Bike stuff to get done in 2013

It's been a busy year for me so far, with little time to get into bike projects. As many of you know, AZ is a spare time venture for us, so my garage time comes when yard work is done, when the weather is good, and when our day jobs are not running on overtime. Lately, free time has been sparse.

So, in order to utilize this scattered free time I have had lately, a new plan of attack has been laid out that will keep me in the garage hacking mode and add some new stuff to our site.

We have decided to start on an in-depth series of tutorials that will also become mastered into a DVD set for those who want to watch them on the big screen. We will cover welding, grinding and general bike hacking from beginning to end so that anyone can jump into this great hobby and learn everything needed to create a successful project.  All of the tutorials will be available for free on our Tutorials section, and the 3-part DVD will be offered for sale just like a plan.

I am also working on a bunch of online calculators geared towards the things we do, so you can just plug in your numbers and get the answers to common problems such as measurements, spoke length, gear ratios, tubing weight, wind resistance and other useful calculations. If you have any suggestions for an online calculator, then stop by our forum and make a suggestion. We would like to make AZ the ultimate place to be for creative bike builders!

Saskatoon berries calling to be picked

With all of the rain we have had lately, my favorite summer time berries have finally arrived. Saskatoons are a sweet berry that seem to fall between cherries and blueberries on the taste scale, and they so are abundant around here that a single tree out of the dozen in one field could fill a barrel. I like them so much that I often skip lunch and just head out to the trees to eat like a bear! The crab apples are also coming along, and they will be replacing the 'toons about a week after they all dry up. Oh, and don't forget the raspberries; they are soon to arrive as well. This is a tasty place to live.

Ok, I will keep it short this morning as I am going to start coding those online calculators and hope to have something to show this week. Wish me luck; I am about to dive deep into web coding again and do battle with a foe that makes Murphy's Law seem tame!

~ Brad

New Plan Online - The Transporter Cargo Bike

The Transporter Upright Cargo Bike

Well, it's finally online! The Transporter Upright Cargo Bike is the latest addition to the AZ plans page and is ready for download. It has been a real battle trying to find a few hours between the rain to get the bike photographed, but the weekend played nice for an entire day. I had fun moving some cargo around the yard and down our windy, hilly dirt roads and everything worked perfectly.

This plan takes a typical department store mountain bike or road bike and converts it into a rear loading cargo bike, leaving the front section of the bike in its original form. By keeping the part bike mostly unmodified at the front, the ride and stance is much the same as any bicycle, so you can head out into traffic and maintain eye level with those gas guzzlers.

A typical yard sale mountain bike

This plan is highly adaptable to your needs, and includes a rugged frame that can carry many different types of cargo carrying systems. The Transporter can be made to practically any wheelbase and the entire plan only requires standard bicycle components and a few lengths of round or square tubing, so it will be an inexpensive and straightforward build. I opted for a flatbed cargo top since I intend to move some large items around such as firewood and potted plants.

Testing the brakes down our hill

I loaded some heavy cargo and drove the bike down the steep hill up to our driveway for a brake test. Even using only the front disc brake seemed to offer adequate stopping power, and the handling was good. The only learning curve was getting used to the wide turning circle of a bike with an 8 foot wheel base. I did manage to get it turned around in the width of our narrow dirt road, but did use the entire road to do so. For typical navigation, the bike handles just like a regular cycle.

Blending in with the wildflowers

Our field is just bursting with color these days thanks to the rainforest-like climate over the last few months. Normally, the wildflowers bloom in shifts of yellow, white and then purple, but this year they are all here at the same time. I rolled the Transporter over to the edge of the yard and got some great shots of the bike contrasting against the rolling blue and white sky and the matching yellow in the field. I think photographing a bike is almost as fun as riding it, and I enjoy trying out different backgrounds to set the mood of the shot.

Well, there you have it, another plan completed. We are now turning our focus towards a set of highly detailed welding, grinding and bike hacking tutorials which will be part of our tutorials page and offered for sale as a complete DVD as well. I should be able to do most of the filming under the non-leaky section of the old trailer, so the rain will not get in the way this time.

