flangehead

We'll see what noglider says, but it sure looks like a conversion of an old kiddie trailer to me.

I did one similarly; see https://www.bikeforums.net/21220581-post693.html

Several brands sold very similar designs. The old style had tubing on each side of each wheel, which feels strong. Mine was rated for total of 100 pounds per manufacturer as a kiddie trailer. I am comfortable planning for 150 pounds and I'm sure I've done 200 pounds several times. Weak link is probably the hitch and practically, being able to brake with that much weight becomes an issue.

The newer models on the market tend to have cantilevered wheels which I would not load as aggressively.

noglider 

Notso_fastLane flangehead is right. It's a Burley trailer with the top and sides removed. I think I've hauled over 150 pounds with it. When it's heavily loaded, I'm shifting like a tractor-trailer driver. But with sufficiently low gears, I don't have to exert myself hard; I just roll more slowly. I once took this trailer to Costco and got a full Costco-size load that would normally fill my car's trunk. People looked at me with envy.

noglider 

To find a trailer like this at a good price, set up a google alert with the search terms "bike trailer site:newyork.craigslist.org" and substitute "newyork" with your local craigslist. You will get an email each time a listing pops up. Trailers sell for many hundreds of dollars new but less than $100 used.

jimmuller 

norskagent

1980 McLean perfect pleasure...my beer run bike!

obrentharris 

I can't compete with a McLean for a grocery getter, but here's mine.
I'm less than a mile from the grocery store, hardware store, and post office so this old PX10 gets put to work often.
Shown here hauling the Box o' Crap home from the Post Office.



Brent

nlerner

While I showed my Raleigh Int’l with trailer on a Costco run earlier in this thread, the bike I use most often for grocery runs is my ‘94 Bridgestone RB-T. I have a Topeak rear bag system and a Wald basket up front, perfect for two+ bags of groceries.

cooperryder

Trek 950 with front rack and groceries.

Added rear rack. Works great as grocery getter.

ascherer 

You're pulling a trailer with your Maclean? Interesting choice.

bulgie 

Spouse and I usually do grocery shopping together, on this 1970 Schwinn Twinn Deluxe 5-speed. I'll do separate posts about our single-bike grocery getters (hers is pretty awesome, custom titanium!).



Got the Twinn maybe 30 years ago and we've ridden it quite a lot -- short hops only though. Grocery shopping, going to movies or parties or out to dinner, or just for a fun cruise around Greenlake, often with a picnic. We have carried loads up to maybe 100 lb, in the three baskets front and rear. Heaviest load that I actually weighed was 85 lb. The bike itself weighs 80 lb.

Apologies to vintage purists, but I've modified it pretty severely, with more mods planned. It came with a horrible forged one-piece Ashtabula fork, where the blades aren't even hollow, they're solid steel -- but too thin to be rigid. Heavy AND flexible. The fork flexed so much that the tire would rub on both sides from taking a sharp turn, or climbing while standing.

The front brake was even worse, a wimpy Weinmann aluminum alloy side-pull. You know how brakes get less leverage and more flex as the arms get longer to go around balloon tires? And on chromed steel rims, yikes. This was possibly the worst brake ever... Other than the rear drum brake on this bike, which was even weaker! So our downhill speed was limited to however fast we were willing to crash -- not very fast!

So I replaced the fork, with one with canti braze-ons. It was a little tricky though, because of the strange Schwinn headset standards, WAY off from everyone else.

I had this nice '80s MTB fork, pretty heavy duty with an extra-reinforced steerer at the bottom, strong sand-cast crown, oversized blades. Made by Tange, with good Cr-Mo tubing. Nice chrome. Problem is, the Schwinn crown race was way too big to fit on the crown race seat of the Tange fork. And any modern headset was way too small to fit in the Schwinn head tube.

What did fit inside the Schwinn head tube was an entire Reynolds 531 head tube -- it slips right through. So I brazed it in place, and left it a bit long, to avoid having to add more threads on the long steerer of the Tange fork. Machined it for a Campy headset, and now we have an awesome fork with a cantilever brake. The difference in stopping is extreme, like having a new bike.

