Want a cargo bike? Build your own, “hillbilly” style

Tom, that’s the best use of scrap metal I’ve seen in a long time! Thanks for sharing.

James @ 2:

I think a lot of that would depend on the skill of the person doing the welding. Obviously, unless one had experience and access to heliarc welding, the only parts you could use would be from steel frame/fork, and even then I’d avoid real thin steel tubing; it’s harder to get the welds right.

The other potential problem with welds is that many of the dept. store bikes (that look like the little pink one in the pics) come with horrible welds right from the factory. The biggest CPSC recall & fine in bicycling history, $1.4 mil. was against Dynacraft a few yrs. ago, mostly for faulty welds at the fork crown pitching kids over the handlebars into a faceplant. If you pick up a bike that might be from that large nation in the western Pacific (not Tiawan), look at the decals down near the bottom of the seat tube to identify the manufacturer. If you see “Dynacraft”, I recommend you set the bike back down & look for something else. Many of these bikes were sold through a dept. store named “W…” & made to their specs.

Where to get frames/forks: Police auction sales, laying abandoned by the roadside or thrown in the trash or CCC. CCC, 1700 Alberta, gets hundreds of suitable bikes donated to them. Many are not worth repairing & can’t be sold, so they strip them for usable parts & toss the frames/forks/handlebars, etc. in their giant scrap metal bin. I bet that for $5-10 they would let you go through their “teardown” pile & pick out what bikes you need. Better yet, go down there to their volunteer teardown group on Sunday about 10AM, spend a couple hours doing community service work – they supply tools – & you could probably pick out what scrap frames/forks, etc you need for free. Call CCC first to make sure it’s OK with them – ask for James, their recycling coordinator.

Tom’s creativity deserves praise, I’ve been watching his website for a while now and I think he has lots of potential. I’d like to find a place where builders could meet and work together on projects without having to spend $100’s of dollars every month on membership fee’s

james; when i lived in minneapolis tall bikes were all the rage. i can’t stand them generally. if all the brain dead punks in the west bank can make tall bikes, and they didn’t fail catastrophically, then someone with any skill with a torch can make a cargo bike that should work just fine.

also, given that there are these instructions tom is putting out, i’d think that that’s a huge help. the crusty kids, to the best of my knowledge, were all just winging it.

In the great tradition of do-it-yourself magazines, Tom LaBonty’s nice pics make a project like this look so easy at first glance. If they don’t already know, anyone deciding to try building this bike using the approach he did is going to learn a bunch, especially if they follow through and complete it.

Think of all the skills involved: measuring, cutting, welding, ability to evaluate materials capability and suitable application to the service it will have to provide. Also, the ability to visualize design options and devise solutions to problems. Some people have a knack for doing this kind of thing. The motorhome bike guy, Brian Campbell seems like another one that can.

Structurally, the job LaBonty did on this bike looks pretty good. His welds look pretty good and strong. A lot of people don’t care if welds are sanded and smoothed all purty like a high end hand made racing bike, just as long as they work.

Doubts about the bike’s structural integrity can easily be laid to rest with a little field testing. Put one of the fancy Dutch bikes up against it. The results hould be interesting.

James — concerns taken, but once upon a time, Popular Mechanics (remember that magazine?) published all sorts of DIY projects for everything from windmills to pedal-cars, and none of their articles was ever preceded by ten pages of disclaimers. It was ASSUMED that anyone trying out a design in PM was responsible for whatever happened. Period.

We live in a litigious atmosphere that has killed off a lot of natural curiosity, innovation and personal responsibility for one’s own inventiveness, and I think that’s a shame.

Tom LaBonty is offering us a chance to be responsible for our own mobility in a refreshing and novel way. And it’s keeping cast-off bikes out of the landfill. Where’s the downside? I don’t see it.

Mnay thanks to Tom for encouraging the open-source development of cargo bikes- this is absolutely awesome. It makes me sad to admit that my MIG welder has sat in a corner unused for many months – this is just the inspiration I need!

As for James and his concern – this DIY endeavor is just like any other project. It is only as safe as the skills and judgement of the fabricator. Manufactured products that fail are dangerous because the consumer has no knowledge of how it was built or what potential weaknesses might be, and has the “expectation” of safety. But the nice thing is that if you built it, you can evaluate it, break it and you can fix it. And like any vehicle, you should check out all safety systems before throwing those bags of cement in the cargo area. So lighten up…everything will be fine. BTW, this is coming from someone who had an aluminum BMX frame break in two unexpectedly.

…I like it a lot…

James #’s 3&7..

In my experience not any more than on factory built bikes, and also from my experience structural failure was not as much of an issue as 5 poor drivers and one tree branch that fell on me.

Also-

I love the step by step guide and am surprised he’s not selling it.