~ Brad

Bike builders news July 19

In this issue:

 Feature articles by RadicalBrad of AtomicZombie.com:   

Transporter Cargo Bike is done - this project has been challenging
Paper, Proto, Plan, Precipitation! - the design and build process

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Head tubes and bottom brackets for your bike projects - in stock
Freewheel axle and disc brake adapters - for your bike projects
Chains and brake cables? - let us know what you think  

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Bike builders community chat - hot topics of conversation     

 Bike builders gallery  new additions - recumbents, trikes, choppers & more    

Builders Feedback - we love to hear from you.

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Free DIY tutorials - many in PDF format
AZTV webisode - There and Back Again: A Zombie's Tale 

  This and archived newsletters are here.

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Thanks for your feedback, and keep those suggestions coming. 

  

See you in the Builders Forum. 

            

Random thoughts, more rain!

Managed to snap a pic in between storms.

It's official; we now live in the rain forest! And, when it's not raining, the humidity hovers between 70 and 80 percent, so it might as well be. Oh well, here I am complaining about the rain when three months ago I was up to my waistline in snow. I guess that spring and fall really are the only good seasons for an outdoor bike hacker like me.

I did manage to get an hour on the Transporter Cargo Bike and added the cables, levers, and shifters. The first test run went well minus the fact that I had almost no air on the front tire. To complete the plan, I still have to get some photos and video of the bike being loaded with cargo, so it will be a game of waiting for the weather to cooperate.

Wow, a day that might not rain!

This week's forecast is pretty much the same as the last two months with 40 to 60 percent chance of showers, which really means spitting rain every hour followed by intense rain for a few minutes and then 70 percent humidity until the next wave of rain. I don't ever remember this much rain, and I am seeing plant life that looks like it belongs in the Amazon jungle around here.

New welding and grinding tutorials coming

In an effort to do something useful this year, we have decided to start making some highly detailed welding and grinding tutorials to replace the old ones on our website. These will be step-by-step video and photo tutorials from the very beginning that will show a noob what kind of welder and gear he or she might need, right up to controlling distortion. Since bike building seems nearly impossible out here this year, I plan to retro fit the non-leaky side of my shack with some backing boards and turn it into a video studio to make the new tutorials.

I will be purchasing a MIG welder as well for the tutorials since many are using one and will go through the process of both arc welding and MIG welding in great detail. Grinding tutorials will be the same in depth video and photo tutorials with hundreds of images lots of example videos, and text that explains everything one would ever need to know in order to jump head first into this great hobby.

A robot project from 2001

I like to dig through my old photo archives when I am doing my morning blog. Here is a real retro photo of one of my first large robot projects. If you can drag your gaze away from my super cool sideburns for a second, then you will see that I am riding on the robot, with an RF controller in my hand during a test run of the differentially steered transmission system. This robot was quite unstable and dangerous since it could reach speeds of 20 miles per hour and then flop over face first when something glitched in the motor drive processor!

But, the robot was fun to operate. I would sit indoors looking at a video link being transmitted from the head mounted camera and navigate (carefully) around the block, interacting with stunned bystanders using a text to speech processor that made the robot talk. I do miss building these things. Once I have an indoor workspace again, I have plans to build a 4x4 autonomous robot that will patrol our yard and keep that dumb bear off the property.

Well, I am going to head our and face the rainforest now. I have to find a way to cut the lawn in between drizzle as it is now knee high in most areas. Talk at ya later.

~ Brad

Paper, Proto, Plan, Precipitation!

A tandem tadpole trike sketch

I was really hoping to have the Transporter Cargo Bike ready to show off for this morning's blog, so far this year has turned our area into a rain forest. Sure, it’s great for the garden and berry trees, but not great for getting any welding or building time in because my shack has no doors or windows and leaks when it rains. Add to that the 2 foot tall grass and I am starting to wonder if perhaps winter would be more productive after all! Ok, enough complaining I will save that for the end of the blog!

While searching for something else to blog about, I thought of what it takes to turn an idea into a working project. I divide the process into three steps: paper, prototype and then plan. Most of the time, an idea never leaves the paper stage. I currently have 43 full spiral ringed notebooks of bike ideas that I have collected from over the last five years. Sadly, I never kept notebooks before that time, so a lot of cool and crazy ideas ended up in the recycle bin.