The old forged-steel Ashtabula handlebar stem that came with the bike has an 0.833" diameter quill, and the Tange fork needs a stem with an 0.875" quill (7/8" or 22.2 mm). Luckily I had been hoarding this somewhat ridiculous looking Cinelli MTB stem forever, never could imagine what bike to put it on -- 'til now! It's perfect.

Front wheel has been upgraded from steel Schwinn 26 x 1-3/4" (ISO 571) to alloy, ISO 559 -- regular MTB size. Rear wheel hasn't been upgraded yet so it's still steel, with the horrible old 26 x 1-3/4" tire. Gotta get around to finishing that. I should braze cantilever bosses too or maybe some sort of U-brake (Mafac Raid maybe?) For now, the drum brake still works -- sort of.

Twin bells on the handlebars, which are both very loud, and play different notes so we make an unholy racket when we ring them both.

Matching Idéale saddles, padded with leather tops, and big ol' coil springs in back. Perfect for an 80 lb. bike -- what other bike could you put those on?

Hey, check out the Velo Orange front rack. It came with this optional bolt-on fence or top rail, that you might use if you weren't using a basket. But I had the brilliant idea of bolting it on upside-down, where it serves as a protector for the headlight against bike racks etc, and as the forward mounting point for the fender.

I also brazed on the cable housing stop for the front brake onto the rack, which completely cured the bad brake shudder we got when the housing stop was the hole through the Cinelli stem. I also tried a normal housing stop hanger in the headset, which helped but didn't cure it. The rack-mounted stop worked like magic. The VO rack being stainless steel, I was able to silver braze stainless bits to the rack without having to deal with paint or chrome. (Normally, fillet-brazing with silver is difficult, not recommended, but this is "Fillet Pro" from Cycle Design -- great stuff.)



It attaches to the rack in two places, plus to the fork crown, so it is strong, rigid and with redundancy -- any two of the three attachment points are enough for strength.

Here's the headlight braze-on:



And the front fender attachment:



You can also see the second headlight braze on, on the other rack strut. Planning to put dual headlights on it, someday.

We shove the bike into parking racks all the time, never any worry about the fender or the headlight getting bashed.

Anyone still reading this, thanks for your perseverance. You might be a bike nut.

Sandstrom

I was hungry this day

obrentharris 

Fantastic!
This is one of the things that I like about this forum; people willing to go to great effort over small details to improve a bike in ways that most of the rest of the world would never even notice. To all but a small group of us "It's just a bike."
Brent

bulgie 

I made this for Laurie when I worked at Ti Cycles, as an XC-racing ultralight MTB. It originally had a SID suspension fork, maybe the lightest you could get back then, which I then lightened further because Laurie is petite and doesn't break things. I machined down a Ti BB spindle because it was too heavy -- stuff like that all over the bike.

Then the bike got stolen! It was gone for a long time, years, until I found just the frame (with the customized Ti BB still installed) for sale in a bike shop. Fork and everything else long gone. (I won't name the shop because it wasn't their fault and they turned it over to me no questions asked.)

Laurie by then had a full-sus MTB she liked, and this one is pretty obsolete with the 1" steerer. Would have been expensive (and redundant) to re-create it as a real MTB, so it just hung around as a frame for a few more years.

Then Laurie's grocery-getter, built on a dumpster-dive low-end Diamondback, was getting kinda creaky and annoying, so we decided to spruce up the ol' Ti beast. Almost all parts we had on hand in various junk piles. The fork, off a Bridgestone MB-1, lowers the front end enough (compared to the suspension fork) that the head angle and BB height are brought well into road bike range. It made the seat tube angle kinda steep, but a long-setback post cured that. (The original, stolen post was a zero-setback design.)

I did have to buy the crankset, when the triplized Dura-Ace I tried (from the junk pile) wouldn't quite clear the chainstay, on the custom-shortened Ti spindle. Gotta use that spindle -- I spent an hour milling it down, back in the '90s! Here's the resulting clearance of the shortened spindle:

Clearance there, between the bearing cup and the crankarm, is similar on the right. It almost rubs but not quite -- and acts as a shield helping to keep water/mud/grit away from the bearings.

