dennisN86

Hi community,

I'm searching for a cruiser bike frame that fits fat bike wheels and is made from square tubes. It must be an all steel frame, since my welding skills and machinery do not cover aluminum. Does anyone have a suggestions on a bike builder using square pipes for his builds and could link me some?

Thanks,
Dennis

unterhausen

Square tubing is not going to be easy to find in bicycle-appropriate thicknesses. I think the only builders that might use it are building recumbents. If you are going to build it yourself, why are you looking for a builder?

dennisN86

I'm building the bike together with an "urban mobility initiative". A frame on which the cargo bike should be build is a mandatory requirement. No one should start from zero.

unterhausen

"No one should start from zero" seems like a strange assertion in the framebuilder forum. Are you really planning on doing something that isn't already commercially available? Or is the cost the main design issue?

There are very few framebuilders that do collaborations like this. Bilenky in Philly might modify a frame for you. However, in general, I would expect to pay a framebuilder more than commercially available cargo bikes to do anything too far out of the ordinary.

Andrew R Stewart 

I don't know about no one should start from zero, many things might not have been discovered or created if we all followed that.

I do agree with Eric's comments, square tubing is pretty uncommon in all buke frames save but for specific sub assemblies. The main advantage I see square tubing has over round is the easier ability to attach other flat stock to the tubing. But anyone who can braze/weld should also be able to add mounting tabs, threaded bosses and such to serve as the mounting points. Andy

dsaul

All of the framebuilders in this forum start from "zero" or as close as possible, given that some components are already machined(bottom brackets, dropouts, braze ons). It doesn't make any sense for one of us to build a frame that you would then cut up to make a cargo bike out of it. We would rather just make the cargo bike from the start. I don't know of any production frames made from square tubing.

unterhausen

I looked up bakfeits on google images and saw some. I know there are some that use rectangular tubing for the platform area. Most commercial cargo bike builders are building at a high enough rate they can get tubing drawn to their specs. Most use round and other typical bike tubing shaped tubing where it's more appropriate

this is my favorite set of bikes https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C...2VVTdfgbzRn_M:

Of course, with a few exceptions, the Netherlands is pretty darn flat, so weight isn't as much of a concern

dennisN86

Thanks for all the comments. Yet a debate about "why not starting from zero" is pretty redundant and not answering my question.

Is there anyone out there using square pipes for fatbike/cruiserbike frames?

dsaul

You might find more help over at the Atomic Zombie website/forum. A lot of their stuff is built from square tubing and cannibalized frames. https://www.atomiczombie.com/

unterhausen

In case I wasn't clear in my first post in this thread, no builder of upright bikes that I know of is using square tubing. A lot of builders show up and then quit, it's not a good way to earn a living. So I don't know all the active builders. The people that build cruisers might use square tubing, but I am barely aware of who those builders might be. There may be people building cargo bikes that use square tubing. Since you have failed to be forthcoming about what you are really doing and why you have this rather strange requirement, I doubt you want to engage with a cargo bike builder. And I'm not sure if there are any active ones at this time anyway, it's a tough business.

The reasons why I'm nearly certain that no reasonably successful builders build upright bikes with square tubing are fairly simple. First, bike specific tubing is very cheap, it's often cheaper than plain gauge 4130. Second, anything other than round tubing is heavier, and weight is a prime requirement for almost all riders. Third, fixturing is a problem with anything other than round tubing. When people show up on the framebuilding email list with projects like this, they never want to pay what it's worth for the development time and thus never get any takers. I don't know if that is true for the OP or not.