I usually start with a few pages of rough sketching just to get my head around the basic idea and how it might look.  It takes only a few minutes to sketch up a bike. The sketches offer a decent view of many of the difficulties in designing a bike or trike such as chain line, seating position and steering. I can usually determine if an idea is viable within a few pages worth of sketching, and by the 10th drawing often the bike or trike is radically different than the original idea. This tandem tadpole trike sketch seemed workable, so it was one of the few drawings from several thousand that moved to stage two - prototype.

The Viking Tandem Trike

All of the AZ plans go through a prototype stage so that ideas can be tested in the real world and then either modified or scrapped. Having a rough prototype means I can beat the hell out of the vehicle and see what it can take, making any adjustments that may be necessary. This tandem trike proto was made of electrical conduit and BMX wheels and took about two weekends to put together. We tested this trike at a campground for three days, beating it up over trails, down rough gravel roads, and even off road at times. It held up, even though there was no frame trussing and many of the welds were only half finished. My thinking is that if a poorly build proto can hold up to abuse, then a properly built final design would certainly hold up to just about any conditions. So, the next step was to turn proto into plan.

Turning paper into prototype

When I built the Viking Tandem Trike based on the original prototype, I made it a lot more durable and added many new features such as an unlinked transmission system, adjustable bottom brackets, dual disc brakes and under seat steering. The 1.25 inch conduit was replaced by 2 inch square tubing and the frame was properly triangulated for supreme strength. Building a plan from a prototype is a much longer process because every step has to be meticulously photographed and documented, but it is worth the effort when I see completed projects based on our plans being posted in the gallery.

So I am 95% into the plan stage on the Transporter Cargo Bike and only need to add the brake and shifter cables to complete the plan. But, the rain-man seems to have other plans, keeping me indoors as of late.

This is a typical site out here lately

The weather report has been practically the exact same for more than a month – a 40% chance of thunder showers and high humidity. What that means is that it spits rain once every few hours and dumps rain once a day. The grass is constantly wet, and my bike building shack smells like the back of uncle Jeb's cabin...ack! I am at the point where I need a nice dry sunny day to get the final photos done, even if the rain holds off for four hours, I would be happy. Oh well, the apples and berry trees are sure enjoying the new rain forest, but the lawn is getting so tall it may take three days to hand mow the yard the next chance I get! I wonder, is there such a thing as an anti-rain dance?

~ Brad

Cargo bike plan in the shade

The Transporter Cargo Bike parked in the shade

Yesterday, I decided to try out our new arbor for the first time by writing the new Transporter Cargo Bike plan outdoors. It was great to actually have some shade out in the blazing summer sun, and although my old laptop screen was a bit dim outdoors, I really enjoyed the fresh air and scenery. Since our home is a ranch-style modular home, it offers practically no shade as the sun passes overhead, so this arbor is our only shaded spot in the entire yard. Well, I guess I could hide in the bush and get shade from a big ol’ pine tree, but then the bugs would eat me alive.

We live in the path of some kind of odd wind phenomenon, so stand up umbrellas get torn and tossed practically every time we tried to use them, but this time we have a solid structure with a lattice roof that blocks out about 75 per cent of the overhead sun. I think I will be doing all of my writing out here from now on and maybe even some of the website design and upgrading.

Having an injured back this week meant that I could not get the cables on the new bike just yet, but I had enough of it done to dig into the meat of the plan. I dragged the bike up the hill, parked it under the arbor and ran an extension cord to my laptop. I make a large document of images and dimensions when I build a new plan, but also double check with a tape measure and angle finder as I write, just to make sure that everything works out.

A typical plan write-up consists of editing about 120 to 150 photos from the 1,500-2,000 that I take during a build. I then edit them all in Photoshop for color balance, resize them, number them and then start adding text in a logical and sequential manner. So, as you might have guessed, this is a LOT of tedious work; being outside was just great. Looking at my office walls for 15 straight hours is boring compared to looking at the tree line and watching the deer stroll past. Hey, was that a bear checking out my Saskatoon berry trees? Grrrrrr!