The bike wasn't designed for fenders, but they worked out great. No chainstay bridge, so I tapped a hole in the BB shell and used a looong bolt.

I bought a Velo Orange stainless front rack and modified it to fit (do those ever fit any bike without mods?)

I built the rear rack from Cr-Mo tubing. So far we're letting it rust, gotta get that thing powdercoated one day... Due to the very short (16") chainstays, the rack needs to stick out further back than normal for heel clearance, so I made it out of fairly large-diameter tubing (3/8") for rigidity. It doesn't sway noticeably, even with the heaviest loads she's carried.

Some rear rack pix:

These panniers fold and snap shut when not in use (for improved aerodynamics!)


Note the built-in features for U-lock, tail light and fender struts.

Note also the DKG brand canti brake booster, coolest one ever. The fender attaches to the booster, so I didn't need to drill the monostay wishbone on the frame. Brake is an Avid Tri-Align, one of the better low-profile designs. Gotta be low-pro with such a low seatstay, or else the rider's ankles hit the brakes. Wide-profile NGC 982 canti brake on the front, modified with a cable clamp off a '70s Campy sidepull... just 'cuz.


Does that last picture (above) make sense? It shows the bail that secures the bottom of the U-lock, and the method of attaching the bottom of the grocery pannier. The panniers are (by design) extremely difficult to get off -- requires a pry-bar and know-how -- so they can stay on the bike while shopping, and not get stolen.

I offered flat bars but Laurie wanted drop bars. The Wald basket would have rubbed on her fingers when in the drops, so I modded the basket -- can you see how it tapers for finger clearance?

Not a trick of the lens, it's about 2" narrower in back.

Other features that are nice to have in a grocery-getter: Dura-Ace AX aerodynamic brake levers shave milliseconds from your time-trial to the store. The Ti-rail "Rolls Titanio" saddle let's you drop everyone on the climb of the mountain pass (probably 50 ft elevation change between here and the food co-op). I got the Rolls for $15 at a swap meet, in the closing minutes when sellers are desperate to get rid of stuff. Rolls is Laurie's fave saddle.

All 4 cables run inside the handlebars to avoid unsightly lumps under the tape. (this crummy tape in the picture above didn't last long and has been replaced.)

This Modolo handlebar has a groove for the brake cable, but for some inscrutable reason, the groove starts something like 2" away from the lever. So I made the cable go inside the handlebar and emerge where the groove begins. The groove is obscured by the cable in this shot, but the hole to the left is where the groove begins. The bar-con cable enters just past the internal expander of the bar-con perch. I wouldn't have done all that work for a grocery-getter (how obnoxious are the lumps from cables after all?), but these bars are off her old retired road race bike, which was a 'show bike' when we built it around 1990.

All in all, a fun exercise in excess.

bulgie 

Thanks Brent! You're very kind.
Making the front brake work better should be enough satisfaction, but my life's not complete until I get affirmation from BF people.
I hope that doesn't sound snarky. I'm sorta kidding but also kinda serious!

-Mark

noglider 

Great stuff, bulgie. I read it all. Yes, I am a cyclephile aka bike nut.

Last ride 76 

Bulgie, that work rocks! Not just the work, all of it, Including the history/ story! Cool as heck.

tkamd73 

Enjoyable topic, great bikes, but with a family of 5, I’m using a car!
Tim

bulgie 

Thanks man! Don't change, you're beautiful the way you are, you (bike) nut!

Miele Man

I use either my MTB, my MTB with dropbar or my touring bike to get groceries or run errands. When getting groceries I use my panniers. When picking up large items I use my Arno straps like in this case when I used my touring bike to bring home my dehumidifier.


Cheers

Miele Man

You trust that handlebar not to snap sometime down the road? Shivers.

Cheers

bulgie 

Good question, thanks for asking. Yes, drilling handlebars can be risky and I recommend that people don't do it. Don't do it!

