DIY Kid Bike Fenders

After an 81-day stretch of dry weather, it finally rained this morning. For people who enjoy walking and biking, it has been a long and blissful summer. With the inevitable dampness of fall on the horizon, I took some time last night to fender my second-grader's bike.

The fenders are made from coroplast, a corrugated plastic used for making campaign signs. I picked up the idea from Kent's Blog and a local elected official was happy to give me a stash of signs after his election. 

[Note: Around here campaigns are required to collect their signs from public spaces post-election. It is very illegal for private individuals to take them during election season. However, if you find a forgotten sign in a ditch post-election, it's your civic duty to pick up litter, right?] 

At her request, I had already customized the bike by covering the entire frame with fancy duct tape. We continued the look on the fenders; she digs the skulls. You can buy fenders for 16" and 20" wheels, but most shops will have to special order them. Inexpensive kid bikes like this one also don't have the usual eyelets for mounting manufactured fenders with screws, so zip ties and coroplast are an excellent alternative.

The best part: she thinks it looks cool and wants to ride, even on the rainy days.

UPDATE:

Here are some more detailed photos of the 20" kid fenders.

Pre-assembly: Using a razor knife on a concrete floor, cut two strips from a 2' long campaign sign. Make your cuts in parallel with the channels in the coroplast. The wider piece to cover the tire is 2 3/8" wide and the strut piece is 1 1/2" wide. (If you need a front and rear fender, repeat this step.)

Most campaign signs don't look that cool when chopped up, so wipe them clean and cover them with duct tape. It looks cool and helps keep the coroplast from buckling. 

Center the strut at one end of the fender and punch small holes for the cable ties. Join the two pieces so the sharp fastener of the cable tie is on the outside. 

This way there are no sharp edges near the tire. Pre-fold the struts around the edge of the fender piece, creasing the coroplast. This will help with mounting.

Rear fender: Notch the fender as needed to mount the front end near the kickstand plate. This bike had a screw hole, so I rummaged an old screw that fit. Otherwise, use cable ties.

One cable tie was all I needed to attach the struts near the axle.

You may need to make your fenders wider. This bike required the struts go around the outside of the huge fork blades.

And get creative with the cable ties! It may take more than one!

Bike Month DIY: Xtracycle Running Board

We had a two nice days of Bike Month before the rain came. May is consistently wet on Tacoma, which can give you plenty of time for little maintenance tasks and bike projects.

Xtracycle now sells a nice pair of runningboards for $149, which are out-of-my-price-range and out-of-stock. So on a rainy Thursday, inspired by this photo by some folks at Clever Cycles, I started making a running board for my Xtracycle.

I used a wideloader as a frame.

I have a pair of these guys and rarely use them.  They are a bit wide for navigating sidewalks and bikeracks, and they get in the way of my small passengers doing running mounts/dismounts.  So I removed the spring pins with an old spoke, hacksawed 4" from each end, and drilled new holes for the pins.

While I was under the hood, I removed the broken Kickback plug and replaced it with a wine cork. I found out later that you only want to leave ~2mm of cork sticking out. This is too much:

[Not shown: biking to three hardware stores to find 3/4" P-clamps. WTF? - MN]

I shellacked and old flooring board that I found in my basement, drilled and clamped. Those are cut-up road tubes under the clamps.

Mounted:

I decided to only mount a running board on the drive side for a multitude of reasons: kids climb aboard curb-side, protects derailleur, I push-off with my left foot and it would sometimes get caught under the Wideloader, and one platform seemed like enough.

The Snapdeck and handlebars also received a fresh coat of shellack whilst I had it out. Now I'm ready for more rain!

[I finished this on Friday night, right after receiving an email from Xtracycle stating that their Running Boards will be back in stock next week. FYI. - MN.]

Madsen Rain Cover

This is our first attempt at a rain cover for our MADSEN kg271 bucket bike.  We wanted something simple, inexpensive, light, and hopefully durable (i.e. kid-proof.) that would keep the kids warm and dry for short trips around town on the rainiest of days.

