sheba

About a year ago I was checking out cargo bikes on the internet and happened to stumble upon this bike. The Coffee Bike: distributed through Project Rwanda as a third world means of transportation. The bike looked awesome – like a Big Dummy but more versatile, not to mention cheaper. You can buy a Coffee Bike complete directly off of Project Rwanda's web site for $750. I actually got mine from a dude who's neighbors with Tom Rithcey.

The setup:
The Coffee Bike came pretty much ready to ride. Most of the components were lower end. I replaced nearly everything but the wheels, headset, handlebars, and seatpost. The original crankset was some kind of generic with a non-removable chainring: lame. Bottom bracket was a loose ball and cup type. It had a cheapo Sram dérailleur with a cheapo twist shifter. Saddle was some kind of comfort seat.

I bought a Dimension cyclocross crankset, a 34 tooth Surly ring, and a Spot ring-guard. I fashioned up a chain-guide to keep the chain on the front chainring. I replaced the crappy generic cassette with a crappy Shimano 8 speed cassette (12-32). I threw this old Deore rear dérailleur on it with a brand new Sun friction shifter. I replaced the stock brake levers with Avid FR-5's, but kept the Promax v-brakes. I put on brand new ODI lock-on grips and a take-off WTB saddle.

The owner of my LBS gave me a long board to mount on the back. It's made of bamboo and has super tough clear grip tape on top. It is awesome.

Issues:
I kept the wheels. Rear is 48 spoke, front is 36. Both are, unfortunately, the english axle size of 3/8” x 26tpi. They are loose ball and cone style, with no rubber seals or anything. Oh well, they'll work great for a long time as long as I repack the hubs regularly.

The Coffee Bike will probably only have one chainring in the front. The frame has some tubes coming from the bottom bracket that will interfere with any type of front dérailleur. Right now, the smallest chainring I can fit is a 34 tooth (110 bcd). The biggest a rear cassette goes to is 34 tooth; mine right now only goes 32. Will 34x32 or 34x34 be a low enough gearing to make fully loaded mountain passes? I hope so.

The rear v-brakes weren't hitting the rim properly when the rear wheel was all the way back in the dropouts. Rather than have to mount the wheel considerably farther ahead in the dropouts, I decided to move the brake boss location. I found this adapter in QBP that I mounted to a different part of the frame with hose clamps as seen below. The adapter is very secure, and the original brake bosses remain on the frame as a backup.

The Coffee Bike came with a motorcycle-style kickstand. The mounting position is kind of awkward and it doesn't operate very smoothly. I may be able to modify it to work better, but for right now I just don't have it on there.

The ride:
The Coffee bike is super stable. I took it over a bunch of snow and ice with no problem. Turning is almost just like a regular bike. The friction shifter works great. I made it up some huge hills with one more lower gear to spare. No complaints here.

Cargo system:
I bought two 80 liter widemouth drybags for cargo. I also recently purchased a sewing machine and ten yards of 1000 denier cordura nylon fabric on eBay. I plan on kind of copying the xtracycle bag system, but making it better and custom fit for the Coffee Bike. Right now I'm waiting on some of the hardware and webbing before I get sewing. It should work out well.

Future upgrades:
New front fork with disc-brake tabs. Front disc-brake. New front and rear wheels with standard metric 9x1 and 10x1 axles. Odometer. Possibly getting the new rear brake bosses permanently brazed on.

NormanF

I was lucky enough to procure a complete Big Dummy for slightly more than the price you paid for the Coffee Bike. When you add in the cost of upgrades, it'll come to about the running total for my BD. Hope you enjoy it!

Sturmcrow

Thanks for the great write-up. From personal experience, you may want to consider a more fool-proof way to lock the rear axle into those horizontal dropouts. Especially considering the low gears you're talking about. I made a DIY longtail and the first time I had my GF on the back and took off I pulled the rear axle right out. I ended up fabricating little axle locks that wrap around the back of the dropout out of brass

bikecopXXX

that frame looks really nice. lots of tabs for bolting on stuff. too bad the components are cheap.

NormanF

To price it under a grand, they had to cut corners somewhere. When you want to build a good quality cargo bike, the components pricing can add up fast to the real bike cost. It ain't cheap.

The Human Car

Do you have a part number or catalog description?

sheba

Part number BR9121. You can check it out in QBP here.