Making the photos follow the plan

Sometimes the 1,500 or more photos can get out of sequence with what I have on paper because I often work around the weather. There are days when I can put the frame outdoors for welding and then other days when I am stuck in the shack to work on the small bits, so this can really mess up the storyline. Oh well, I had a cool summer breeze, no traffic noise pollution, a view of the greenhouse and the sounds of birds to make the work easier. I sat under the arbor from morning to night to edit the photos until the black flies, mosquitoes and noseeums drove me inside.

Getting some advice from the real expert

Of course, I never work alone on a technical project. My silent partner is always around to give me the look when I do something not so smart. A tilting of his head to the left means that I have a measurement wrong, a right tilt means...hmmm... “Get me more food?” Well, not sure on that one, but my furry buddy "DJ The Prince of Dogness" does know his stuff.

Well, I’d better get back to the plan so I can get it ready for the website and then move right to the next bike project of 2013. There is so much stuff to do around the yard and the weather has been so wacky this year that I must hit it hard every free second or Old Man Winter will be back before I know it. Bark at ya later!

~ Brad

DIY always gets attention

I've always had a passion for radical bike designs.

 
If you have been hacking things together for any length of time, then you probably know that your unique creations draw attention wherever you are. When I was in my early teens, I would string four or five scrap bikes together and my buddies and I would wobble down the street on my contraptions that often resembled bikes from Doctor Seuss books. Making it back home in one piece was a 50/50 chance because I usually only brazed my early bike hacks, but the one thing that was guaranteed was a lot of attention.  My intent was never to make something to draw a crowd, but I often found myself talking to a group of interested onlookers or even speaking into the camera on the evening news.

I took a long break from bike hacking after getting my first motorcycle (and job), but found myself back out in the garage in the year 2000 to rekindle my DIY roots and get my mind off the daily grind of living in the real world. I started collecting junk bikes and old power chair parts and concocted some cool bikes and robots out in the small garage just to have fun on the weekend. Oddly enough, I never took any photos or intended to publish these works. One day Kat suggested that I put some of the bikes up on my website AtomicZombie.com, which at the time was a home for electronics hacking stuff I was doing.

Getting youth interested in technology.

Well, within months I started connecting with some amazing people and realized I wasn't the only one who enjoyed making art from metal, sometimes for fun, sometimes to be practical. It didn't take long before the word spread locally, and we were dragging my creations to all kinds of events. The large video guided robots were always popular. I enjoyed inspiring young hackers to consider this great hobby. The robots were a natural crowd magnet since I controlled them from miles away via video link and could communicate to people by typing words into a speech synthesis station at the base, making the robot seem intelligent. Soon my remote robots’ main purpose was to draw in a crowd and baffle them with technology.

Photo op with some visiting teens from the USA after my World Record ride.

 
At one point, I decided to aim for a Guinness World Record, making the tallest rideable bicycle, and figure it would be fun and possible draw a bit of attention to the website which was now mostly dedicated to bike building. Well, I was certainly not ready for the storm that this thing generated once the word got out! I must have done a dozen live radio interviews, news casts and even a live spot on a a national broadcast of Canada AM . Tall bikes sure draw the crowds!

When the tallbike called "SkyCycle" made it to a full color page in the Guinness Book (along with my mug), I was shocked. I knew these crazy contraptions could draw interest, but I had no idea how far it could go. Even a simple recumbent bike like the Marauder would spend half the time parked as I explained the bike to interested people along a ride. No doubt, all you DIY enthusiast out there know what I am talking about.

When I think back to me pre-DIY days, I guess my inspiration did come from seeing others’ creations, although it was mostly in the form of photos from old Popular Mechanics books or the odd newspaper article. Now, with the internet jacked into our heads like The Matrix, it's so easy to connect with other DIY folks and share advice, so the community is stronger than it's even been. Back in the early 1980s I would have never thought that one day I would be saying, "Hey!" to a cargo bike builder in Africa and then a trike builder in Australia within a 15 minute span.

