philgib

Hello,

I am starting my own foundation providing to third world countries custom vehicles made of 2 bikes welded together parallelly so that it can be driven/pedalled by one or two by people and still load LOTS of heavy stuff or passengers from one village to another.

I have runned this vehicle on a 2-bikes chassis a lot these last weeks, on the hill, on the beach, on the street, wherever I could go, super loaded, empty, etc... It is great but I bought two very cheap bikes (130 dollars each in Mexico) and all the parts are falling apart (brakes, derailleurs, wheels...)
.
I have decided to strip the bike from any accessories, not to make it lighter, but to make it much less complicated to maintain in poor countries No speed changes. No brakes levers. Always running.

Here is what I really need :
1- Undestructible so that the vehicle reputations holds well and I can convince more people :-)
2- Steel looks mandatory as I have to weld the bikes into a chassis. Any chassis crack will be also easier to repair by any local welder.
3- Super cheap. Third world foundation budget...
4- Easy single-speed (because of heavy cargo) with free-wheel system so that one biker can pedal but the other biker can rest or pedal at will.
5- Braking when pedaling backwards (Are coaster brakes the same ?)
6- comfortable enough in the bumps of African roads.
7- Will adapt tyres to user's roads.
7a- What would be the strongest tyres for bumpy road ?
7b- Then for countryside dusty roads ?
7c- Then for desert / beach ?
8- Woman style frame, i.e. no high middle bar which prevent older people to lift the leg to ride it.
9- 26" wheels
10- Soft saddle

I would highly appreciate that you put a model / brand / price in front of all these items. No fancy product, not expensive neither. It does not matter if it is badly paint or ugly. Most important is that it is useful AND solid !

Ideally I would have bought a Wall-Mart-type single-speed with coaster brakes bikes, but I could not find any.

Thanks a lot for your help

Phil

JeffS

Isn't riding this bike on dirt roads going to produce tremendous stress on whatever you use to tie the frames together? I would expect almost immediate failures.

Anyway, maybe you could work something out with Kona to use their Africabike.

Allen

Worksman?

philgib

Nop, chassis goes strong, we have tried every single bumps in our city, we loaded up to 7 adults - that's 1000 pounds - and everything is fine except heavy wear of the tires, but that maybe bad tyres quality.

Nightshade

To find the best 3rd world bike look at India & China for bikes that meet all of you 3rd world
criteria. They build the best bikes for their use 'cause they have to.

squirtdad

Here is some info simple hauling bike...there are others.

Personally I think the approach of putting two bikes together to make a 4 wheeler is probably not the way to go..... I would suggest the KISS (keep it simple silly) engineeringn principal and stick to one person and 2 or 3 wheels.


Look at the latest outside magazine for pic of a Tom Ritchey designed "coffee" bike...there are references to to othe similar big load bikes.

see also

https://outside.away.com/travel_photo...thisSpeed=9000

https://outside.away.com/outside/dest...eo-photos.html

https://www.woodenbikecoffee.com/bike.php

cooker

What about using donated and reclaimed bikes?

vik 

+1 - they've already solved this problem and have off the shelf solutions you can buy at low cost for your project.

Allen

No doubt.
Flying Pidgeon.

philgib

"look at India & China for bikes"

Good idea but these 2 countries are rather large, aren't there... Imagine someone saying "look at the USA" ?

I would rather have a brand if you know of any.

vik 

I used google and came up with quite a few links. If you then send some emails to companies in India describing what you are specifically looking for you'll get some useful leads.

I suspect the folks on this particular forum are not uber familiar with the specific domestic brands of work bicycles used/sold in India.

StephenH

Google "low gravity bicycle" and you should come up with a number of Indian bike manufacturers. Be aware that they may ship bikes completely knocked down, including wheels. Don't assume high or low quality until you see them and use them.

I believe there are Indian manufacturers of the reverse cargo bikes as well, which might be a ready made solution.

badmother

Right way to think, but "third world countrys" is a hell of a lot of countrys! Getting spare parts is a big problem becouse of forex shortages. Each country / area need to use the bikes you can acctually find spares for locally, and that can be a big problem. When I worked in East Africa in the late 80`s the area was full of chinese bikes, no 26" wheels in sight for three yrs, but that was back then..

Old tyres and worn out tubes made peopel put straw and old rags innside what was left of the tyres to try to go a little further.

Best is to go for local solutions. That way it wil also be repaired when needed.

vik 

Good point about spares. Depending on the area in question there may not be a reliable source for affordable spares and the project in question may have to account for the provision of spare parts for the life cycle of these bikes.

This may be the only available local solution:

Allen

https://www.flying-pigeon.cn/

alanbikehouston

"Bicycling" Magazine has had several articles about their efforts to provide bikes to health care workers in Africa. The Kona bike was designed in the USA and is built in communist China. It was designed to be very durable, and very easy to maintain.

"Bicycling" discovered (or re-discovered) the problems associated with bikes in Africa. Few Africans outside of large cities have any experience with bikes. People ride on flat tires, because they don't know how to fix a flat, or don't have access to basic tools, patches or inner tubes. Fixing a chain? A major deal.

