BikeHacks

Rail Bike

I have had some very fun excursions on rail trails, disused railways turned into pedestrian/bike paths.  The trails typically go through very beautiful areas and rarely do you have to concern yourself with motorized traffic of any kind. 

Reader Will appears to be interested in rails as well, but he wants to ride on them - literally.  Check it out -

Will included the following text -

A rail-bike is a bicycle that has been modified to be able to ride on the rails of a railroad. The front wheel has a device attached to it so that the bike won’t steer off the rail while an outrigger is used to support the bike using the other rail.

I used conduit, cut up “razor” scooters parts, one bike fork two bits of steel and numerous nuts, bolts, washers and retaining pins.  Nothing is welded.  The hardest part is getting the spacing right so that friction and play are minimized.

A lot of person hours certainly went in to this working model and the details are pretty amazing.

New projects are sometimes learning experiences and Will also wrote -

Seems I became a bit to confident in my design, and while traveling at somewhere around 16 MPH I had a derailment.  The guide in the bike side caught a rail tie stopping the bike immediately, and as I was traveling over the bars, the frame bent behind the lugs at the head tube, seat tube and bottom bracket, so the fame is a total loss.

Ouch!  Will has noted that he will continue his pursuit of a safe rail bike and will keep us updated.  Additional photos and commentary of this project can be found on the Velospace.org Forum.

BTB Sunglasses Giveaway Winner

As noted in the blog entry on April 18th, BTB Sunglasses is working with Bike Hacks to provide a free pair of glasses to a Bike Hacks reader to review.  Thank you to the 68 people that commented for their chance to receive the glasses. 

Random.org was used to select the winner, and in this case the lucky number was 9.  That means Gentry Seagraves is our winner.  Gentry, send us an email to claim your loot.  We will post Gentry's review sometime in the future.  

We are working with some other companies on contests/giveaways of other products so stay tuned for more opportunities to receive some free swag. 

Commuting: Fender Cleaning

One thing that makes bicycle commuting a lot better is a place to park your bike inside. Leaving your trusty steed to the elements and passers by outdoors is just no fun. When you bring your bike inside you also sometimes bring in some unwanted things as well; like leaves, dirt, and road grime.

Fenders are great but have a tendency to collect all sorts of muck. I have noticed at times, especially after riding to work in the rain, that when I roll my bike out of the file room at night, there is an assemblage of items that have fallen out of my fenders as the water has dried over the course of the day. The most common culprit is leaf fragments.

In serendipitous moment one day I discovered a simple solution to fight fender muck – a plastic fork from my favorite Vietnamese restaurant. I happened to have a fork in my jacket pocket and a bright light went on in my head. Turns out the contour exactly matches my Planetbike Freedy! On nasty, wet days before I head inside I turn it upside down and scrape out as much of the muck as possible.

 

 

A simple way to stand at the ready is to sucure the fork with a rubber band on my seat post.

Do you have a trick for cleaning your fenders?  Let us know.

 

Product Modification: Wine Cork for a Brake

I am discovering that wine corks seem to provide solutions to a variety of bike related annoyances. I stumbled across this cool hack on Kevin Kelly's site. It's a simple yet brilliant idea for an age old problem.

I know some brakes have the ability to be engaged when the bike is not in motion, but I have seen very few. And if you don't rock a kick stand, you often return to a bike on the ground after you have leaned it against something only to have it move on you. I know I for one could have used this idea before as my road bike has a huge dent in the frame because it fell over into pole at a rest area one time. I'm pretty sure this would have kept that from happening.

Dual PVC Bike Rack

Here is an excellent tutorial on making your own two-bike rack from standard PVC pipe. If your conscience can handle the environmental disaster that is PVC, then get on it.

This rack was designed by a guy who does adventure races (you know, with the compass, and the running and the biking, etc) so that he could store his team's bikes easily at transitions. This would work equally well for triathlons or your garage. If you need to store more bikes, the design is simple enough that you can easily modify for more or fewer bikes.

The thing I like best about this design is that it's easily broken down for storage/transport. The upright supports aren't glued into their bases, so you can remove them and store them in the horizontally-aligned supports.

HowTo: Make Duct Tape Panniers

Well, these panniers aren't quite entirely made of duct tape, but they sure use a lot! Kent Peterson put up a great page detailing how to make these duct tape panniers. The concept is pretty simple and definitely hackable--there ought to be tons of variations on this same design.

The basic idea is to acquire a couple of plastic containers--Kent used pet food containers. Cut the top at an angle, so that when the panniers are mounted the bottom of the pannier is farther from your heel. Find an old political campaign sign, or Realtor sign (the material is called coroplast) and cut a couple of tops for your new panniers. Kent used zip ties to attach the lids to the bodies. In order to hang the panniers from his rear rack, Kent used some double shower hooks (refer to his pictures for a better visual explanation) mounted to the pannier.

Seems to me that this would be the weakest part of the design since pretty much all the weight from each pannier is hanging on those shower hooks. Kent's pictures don't show it, but the hooks seem to just be screwed in through the plastic with little reinforcement. Should be fine for relatively light loads, but I'd imagine a few books in the pannier could start to cause the pannier to hang low and possibly slip off the rack.

Kent keeps the whole business strapped down with bungee cords and spare toe clip straps. The toe clip straps are mounted near the hooks in order to keep them tied down. The bungees wrap from the rack, around the pannier, and back onto the bottom part of the rack braces.On the whole, it's a really cool idea and a relatively inexpensive set of panniers. Kent mentioned that he'd been considering Oyster Buckets (or, for Portland folks, some BikeBuckets), but his design definitely offers more heel clearance, which is a must for a bigfoot like me.

