Well the holidays are behind us, and we’re moving forward on the Bike Cart project.<\/p>\n
[slideshow]<\/p>\n
It stands to reason that the lighter the trailer is,\u00a0 the more cargo you could carry,\u00a0 if you don’t compromise durability, or weight capacity.\u00a0 That being said, how much difference will a couple of pounds of trailer make?\u00a0 There is no doubt a point of diminishing returns, where you’ve increased the likelihood of\u00a0 a structural failure.<\/p>\n
A lot of people are going to fill a trailer to capacity whether\u00a0 it’s feathers or compost, when it starts spilling over the top that’s when it’s full.\u00a0 I think that has to be taken in to account when you build a trailer.\u00a0 Design elements such as the shape and flexibility of\u00a0 the supporting frame members can increase strength,\u00a0 a lot more than adding weight in most cases.<\/p>\n
The first thing we are trying is leaving the wheels assembled.\u00a0 A spoked wheel has a lot of\u00a0 strength. When it’s turned horizontal instead of vertical it’s not as strong,\u00a0 but the design shown above was able to support my winter weight of around 180 lbs, or so, with no problem.\u00a0 The tongue of the trailer, the part that connects it to the bike,\u00a0 is made with a 27″ rim split in half\u00a0 and fitted together. Initially this seems to have too much flex, but we think we can eliminate that problem by bolting it together more securely, or maybe stacking the rims vertically instead\u00a0 of fitting them together horizontally.\u00a0 we’ll see how that goes.<\/p>\n
There will be a lot more on this subject later.\u00a0 As I said before this process will be reported on as we proceed. Check back often for updates. Input is always welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well the holidays are behind us, and we’re moving forward on the Bike Cart project. [slideshow] It stands to reason that the lighter the trailer is,\u00a0 the more cargo you could carry,\u00a0 if you don’t compromise durability, or weight capacity.\u00a0 That being said, how much difference will a couple of pounds of trailer make?\u00a0 There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,8,9,10,13,15,16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikecart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikecart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikecart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikecart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikecart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikecart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikecart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikecart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikecart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}