So, if you are a new builder just getting ready to roll open that garage door and head out on your new DIY creation, get prepared for the attention your work will draw.  You will now become the source of inspiration for a young generation of future DIYers, so make sure you pass along that attitude that drives us all, "Yeah, you can do this, too"!

~ Brad

Revisiting an unfinished prototype - sociable tadpole trike

In 2001, I decided to tinker in the garage with my angle grinder.

Once in awhile, I like to dig through my photo archive labeled "the Graveyard" where I keep photos of unfinished or failed bike and trike concepts made over the years. Sometimes these ideas just fail completely, or they become too complex to make into plans since I try to ensure that anyone with nothing more than a basic welder and a grinder can do the same work I do.

So, I was waiting for some microcontroller code to compile the other day and I want for a photo trip down memory lane and found an old project called "the Sociable Tadpole Trike" and it sparked some new ideas.

I remember building this thing sometime around 2001 or so. I scoured the ‘Net for any examples of a side-by-side (sociable) tadpole trike (two wheels up front) and there was nothing out there at all, so I thought it would be cool to make the first one. Without any forethought, I spent a free Saturday cutting up tubing to make the trike. I don't think I even measure a single tube, but sometimes that's how it goes when you are driven by an idea - cut first, measure things later!


I had some leftover machined 20mm tubes that were part of another project and they fit nicely into a 20mm hollow axle hub wheel set that I built the year before (these were eventually used on the Warrior and Viking Trikes). To make the front steering, fashioned a bracket from two pieces of angle iron and then welded the 20mm tubes to another tube that held some brass bushings. A bolt acted as the kingpin. The odd angles shown between the kingpin and axle tube are there to allow for center point steering (this makes the wheels pivot in their center on the road).

My first attempt at center point steering.

This steering system worked out quit well, but I never used it on any of our plans because it requires four machined tubes to be made and unless you have your own lathe, these small jobs cost a lot to get done at a machine shop. But, for this prototype I decided to just use whatever bits I had on hand in order to make the trike functional in the one free day I had to work in the garage. Yeah, back in 2001 I had a garage to work in, so I didn't have to dodge the weather all of the time!

The prototype trike required machined tubes for the steering system.

The Sociable Tadpole Trike went together in a hurry and actually looked pretty good when it was done. The steering was almost perfect and the frame seemed stable and strong. I even had an independent transmission system rigged up that ran the two cranks to a transaxle that had independent derailleurs for each rider and a main drive system to the rear wheel, but sadly, I did not take any photos of this unit. I thought for sure that this trike would make it to the plans page, but after rigging up some temporary seats the next day, I found an unfixable flaw in this design - elbow room!

My prototype Sociable Tadpole Trike

It seems I misjudged how much room two people sitting side-by-side would need, especially with the captain having under seat steering, so the trike would need to be almost 5 feet wide in order to steer properly and not have the rides sitting shoulder to shoulder. I made the trike exactly 4 feet wide, and decided that a 5 foot wide trike would be too wide for any practical use. Eventually, this design was flipped around and made into the Kyoto Cruise Sociable Delta Trike, which was no wider than 4 feet.

But, the point of this musing is that I intend to revisit this concept once again, and have a wild and crazy idea on how to make the trike less than 4 feet wide, have an independent transmission, suspension, and need only simple components. Are you ready for this one? Front wheel drive and rear wheel steering!
Yeah, that's right! It will have fixed front wheels driven independently like on the Kyoto Cruiser and run a linkage to a rear steered wheel.

Now, normally I would recommend against a rear steered vehicle as they have quirks, but in this case, the width of the trike along with the riders being placed over the front axles would make the trike stable. I wouldn't use it as a racing trike, that's for sure, but for a fun sociable trike, I think the rear steering would work just fine, and allow for a nice stable ride with a great turning circle.

Richard Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the Dymaxion

There was an interesting rear steered three wheel car called the Dymaxion invented in the 1930s by Richard Buckminster Fuller and it seemed to be quite maneuverable and stable from the text I was reading. The length and width of the trike seem to make the difference, which would make sense if you think about how a rear steered vehicle would handle.