See, Secure, and Store Bike Hacks

Reader Jack sent along a compilation of hacks he has employed to see better and to store and secure items.  I am almost postive one of the hacks will cause commenter Torben to grimmace.

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$12 bifocal glasses so I can keep the bugs out of my eyes and read a trail map or see a small screw to do a repair.  Industrial safety glasses, can be yellow or smoke gray.  Choice of diopter strengths.

Bike Hacks editor note - there are also stick on bifocal lenses.

Helmet zip tie because the foam and glue is worn and falls off in the heat.  Mirror on right side because it blocks the road more on the left side. Slight head rotation and good to go.

Bottle velcro tie holds non standard water bottles such as purchased from grocery store, ice tea etc.  Also holds a "Gulpy" water bottle for my dog to drink with.

Chico bag is a reusable bag for shopping, clipped onto rack.  Rack also holds a handlebar pack which I use for tools, jacket, and front light storage.  Velcro tie holds it between rack and fender.

Velcro tie also holds front wheel to rack when redeployed because the magnet that is supposed to hold the front and rear wheel together fails.

I secure the front handlebar to the front wheel with a Velcro tie so it does not rattle when folded.  Same tie can be use to help hold the Chico bag in the front against the riser for lots of shopping.

Mirror, Mirror: Bike Helmet Mirror Modification

I started riding with a helmet mirror over 10 years ago and now find it pretty much impossible to ride without one. As a matter of fact, I ride more than I walk and when I walk I constantly find myself instinctively looking up for a mirror that is not there.  It really drives me batty if for some reason I ride with a different helmet that does not have a mirror mounted to it.

The mirror of choice for me is a CycleAware Reflex. I have never ridden with any other kid of mirror but I can imagine that a handlebar mounted mirror would suffer from excessive vibration.

I also wear glasses when I ride and I know there are glasses mounted mirror options, but my frames are super light and I don't like heavy glasses on top of my nose.

Thus the helmet mounted mirror is the winning choice for me. The only downside I found over the years is that I bang my helmet around and have managed to pop a couple of the CycleAware mirrors off. The mirror does have a quick release of sorts, you can pop it off of the mount, but doing this repeatedly can lead to dislocation of the mount which comes with a sticky pad from the factory for attaching it.

For me the solution came with Gorilla Glue. I don't much care about the tidiness of my hacks but for those who are concerned about such things, be warned that Gorilla Glue will foam up. I had never used it prior to this project and slathered a liberal amount on. You can easily see the result on my helmet -

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It may not look pretty but I will tell you one thing though, that bad boy ain't coming off! I'm pretty sure that the helmet would break away from the mirror rather than the other way around =)

If you don't ride with a mirror I would highly recommend giving it a whirl. It is especially useful in an urban setting. I have enough to worry about with potholes, manholes, etc. and to have to look over my shoulder is just one more thing to distract me. If you do ride with a mirror and have your own advice or recommendations to pass along please chime in with comments.

BTB Sunglasses Giveaway

I see it everyday but don't understand it - people riding bikes without glasses.  I am forced to ride with glasses since I am blind without them, and on the rare occasion that I ride with contacts I need something in front of my eyes to fend off dryness.  The reason I don't understand people riding without glasses it that I get hit in the face with small objects all of the time and can't imagine my eyes not being protected. 

I most commonly get hit with tree shrapnel and bugs are also a common hazard.  One of my least favorite things is riding through a swarm of gnats.  And on a related note, how terrible is it when a bug flies in to your mouth while riding?  Once a bee flew into my mouth and I was fortunate that I spit it out before it decided to sting me.  A bee hitting me in the eye would certainly not help my ability to stay upright on my bike. 

For anyone out there riding without glasses, thanks to the generous folks over at BTB Sunglasses you now have your chance to receive a free pair of glasses.  We are going to conduct a random drawing and BTB is going to give the person selected a free pair of glasses to review.  The recipient simply has to wear the glasses and submit a review for Bike Hacks. 

BTB has a great mission to boot.  The following describes what they are about:

The Be The Ball Foundation's focus is to actively promote youth participation in all ball sports for a healthier and active lifestyle. With child obesity reaching an all time high, the foundation's first project is to produce nine Public Service Announcements using major sports figures to deliver the message of participation. In addition to high profile PSA's, the foundation contributes funds to local sports teams for kids.

A portion of every sale on the BTB Sunglasses website goes towards this mission.  

For anyone with questions about one of the selling points of these glasses, check out the following video.  The money shot literally comes at the 18 second mark.

 

I think it is safe to say that the glasses would safely fend off any insects coming your way.

So the way the giveway will work is pretty simple.  Just leave a comment on this post and be sure to fill in the box that asks for your website or email address. You can say something random if you want as well, but at a minimum I need digital information that identifies you. We will take comments up until April 25th at midnight Eastern Standard Time (U.S.).  One entry per person only please.

We will announce the winner shortly after the deadline and BTB will send out a pair of glasses for review.  Keep those eyes protected! 

Mystery Bike Rack

Reader Anton spotted the following at the University of Otago Medical School in Dunedin, NZ.

Anton writes - "Not sure what this is, but my guess is surfboard carrier.  Any others? Even though Dunedin is quite southerly (Antarctic southerly) our surfers are tough.  So its a reasonable guess...."

We have seen a surfboard rack before on Bike Hacks, but this rack is perplexing because it does not look like it would give the rider the ability to pedal with a full stroke.  The way it is set up makes it seem like you would have to pedal only a portion of the stroke, and then pedal backward to go forward again.  Do others have thoughts?