But I believe this one is safe enough because of the following:

1. Laurie is light in weight and doesn't strain things much.
2. This grocery-getter is seldom ridden more than a few miles. Its time of long hard rides is well in the past.
3. I used them (different bars but drilled the same way) on my own racing bike for a couple years, while I was racing. That bike also got most of my training miles at the time. I weighed 50% more than Laurie weighs, with even more difference in the shoulders and arms, and I am more fast-twitch in my muscle make-up, more of a sprinter. I'm sure I pull more than twice as hard on the bars when sprinting, probably three times as hard. I retired those bars after a few years, out of an abundance of caution, but they might well have gone another 20 years without breaking.
4. Professional racers raced on drilled bars (back when pros used aluminum bars), and I never saw one broken, nor heard of one breaking. And if one broke in competition, we probably would have heard about it. (Please forward any examples of bars broken at the cable hole -- preferably with photo evidence. Not "I know a guy who knew a guy who heard of it".) While it's true that pro bikes usually get retired at the end of the season, they often get handed down to friends/family, or sold to fans and get ridden lots more.
5. These are strong alloy, heat-treated bars, probably somewhere around twice as strong as most non-heat-treated bars. I have bent them out wider to use as off-road bars (not Laurie's, but others of this brand/model, that I used on my own MTB). They are astoundingly hard to bend!
6. I drilled them correctly. I placed the holes farther away from the stem than the pro-bike drilled bars I saw. Stress on bars increases as you get closer to the stem. Right at the stem is where the maximum stress is seen, and it decreases as you move away from there.
7. These bars are drilled down in the groove put there by the manufacturer. This is an area of lower stress. Stress flows to the parts of a structural member that are farthest from the neutral axis. Broad generalization with exceptions possible, but I do believe it is the case with grooved handlebars -- cracks or other failures are less likely down in the groove.
8. I drilled them to the minimum size needed to allow the housing through. Most of the holes I saw on pro bikes were larger.
9. I deburred and polished the edges of the holes to help prevent initiation points for fatigue cracks.

My gut feeling* for how long these bars can go before breaking, at her weight/strength, at this level of riding intensity and mileage, is somewhere between 100 years and infinity. If someone in the 22nd century gets hurt because of the bar snapping at the drilled hole, then I'd feel bad, except I'll be long dead, so tough luck sucker.
*Gut feeling based on ~50 years as a bike mechanic and 20+ years of that as a full-time bike framebuilder. Doesn't make me infallible, but it's something.

Laurie knows the bars are drilled and accepts the risk. She knows to stop riding on them if she feels anything weird about them. After 40+ years of riding hard and working on her own bikes, she's more aware than most riders, of how they should and shouldn't feel. And she promises not to sue me if they break! I have never done, would never do this for a customer, no matter what they say or what waiver they sign.

Oh and did I mention? Don't do this!

-Mark

madpogue 

Pardon my ignorance, but is that ^^^^^^^ unpainted titanium? I suppose with a coat of paint, that chainring might not clear.....

riva

I'm so confused by the original post to this thead..

bulgie 

Yep it's close, but we like low-"Q" and wide tire clearance. These chainstays are so lightweight that I suppose there must be a lot of flex. Haven't measured the flex, but the tubes are smaller diameter than even traditional (non-OS) steel chainstays, and they're thinner wall (0.7 mm) than most steel, and Ti has roughly half the inherent stiffness (Young's Modulus) of steel. But even with all that (presumed) flex, the stay never touches the chainring teeth, so I call it good. Any more clearance there would serve no purpose. "A miss is as good as a mile", except in horseshoes and hand grenades

The chainstay leaves the BB at an abnormally sharp angle, needed to achieve the wide tire clearance with such a short chainstay dimension (16"). So if the chainring were any larger, it would hit. That's a 24t, but we like that it's so small because it allows a smaller freewheel for the same ratio. That in turn allows the short-cage racing derailer, a Dura-Ace 7400 in this case. So we have no desire to run larger than a 24t granny ring.

Did I answer your question?

madpogue 

What was my question?

Whoa, did not notice the short cage on the first look. Nice how you're able to make that work here. I just picked up two of these at the swap for $10 apiece; now you've got me thinking.....