A short wheelbase rear steered trike would want to oscillate due to momentum of swinging the rear during a turn, which would then cause the pilot to counter steer and create a hard oscillation that could lead to a rollover. Add speed to this equation, and you have a ride that would not be easy to tame. Add a wide track and a longer wheelbase to the vehicle and it should steer more sensibly, allowing the vehicle to make nice tight turns and handle in a controllable manner.

Now, this is just my "guess" on how the thing will actually work, but I have been thinking about making this my next trike project for 2013, since I really miss the aspect of cruising side by side. If this new FWD Sociable Tadpole Trike actually works, it may be the base for a full body, since it would be easy to make one due to the fixed front wheels and the teardrop aerodynamic shape. In fact, the body might look like a mini Dymaxion!

Well, there you have it, a new idea is born and it will involve some things that have not yet been tried, so I am all charged about either making a new plan or adding to my folder called "the Bike Graveyard".

~ Brad

Apples, Sparks and Skitters!

Summer is definitely a lot better than winter! Let's face it, when it's -30C out or even -10C, you cannot work in an unheated space. I have tried this in the past, and even if you can keep your hands warm somehow, the welder won't run right, causing sticking and burn-throughs nonstop.

There are good and bad things about summer as well, but for the most part summer beats winter any day. Along the pathway down the hill to my building shack are several apple trees and Saskatoon bushes, and I find myself living on the fruit for days on end when I work on a new project. A few gallons of ice water and the apples are usually enough fuel to keep me going for eight hours or more.

Thanks to a lot of rainfall lately, the Saskatoon berries are almost ready to pick, the raspberries are coming along and the apples are about half way there. I look forward to "living off the land" once the berries are ripe, but will probably have to deal with that bear again. Oh well, I have a plan this year, and it involves some “MacGyver-like” contraptions.

Of course, summer does bring it's annoyances as well and yesterday they almost drove me completely mad. Yeah, you already know what I am going to say...black flies, ticks and mosquitoes! It was raining yesterday afternoon and then the temperature went right up to 30C, so I took the opportunity to head down the hill and see if I could get the Transporter Cargo Bike together for this morning's blog, but the mosquitoes were so bad that I had to run like a coward back into the house.

Since there is a 60 foot difference in height between the old shack I work in and our house, the climate is completely different down there much of the time. Up on the hill, it is always dry and breezy, but down the hill, it can seem twice as hot, muggy and often no breeze at all. Add to that the fact that my shack has no doors and you have mosquito hell sometimes.

I did manage to get the wheels and chain on the bike, but after dropping the bike twice to swat humming bird sized mosquitoes off my neck, I gave up in frustration. The grass was too long, the place was humid like the rain forest and water was leaking through the roof, so it just wasn't a productive afternoon. I am really looking forward to getting the new bike out for a test run, so I will see what the weather has in store for me today.

So far, the Transporter Cargo Bike came together very well and only needs to have the brake and shifter cables installed to be usable. I also have to come up with some kind of latch to hold the kickstand up, but have a plan on the drawing board for that. The other tricky bits will be the rear shifter and brake cables, since they need to be more than twice as long as those on a regular bike. I do have some long throttle cable that was purchased off a roll from a motorcycle shop, so I think that will do the trick.

Well, that's it for this morning; not too much to report on the new bike. If it dries out a bit today, I may get the chance to add the cables and get a few action photos of the completed bike for tomorrow’s blog. Hey, I wonder if I could weld and grind with a mosquito net over my face.

~ Brad

Painting under the stars

Yesterday I managed to get a full day in on the latest project "the Transporter Cargo Bike". It was a hot one, but now that I have power running down to the old shack, I was able to stay somewhat cool by aiming a huge fan at myself as I welded and grinded away on the almost completed frame. My goal was to complete all of the welding and have the frame painted before the end of the day, but with all of those round tube trusses to weld and the fact that I had not yet figured out the kickstand, I knew it would be a late one tonight.

Since the Transporter was really turning out nicely, I decided to go all the way and add a front disc brake. Actually, this worked out well for the plan because I could now show the steps needed to remove the brake studs from the front fork and install them at the rear and then show how to make a disc brake mount for a front fork that had none. Since most of the stopping power is needed at the front of a bike, the disc option was a good one for a cargo bike that may see loads topping the few hundred pounds mark.