The support frame is made from two pieces of 1/2" electrical conduit coupled together, so it's modular for summer storage.  The frame sits in the bucket on top of the seats.  The cover is primarily Sunbrella fabric, a light awning material, with zippered vinyl windows.  The nylon strap, sewn into the bottom of the cover and fastened under the lip of the bucket, keeps the whole thing in place.



Conception and production was a group effort.  Many thanks to my dad for helping with the pipe bending, and many many thanks to my wife for showing off hew prowess with a sewing machine.  Hat tip to Crow for sending us to Seattle Fabrics - they had everything but the conduit!

Unless the weather is too nice, we'll have a full review soon.  What do you think?

Stoked

After watching this Totcycle video showcasing some of the ways other Pacific Northwest families mobilize on bikes, my oldest daughter reminded me that we needed to put some stoker handlebars on the back of our Xtracycle .

Xtracycle sells a stoker bar kit, but I had all of the bits laying around.

Mom photographed our first departure, but I wish I could have recorded the squeal of excitement that Gwen made when hit cruising speed.  She loves it!

Thankfully Healthy

After struggling with the H1N1 flu for twenty days, I finally felt well enough to shuttle the kids to pre-school in the Madsen bucket bike today. To me, this is a health milestone that says, "You're better!" There was a chilly Northwest drizzle falling, but with their legs covered by a light fleece blanket and an umbrella at their backs, the kids stayed completely dry. I was left with damp thighs from my rain jacket run-off, which made me reconsider the value of rain chaps. And while the umbrella is fine for light precipitation, my youngest isn't big enough to hold one up on her own (she stayed home for this test). I need another solution.

The folks at Madsen made a prototype cover, which I heard was scrapped for a different design. I've worked out a basic design of my own for a passenger rain cover which I hope to build and test in the next few weeks. Unfortunately, it won't be done in time for Tacoma Bike's Family Tea Party on Sunday.

I'm not in a huge hurry to build it because the kids don't seem to mind the rain that much. After weeks of drenching downpours, they were more than ready to brave a few showers to get in some laps on the sidewalk the other day - without fenders!



Wishing you all good health this season - Happy Thanksgiving!

Endless Summer

We had a few days of wet weather, but otherwise this has been a phenominally sunny summer. The MADSEN Cycles bucket bike has been getting used nearly every day for outings to the park, short errands, and the thrice-weekly pre-school run. I keep wondering if we'll continue to use the MADSEN once the dampness of fall and winter finally hits, so we've been testing out contingency plans. Turns out a 4-year old in the bucket can easily wrangle a bumbershoot in the back seat at cruising speed, while still covering most passengers and not poking me in the back. Sweet!


Plus my mom send these flashy German-made raincoats for the kids. I think we're set.


However, the sun just keeps on shining. So we continue to bike over to the UPS campus to kick the soccer ball around in the evenings. If you see us there, come say "Hi!" so Gwen can tell you all about her bucket bike. Here is our latest journey through the lens of Gwen's camera:

Grocery Run

Sarah and I planned a short rec ride for this morning, 10-15 mies on the Scott Pierson Trail, followed by a grocery run on the way home. We were soaked with some of the coldest rain imaginable by the time we reached the trail entrance behind TOP Foods, so we decided that this was far enough in these conditions. We purchased about 60 pounds of groceries and a 40 pound bag of dog food.

When we came out of the grocery store, the sun was coming out. The rain had stopped and our load made it home completely dry.


I noticed quite a few car drivers doing double takes at the loaded Xtracycle on our way home. While waiting in a turn lane, one car driver hollered, "Very cool, man!"

So far, I've avoided doing big grocery runs with the kids by bicycle, but that's coming. Now that I know Tula can fit in the PeaPod, the logistics of getting the two girls to the grocery store on the Xtracycle are falling in to place. A sunny day would also be helpful!

Little Passengers

On Saturday I tuned up the brakes on my Xtracycle and Cross Check, now that the foul winter weather has taken its toll on the brake pads. I also added a new rear fender to the Xtracycle made from a coroplast campaign sign I found in a ditch post-election. I needed to test ride the setup, and decided to give Tula her first ride in the PeaPod seat.

