Cargo-racebike
I built this cargoracebike as a preparation for a trip to copenhagen in the summer of 2015.
I hope to use this bicycle for this but extensive testing still needs to be done. Maybe this will turn out to be just the prototype for the final bike, but only if I can find a better framebuilder than myself (what won't be that hard).
Design
Altough a lot of the time I start building without knowing where I'm working towards, it is very important to have your design ready.
For me, plain pencil and paper works fine, But you could also make a mockup of your design or draw it in CAD.
Source
Sourcing some bicycle frames is not so hard to do. I live in a country with probably more bicycles than people so it's easy to find old bicycles for free (especialy the steel ones since a lot of peaople are ditching those for newer aluminum, a lot of the times electric, bicycles)
But if you can't find them for free, here is a nice instructable how to buy used bicycles.
You will probably also need some parts for the steering system and some scrap bolts and nuts.
Build Frame
I build the frame out of parts of 3 frames.
-an old race bike
-an old bmx (front fork and headset)
-an old ladies bike (some tubing)
The hardest part is to make a straight frame. with a little string from on side of the rear triangle around the front headtube back to the other side of the rear triangle you can get a realy nice look at how straight the frame is. You should always first "spot weld" the frame entirely so you can break wrong welds if you misaligned something by accident. You will need to mitter the tubes you want to connect.
A vice is handy to use for the welding but because bicycle tubes have a small thicknes you can easily deform them with your vice. Herefor it's probably usefull to make a wooden grumpy man accessory for your vice (picture 2). The wood will deform rather than the metal so your tubes stay intact.
Some The corners larger than 90 degrees I strenghtened with a piece of tube wich you can figure out in a cad program or in the same manner as the mittering of the tubes (which you can see from the weldings on the pictures I didn't do very well.
That's about it for the frame.
here is a nice instructables about jigless framebuilding:
Build Steering System
The steering system is designed in such a way that the lengt of the stem is compensated in the steering circle to have a more organic steering feeling.
The center of the turning circle is where the axis of the rear wheel intersects with the axis of the front wheel. I made the steering system in such way that the angle of the line from the center of the turning circle to the middle of the stem tube and the stem itself is 90 degrees ( in schort : the stem is tangential to the turning circle)
This makes the length of the stem less of a problem as it actualy feels right now.
More instructables on steering systems for cargo bikes :
Strip Paint
Stripping paint is quite the paint in the ass . hahahahahahaha.
read here how to do it :
Paint Everything
It is not strictly necessary to paint everythinh but i wanted to . it didn't turn out great. Here you can read how to do it if you want it to turn out great :
Assemble Bicyle
All of the pieces you took of the bike you need to get back on the bike now, otherwise it will not work.
Sew Bag Together
For the bag you need some fabric (I use cheap unbleached cotton) and two zippers.
for the patterns you probably want some paper
Good siccors, needles and a sewing machine are also things I used.
first i made patterns of the bag ( you can do this by using cad, specialty software or the good old I-cut-the-paper-and-tape-it-to-the-other-be-unhappy-with-the-result-and-cut-some-more-until-it's-fine-method ). T
hen I created a first part that fits on the frame of the bike. This to ensure that it fitted tightly. The exact fitting was done by using needles to mark where the sewing had to be done. I first pinned the two sheets pof fabric togheter to ghet a thight fit and then i used som more needles to mark where the line would be for that thight fit. the top and front where sewed together, at the bottom and back there where zippers sewed in to make shure the bag can be zipped on and zipped of.
After that I sewed the bags on both sides of the first part.
Put Bag on Bicycle
For the construction of the bag, the bag needed to be fitted on the bicycle once in a while (3rd picture). But now it is finished it is still a different feeling. It's easy to zipp on and of (which will come in handy on a holiday) In the picture I used cardboard to get an idea about how the bags will look if they where filled.
Final Remarks
The bicycle has a lot of shortcomings and will still need some work I gues.
I hope to use it for a cycle trip this summer to copenhagen (starting somewhere in belgium) and maybe leave the bicycle over there. I mainly built this because i want to take a guitar, some cooking gear, some recording gear, some drawing stuff, some writing stuff and maybe some clothes and tents ......
Still to be seen if it will be possible to get somewhere with it.