The cardboard template method of making a front disc brake mount went well, and was easy to do thanks to the "weld it in place" method of aligning the brake hardware. I will probably make this into a separate mini tutorial for the main page, since disc brake hardware is becoming very common and inexpensive these days, and is fairly easy to install.

Now, I was faced with how to design the kickstand. A good kickstand is a key feature on a cargo bike; it has to hold the bike stable while the heavy loads are moved on and off the platform. Obviously, a flimsy side kickstand would be pretty useless, so I worked out a stand that would raise the front end slightly off the ground and level the bike on both sides for maximum stability. This type of kickstand is called a “center stand”, and turns the bike into a trike, with three points hitting the ground (two stand legs and the rear wheel). After some testing, the stand proved to work very well and was made out of nothing more than some tubing and bits of flat bar.

When I finally finished all the welding and did a little sanding on the rough spots, the sun was already setting. I decided to paint the bike under the moonlight and brave the mosquitoes that were now coming at me in large waves.

I decided to use brush on paint this time since this bike would be taking a beating and living outdoors mostly. Instead of a perfect paint finish, I opted for a slathered on thick coat that would be easy to retouch as the bike was used like a piece of farm equipment. Under the dim light of the moon, I slopped on the paint as thick as peanut butter, painting the bugs right in as they landed on the tacky paint! I could barely see what I was doing, so I figured the paint job would be less than pretty in the morning, but yellow is somewhat forgiving and the goal was durable paint, not a showroom finish.

Next morning, I took the frame out for inspection, and wadda-ya-now, the yellow paint job wasn't all that bad! There were a few spots needing a bit of retouching and some runs near the joints, but at a distance of 6 feet away, it looked as good as a spray on paint job. I may use brush on paint a lot more in the future since it requires no primer, and costs only $10for a can that would paint 3 bikes.

The only drawback to the department store rust paint is the selection of colors: black, white, grey, red, green, blue, orange and yellow. Knowing that I can make any color imaginable by mixing red green and blue, I have a cunning plan for my next brush paint job - mix 'em and see! By using the color picker in Photoshop to get the RGB values, I "should" be able to concoct a similar color by converting the decimal value to a volumetric mixing value.

Well, that completes the first official plan of 2013, so if the weather holds out today I may get the chance to assemble the Transporter Cargo Bike and show it off in tomorrow's blog entry. I am looking forward to hauling that old freezer out of the bush and then loading a few hundred pounds of firewood onto the cargo bed to make some fun videos of the bike in action. Type y'all tomorrow.

~ Brad

My TimberWolf Delta Trike Project

By Dennis Martin

Two years ago while on vacation in Iowa after mentioning RAGBRAI (Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) my wife said to me, "Why don't you do that again?"

I hadn't ridden the ride since RAGBRAI XVI (1988), but after thinking about it for a while I thought it might be fun to do it again. The first thing I decided was that I wasn't going to do it on a regular bike!  I've got too many memories of aching back, shoulders and wrists from riding a regular road bike. I wanted a recumbent! Wow, I couldn't believe how expensive they were, and I didn't really see one I liked that well. That's when I ran across Atomic Zombie and their TimberWolf Delta Trike.

Photo 1: Chain guard on tension pulley.

I watched the video and thought to myself, "What a cool trike!" I ordered the plans and spent several days reading through the plans to get ideas on where to get the parts and various items I would need. I immediately started browsing Craigslist for cheap parts. In that way, I got fairly lucky.

I found a mountain bike for cheap and was able to scavenge the bottom bracket, derailleurs, shock and frame pivot. I also used the pedals and the brake levers.  I managed to get the whole front end on a 20" bike from Goodwill for $5! I found an estate sale on Craigslist from a bike shop owner and managed to get brand new chain (a carton of 10), complete crank and bearings and the disk brake. All were new in the box and at a significant saving over retail.

Thanks to AZ for selling the hubs and I was ready to start assembly. Assembly is pretty straightforward per the plans, but I found as I went along that there were a few changes I'd recommend to others if they want to try this (or similar) construction project.