It was biting cold in the damp 45°F air, but she didn't seem to mind at all. In fact...

I'm pretty sure she loves it! Now I need to finish my Snapdeck hack so that my 3 year-old can ride behind the PeaPod. More to follow!

Recreational Riding...

I organized a Sunday morning group ride for the Harmon Bike Club. Unfortunately, I woke up to find two inches of snow that were no where near the weather forecast for today (I was expecting a 92% chance of rain.) Well I'll be damned if I'm going to let down the one other person that might be willing to plow the slush with me this morning. I took the Xtracycle, wore my yellow rain coat (very rare occasion), lots of wool, and ski gloves. A small thermos of coffee was my back-up plan.

After two cups of coffee at The Hub, I rolled out at 10:20 by myself. Here's where I went:

View Larger Map

And here's what it looked like:


I stuck to the arterials where the cars had already plowed most of the slush off of the roads. I was already soaked when I reached Point Defiance Park, so I opted not to ride the portion of 5-Mile Drive that is closed to vehicles each weekend morning (more slush and run-off.) The 14 mile route felt more like a 20-miler, which was what I was shooting for today.

The sun peaked out on my way home. I got lots of smiles from drivers and saw one other set of bike tracks in the park. Those are very uplifting signs on a ride like this. Signs that kept me grinning the whole way.

Hauling Stuff on Bikes

This weekend I made some changes to my Cross Check and Sarah's Cannondale to address the fact that she is the sole bike commuter in this household now that I work from home. The front basket just wasn't cutting it for her, so I swapped my rear rack to her bike (with much filing of struts and adjustment of fenders to make it fit.) She also agreed to try my Brooks B68 after our Valentine's Day outing.

From Sarah's Bike

She said it handled better with the load in the back and that the new saddle was a huge improvement. Mission accomplished.

I finally installed a kickstand on the Cross Check, which required a special mounting plate. The main purpose of this is so that I can prop the bike while I'm trailering, which has been an issue. The Wald basket holder rests nicely on the Nashbar Front Rack, so I secured it with zipties and plan to use it for quick errands. The basket removes quickly and without hassle from the holder, unlike on Sarah's bike where all of the housing from the brifters made it cumbersome to take the basket off. Note that If I didn't have the rack, the basket holder would have rubbed on the headtube, which was causing paint abrasion on the Cannondale despite my best preventative efforts.

From Cross Check

After a few hours riding their trikes in the garage today, the big kids asked to go for a ride in the trailer. It was misting heavily and a bit chilly, but I just took them out for a few miles around the neighborhood. Despite the damp cold, I still had to stop and take off my coat (thank you, Kickstand). We went just far enough for the gentle bounce of the Burley on our pitted Tacoma side streets to lull them into a brief slumber.

From Cross Check

I think this new setup is going to work great. My only beef is that the weight of the basket pulls the steering hard left when parked on the kickstand, but I can eleviate most of this problem by simply taking off the basket. I'm very interested to find out if I can install a steering return spring on this rig a la Dutch city bikes. I also think the basket needs a custom paint job...perhaps something a little obnoxious to stand out whilst I'm wandering the isles of the grocery store? Lime green maybe?

Brown Bikes on Blue Bikes

A UPS parcel was delivered to my door today via bicycle.  

There were two parcel carriers: a woman wearing a heavy brown coat, pants, helmet and reflective vest riding a blue Trek flat-bar bike with no fenders, pulling a single axel, open-topped trailer .  The other carrier was on the same type of bike, no trailer, but was wearing a helmet, brown shirt and shorts.  

With the driving rain and 40F temperature today, this was not the ideal setup for either rider.  I saw them a few more times in my neighborhood, always looking lost and a bit tired, but I can't tell you how exciting this was.  When we were in England last month, we saw many Royal Mail carriers delivering the post by bicycle, and even more used post-bicycles being used by college students in Cambridge as cargo/city bikes.  

I was so shocked that I didn't think to take a photo of this rather momentous occasion, but will try to catch them in action with the Canon soon...