The "traditional" bikes used in India and China are poorly made copies of a 1905 English bike. These were lousy bikes in 1905 and they are REALLY lousy bikes in 2008. The Kona bike is a far superior bike, because it has a very simple design and uses beefy, and reliable components.

Rural Africa relies on "roads" that are much closer to being dirt trails than a modern road. A Kona bike is designed to ride on dirt trails. A bike designed to carry cargo, such as those used in factories, requires paved roads to carry any substantial load. The rare paved roads in rural Africa are narrow, and dominated by truck traffic...not an appropriate place for a "wide" cargo bike.

philgib

Thanks for the great tip on Kona bike.

As mentioned previously, third world is large. Africa by itself is very large too. The one I know (I grew up in Western Africa) is flat and you could just drive anywhere, so no quad width problem.

I will start a new thread about bike spares geography, that is which continent can use which parts. Like, If Latam does not have any Indian spares, I just should not buy Indian bikes for Latam !

Thanks a lot again

Philippe

urider

An other option that you could look at is the Mundo from Yuba Bikes. The Mundo was developed for the needs of the cyclists in the developing world with a huge rack on the back. They have two versions, one singlespeed and one 6 speed. Major cargo capacity for stuff and people.

vik 

Lots of great ideas in this thread. The one that was new for me is that Africa doesn't need bikes - they need a bicycle transportation program - which needs to address:

- providing bikes
- providing spare parts for the life cycle of the bikes
- providing bike maintenance training so the spares can be used effectively and avoid damaging the bikes
- providing some bike safety/riding training if they are not common in the area in question

That's a much wider scope than one might have envisaged with the idea of providing some low cost bikes to Africa.

philgib

In the mean time, people are amazingly inventive and can repair cars with spares they would make themselves.

There are lots of different economical developments in Africa. Some countries are very advanced, some are very late. Difficult to talk about Africa as one single unit. Like, in Senegal or Niger, people know how to fine tune a bike even in remote places.That may not be the case for Swahilis.

But yes indeed, foundations should think about offering bikes AND compatible spares otherwise their program will not last long.

I read about the Africabike and I like it a lot, problem is that it is terribly expensive (300 dollars), that is about one month salary in the countries I am talking about, including Mexico. Calculate how much is an everage monthly salary in your country. Would you pay that amount for a bike ? I don't think so.

I guess the Africabike is more aiming at rich foundations.

So my quest is now for a replica of the Africabike, at half the price... If it does not exist, than maybe I should start building it :-)

squirtdad

[QUOTE=philgib;7316766]I read about the Africabike and I like it a lot, problem is that it is terribly expensive (300 dollars), that is about one month salary in the countries I am talking about, including Mexico. QUOTE]

Look at the articles about the coffee cycles....they take care of this with micro-loans

crackerdog

I believe that is the retail price.

HandsomeRyan

Why not use a bike/trailer setup? I do not understand the advantage of side-by-side bikes over a single bike and trailer.

Several advantages-
• can be operated by one person without hauling the weight of the second bicycle.
• bike can be used as transportation in adition to being used for hauling loads with or without the trailer.
• easier to store inside away from weather and thieves.

I agree with what vik said. Parts, tools, and training are every bit as important as the bikes themselves.

philgib

Because it is not a bike anymore, it is a car ...

- Two people can pedal instead of one, that is 2 engines instead of one for the same load.
- 4 people in line is lots of fun, just like 3 people in a pick-up at the front. Have you tried to bike with your family recently ? How was it ? One in front, one at the back, one at the back, one at the back ? Do they fancy watching your bumb for miles ? With my quad, the whole 4 people watch the same landscape and share the same jokes.
- If you have physically challenged kids or old friends - too old to go on a bike -, you can go biking with them. They just sit next to you and enjoy the wind.
- Any of the 2 drivers can drive.
- You can load more cargo on 4 wheels than on 3 wheels
- It is so stable I just cannot sit on one side (I weigh 95 kilos) and have it fall upside down.
- The weight center is not far on the front or far at the back like when hauling or on a tricycle
- You do not need to put your body at an angle to turn. You just move the steering like a car.
- The akerman system I am using allows for the bike to turn inside a 10 feet circle.
- I can dismantle the 2 bikes and ride any of then within 10 minutes
- I can load the quad in my car as if it was 3 bicycles ( the 2 and the chassis)
- Eventually, I do not destroy 2 bikes, I just add a specific set-up to them, and then it turns into a 4 wheels pedal car at will

In short, you need to load 300 pounds of water or take your kids to school at the next village to really appreciate .That is what third world people do every day.

I agree this is far from big cities commuting and heavy traffic, where a single bike is much easier and faster.

In the future, I am also planning to put a small electric engine, then in a third step, a solar panel on the roof. Yes, we are now talking more about an electric car than a bike. But this is just made of 2 bikes. A friend proposed to me to add a tiny 49cc engine and call it "the cheapest 4 passengers car in the world".

I have just used it to go to the restaurant on the beach at lunch time from my house. Kids and dog love it. My daughter was reading the newspaper's gossips while my wife and I were pedaling. Life is unfair sometimes.

vik 

So you are planning on selling these bikes to the folks in Africa you are talking about? I had the impression you were thinking of setting up a NGO to gather money in the affluent western countries and turn that into a bicycle program in Africa.