The first thing I found was that the tension pulley really needs a chain guard. I found that if back-pedaling, the chain would drop off the pulley wheel and then get caught between the pulley and the frame when forward pressure was applied. A very simple piece of strap steel bent into a long "U" shape and attached to the pulley bolt will keep the chain in place.  Nice, simple (and inexpensive) fix (see photo 1).

Next, on the advice of my local bicycle shop, I went with a two-bolt mount for the handlebars.  The kind shown is the plans is hard to find and in reality it is much easier to mount the handlebars if you use the two-bolt assembly. That way, you don’t have to pass the entire handlebar assembly through the mount if you need to attach/detach the handlebars (see photo 2).

Photo 2: Two-bolt handlebar mount.

I discovered while assembling the seat that a better way to mount the wooden seat to the frame is to use T-Nuts and bolts rather than using wood screws. This offers a much easier way to attach the seat and won’t strip out if you have to remove the seat very many times (as I found you will do) during construction.

The plans call for a rear cargo area which is actually a Coleman cooler.  AZ told me they got theirs from Canadian Tire; I was able to order one online from Target. I chose the red one and that decided the color for the rest of the trike. I wasn’t happy with the plans where they actually have you drill holes in the cooler, so I devised a mount that wouldn’t require you to ruin a perfectly good cooler by drilling holes in it.

Instead of 3/4” tubing, I used some left over 1/2” tubing that I had left from a gate project and made a rectangular frame that just fits around the cooler. I attached a 1/2” tube on the back with some angle braces and it now attaches to the 3/4” tube that comes down from the back of the seat rest using a bolt to hold it in place. The 1/2” tubing fits perfectly inside the 3/4” tubing, and as you can see in Photo 3 the bolt is held by a wing nut to make for easy removal. I also made another carrier for the back with I will use on RAGBRAI to hold my camel back pack rather than transport the weight of the cooler on the whole trip.

Photo 3: Rear cargo carrier mount.

In Arizona, bicycles are required to have tail lights. I had difficulty finding something that would fit and be bright enough to be seen even in bright sunlight. Problem solved thanks to a couple of LED flashlights available from Home Depot (they come in a two-pack for about $9). Some inexpensive tool brackets and they are ready to go. These flashlights have a four-way light system: white, red, green and flashing red.

I mounted two of them on the rear frame and turn them both on to flashing red. They don’t blink at exactly the same rate, which works well in giving a random flashing pattern which is very visible (see photo 4).  In order to mount these evenly, I used the short stub on the right side of the rear frame for one light, and welded a bracket to support the other light. The bracket is made from a scrap piece of frame tubing. These clamp on really tight, and the flashlights are weatherproof, so I shouldn’t have to worry if I get rained on. The flashlights run on 3 AAA sized batteries each and should run for a long time in flashing mode.

Photo 4: Rear light mounts (one on each side).

The last modification was to add a bicycle flag. Sitting low to the road as this trike does, I wanted all of the added visibility of a bike flag. Unfortunately, bike flags normally mount to the axle nut on a regular bike. No rear axle nuts on this trike! Problem solved by making a bracket from some 1/8” angle iron and welding some gussets to make a sturdy frame.

Photo 5: Bike flag holder.

Next, I took another scrap of frame tubing and cut it out as seen in photo 5. An end cap is welded on to make a base for the frame to provide a way to mount to the bracket. I used a piece of 16 Ga. steel to make the clamp. By heating and striking it with a chisel while setting on top of a vise with the jaws open slightly, I was able to get a “V” shape and get the shape you see in the photo. Three 1/4” bolts with wing nuts hold the clamp in place. This makes it easy to remove the flag when transporting the trike so that the flag won’t get damaged or get in the way.

Photo 6: The finished product.

I’m looking forward to riding this on RAGBRAI XLI this year (July 21 - July 27). Maybe I’ll see some other AZ bikes on the ride. Happy pedaling!

Dennis Martin, Sun City, Arizona


Thanks for this excellent article and pictures, Dennis. Great building tips, too. Have a good time.