grocery shopping and zipped around town successfully, but didn’t capture those photographically. I’m quite happy with the build-up, but am looking forward to using the cargo capacity to its fullest.

It’s also interesting to go back and look at what this bike was when I got it. I’ve put enough time and money into it, that’s pretty much a different bike. Only the frame, fork, headset, wheels, derailers, cranks, chainrings and bottom bracket are ‘original’. Now that I list it out, I don’t feel like I swapped nearly as much stuff as I thought I had!

Over the course of last week, I managed to put the xtracycle together enough to take it for a farewell ride around Boston for my friend Mike, who is moving to SF. It felt great, but crazy how far back the rear wheel was. I’d go over a bump, and there’s a half second delay from where I would expect the rear wheel to bump. Just a matter of getting used to it. I lugged around an extra sweater and a 6-pack of beer to drink on the Harbor. The best part of the evening was after drinking those cold beers in front of the windy ICA, we went an warmed our hands and bellies with some delicious 1am Chinese food. Nothing better. The bike is definitely heavier and a bit slower, but I have a feeling that is due to the different geometry, since my other bike is easily 37 lbs of steel.

I’ll get some pictures up soon, though I’ve disassembled it again to fix the derailer problem. and to put on the rear fender and 700c spacers for the racks. I also had to adjust the brakes and will shellac the cork grips tonight.

Mine isn’t going to look anything like this, but still a great video:

Xtracycle Custom Big Dummy Build from Xtracycle on Vimeo.

I took the frame into harris Cyclery and they managed to fix the fork.  When I got it back, it was much better than before.  The next day, I rode it (with jerry-rigged shifters and one rear brake) with the kids in the trailer and was confident that it’ll make a good ride now.

Future plans might still involve another frame or at least a powder coat.  But now, it’s just time to piece this bike together.  Before that, I decided to strip it down completely, clean it all up, repack the bottom bracket and get it ready.  I took the opportunity to weigh the frame and it’s a whopping 9 pounds!  Good thing this will be a cargo bike.

I think the Xtracycle comes on Friday and I can finally get to work!

I put on my new Nitto Technomic stem and Albatross bars and rode over to Bikes Not Bombs this weekend (before the massive snowstorm) to ask some questions.  This was really the first time I had ridden the bike at all.  The first time I discovered the cassette needed to be replaced.  The second time hardly counted, and this time i discovered that the toe-overlap is really tight.  As in, I will not be able to put fenders on the front wheel, and I’m not at all happy about that.  If I were to take a tight turn, my toe would most definitely hit the wheel.  I also noticed that I can’t get the seat back far enough to get comfortable and seeing as it’s an older bike, it has a 26.0 seatpost with minimal offset.

At BnB, they noticed the fork has issues, which would explain the toe-overlap, as well as the squirrely way it rode.  Check it out:

the red line is the head-tube angle. the yellow-line is the fork angle.

So, these two problems lead me to believe that this frame might not work out, which is disappointing, as I really don’t want to be spending any more money.  That said, I’m already brainstorming on a potential frameset replacement: Soma Double Cross or the Surly LHT or Cross-Check or even the Kogswell P/R.

I just saw that biketrailershop.com is having a great deal on xtracycles and so I went ahead and got the “Family Van” option, which includes “Magic Carpet, Footsies, and a Stoker Kit” — all things I wasn’t planning on buying for a while, but when they are included for free?  I can’t pass that up!  My kids aren’t quite ready to ride on the back, so for now we’ll keep using the trailer.

I’ve got the other build-up gear for the new ride, but now I’ll just wait until the xtracycle comes to do a full build.

Yeah!

I just got a link from roots radical about some tips on connecting the chariot trailer to the xtracycle.

photostream of Wes’ X

Anyway, I just went to the hardware store, got a long threaded rod (I think mine was about 8″ long). The diameter of the rod should be the largest that will still fit through the hole on the hitch receiver. I also picked up 2 self-locking nuts and 2 rod collars (this was the only tricky part but I just brought my X into the store so I could make sure the collar fit inside the back/bottom tube of the X), and lastly some large washers (larger than the X’s tubing).  Slide the rod through the back tube, put the collars on (I kept mine as far apart as possible), slide the washers on, then slide the hitch
receiver on the left side, then the nuts on both sides. Tighten nuts until everything is snug but loose enough that the hitch can still rotate a little.

I wonder what the Xtracycle people think of this?  It looks great to me and is probably what I’ll do.  I did read that there is a 50 lb weight limit for the tail end of the Free Radical, so I’ll probably put my kids in the trailer, then use a small hanging scale to see how much veritcal downward weight is on the connector.

UPDATE:Here’s the Xtracycle guy’s response

Posted by: “Rick Pickett” rick.pickett@mac.com rickpickett3

Fri Feb 20, 2009 8:38 pm (PST)

As long as the torque and stress on the frame doesn’t exceed the
called out weight limitations on your FreeRadical sticker/handbook,
then you should be fine. We notice cracking near the dropout when
people overload cargo on the tail, but that’s usually on day-in/day-
out trekkers who are touring non-stop and/or are generally hard on
their equipment.

Rick

SECOND UPDATE: a couple more pictures

On the hitch side, I only use the nylok nut to keep it on. no washers on this side of the xtracycle.

On the right side of the xtracycle, i have a large washer with another nylok nut.

On the inside, i coudln’t find any of wes’s aforementioned “2 self-locking nuts and 2 rod collars”, so I used some regular nuts and smaller washers that fit the inside diameter of the rear-tube. Hope this helps!