The hose clamps that came with it were junk.

zzyzx_xyzzy

Good looking bike. Note, even if you can't fit a front derailleur, nothing prevents you from mounting a granny ring anyway and moving the chain manually.

sheba

Yeah, I plan on bringing along a 24tooth for mountain passes and such.

sheba

So I've got a prototype bag nearly completed , but I ran out of webbing and tri-glides for the moment. For my first attempt at sewing heavy cordura and nylon webbing and such, the prototype is actually pretty awesome. I've definitely learned a thing or two about sewing technical gear, so the next bag is only gonna be better.

Sturmcrow

Any chance you would share some of the lessons you learned sewing technical gear? I built up a DIY xtra-type cycle and also want to copy the style of the xtra-bags. Did you construct it as a long middle piece with two end pieces that sewed on? Do you have a simple pattern you could post?

sheba

Well, I received more webbing yesterday and finished up the first bag. The final product is definitely sweet.




Materials Used:

The main bag material is 1000 denier cordura nylon. This is some of the heaviest duty technical fabric you can get.

After sampling 5 different kinds of webbing, I chose to use polypropylene tight weave. It has a tighter weave which seems hold the plastic clips better than the other webbings did. All webbing used was 1 inch across.

To fasten the bag to the bike I used tri-glides, and for the removable straps I used standard side release buckles.

To sew it all I picked up some UV Nylon B69 weight thread. This is apparently the heaviest duty thread you can get to work with home sewing machines. It is really thick: the same stuff if not even thicker than the threading on my messenger bag.


Price estimation for two bags:

17.85 - 1 1/2yds cordura nylon 1000d
7.68 - 16yds polypropylene tight weave 1inch webbing
4.80 - 30 tri-glides 1inch
3.06 - 6 side release buckles 1inch

34 bucks total plus thread and shipping


Construction:

Real simple. I just cut one 30" x 30" piece and two end panels as shown.



I double folded all of the hems over themselves. This makes all the edges three layers thick of cordura: extra heavy duty. The webbing pieces that fasten the bag to the frame are intentionally long so that I can adjust the height of the bag if I need to in the future. On all the webbing parts I just zig-zagged the sewing machine over them so much they're never going anywhere. I pretty much double or triple reinforced everything. I hope these bags will stand the test of time.

snowranger

Looks strong. With that many buckles, it's going to take awhile for anyone to steal that off your bike.

Sturmcrow

Very nice. Thanks for that write-up. Did you get your materials online? I'm borrowing a friend's sewing machine and may need to throw a couple of these bags together before I return it Is there a reason you used 12 straps on the back? It seems like a little overkill, especially considering that there are only 3 on the front, and I would expect that the load would be shared approximately evenly between the front and the back.

sheba

Well, the xtracycle bags only have the 3 straps going around the bag as well. A lot of the load is definitely on the middle strap over the front. I don't think it should be an issue though. I did some strength testing on the webbing with the tri-glides and side release buckles: they held over 150 pounds (me).

As far as the twelve on the back: stronger is better. If one or two or three break or something, I'll still be good to go.

I pretty much got all my materials online.

badmother

just make sure it is strong enough to sew trough whatewer you are making so you do not destroy it. It can be many layers. I use an old black hand operated machine for this type of projects.

When you put the bag onthe bike you do not want it to hang sagging down, you want the edge of the bike to follow the rack, also when loaded. I guess that is why all the straps was put there. When I made mine I put four b r o a d straps made from the bags material, two on each side of the long straps. They`we got welcro on them for fast on/of action. Also the long straps is wrapped once around the rack.

I found no good pictures of it, but I`ll post an earlu picture, taken before the long straps. Maybe you can imagine. If not I can make some new pictures soon.

If once in a while the three long ones going around the bag you can just use long straps made for securing loads on a cars trailer or roof. I buy them cheap and use that for webbing, much cheaper than buying the webbing in for sewing purposes.



Also look at this one. Not easy to see, but behind the dogs back, close to the helmet you can see two broad straps. Also note there is one in front of the bag, in front of the dogs frontlegs.

TheKingFiphtin

So Sheba, all you have to do is finish that second bag and you're making the trip down to Milwaukee, right? You could even stop in Mad town to visit Zagozen on the way. Hell, I'd even meet you in Madison and ride back to MKE with you.

I really want to check out those bags, anyway. It looks pretty durable from those pics. Did you think about using three wide bands of cordura instead of all those smaller 1" straps?

And are the clips and triglides metal or plastic? Is there any way to remove the bags without taking off the deck? Not that it's a problem or anything if you can't.