BFB Part 2

So a while back I told you about the BFB. Yeah it still looks rough but the basics are there: Simple, cheap, sturdy as hell, capable of carrying a ridiculous load. I reduced the size of the rack to a more reasonable size to carry two plastic tubs for grocery and beach runs, and made rack extensions if I ever need to haul two more tubs. Yes, the gas grill fits on top of the rack.

I took some closeups of my fancy fillet brazes on the custom rack before I painted it, but lost them when this computer crapped out over the summer.

Tangent: Fillet brazing is hard. I always had a real tough time getting the nice whoops in the brass I've seen on some people's fillet brazed joints until I read somewhere (lost all my links in the hard drive crash too) that I should get a smaller brazing tip. So, very unlike me, I *special ordered* a 00 (say "Double Ought") tip for my torch. OMG.. it was like I was trying to braze with a rocket engine before. The smaller tip allowed for a much cleaner joint, and I stopped f'ing up the fillet joints. So, if you're having trouble getting a good fillet, go find a smaller tip. Yup. Back to the BFB story....

While the bike has been done(-ish) for a while I haven't had a chance with packing/moving/working to tell you about the master plan. If you look real close at that original picture
on the whiteboard of Pandapas Skunkworks # 1, you'll notice a red circle in the middle of the rear triangle. Hmmm what could that have possibly been for? More on that later...

Part of the idea behind this bike was to be a poor man's Xtracycle/Longtail. A cheap, durable, load hauling, monster... and that is what is has become. There is a revolution of sorts happening in the US of bikes becoming more utility than the toy status they were relagated to and have begun to wriggle into the mainstream. Evidence of this is the recent WSJ article that mentioned a couple of my favorite developments.. the Monster Truck of bikes, the Surly Pugsley, and the electric assist.

Time to let you in on my plan...in order to meet the goal of a possible car displacement, the BFB had to have the ability to tow a trailer for the kayak, a second seat for a passenger, and definitely be able carry a surfboard. Well, I dunno if you ever tried riding a loaded bike up a hill, but it sucks. I've been reading about electric assist for a looooooong time, scouring the web for developments in homebuilts, commercial kits and such. Until now I hadn't found one that I thought was durable, fast or simple enough to plunk down any cash on. The red circle in the picture was where I was going to put the StokeMonkey motor.

I found the CleverChimp blog by accident while reading the Xtracycle blog over the winter. Here was a guy out west pulling together a reasonable electric assist kit for real cyclists. He uses the idea of a stoker on a tandem driving the power through the left side of the bottom bracket, taking advantage of the gears! Brilliant! (Electric motors are efficient over a limited rpm range, a fact most other kit mfgs ignore, either driving the front or rear wheel without gearing...)

Anyhow.... I started emailing Todd back in February to find out how to get one. At that time he was in the beta testing phase, and not quite setup for mainstream consumption. The test reports on the blog were encouraging, so I got Todd to get me on the "Wants One" list. In August Todd announced limited availability, and since I had a "custom" (*ahem*... I mean.. *hacked*) Longtail ready to go, Todd gave me a call and hooked me up with one of the first full production run kits! Whoo Hoo! Check out the shipping method... From the date on the blog I think one of the kits in this load was mine... Talk about proof of a good thing. Each kit is ~50lbs, plus his son, all on one Stokemonkey'd bike.

Anyhow.. the concepts of Longbikes and Stokemonkeys as practical load hauling transportation alternatives are exploding in the bike world(by exploding I mean I've read about three... Todd's Xtravois, the Vanilla(f'ing Gorgeous as anything they built), and Curtis Inglis's Xtrabike). Surly recently wrote about a StokeMonkey'd Xtracycled Instigator(hauling a keg), and then announced they were developing the world's first production LongTail, the Big Dummy.

I think we're reaching the point... Gas prices are high, traffic sucks, oil is for running out, and forward thinking entrepreneurs are starting companies with smart products like the StokeMonkey. Encouraging indeed.