03/12/07: Chop 'N Drop Worldbike

A Chop 'N Drop Worldbike is a home-made version of our flagship Worldbike design. It's made by chopping a basic mountain bike frame behind the seat tube, extending it, adding cargo racks, baskets, bags, or lashing points, and repainting as a new complete Worldbike. A quick explanation of Chop 'N Drop. The name comes from the world of bicycle and motorcycle choppers, which are often made by cutting and stretching a stock frame, changing a key frame angle, or adding length to the fork. Making a Worldbike is very similar to making chopper, and it can be even more fun when you know that your hard work is contributing to a great cause. Making a Chop 'N Drop Worldbike is a great way for engineering students, garage mechanics, bike industry designers, and others to take part in the open-source process of improving the available bicycles in the developing world.

Function:

The Worldbike is a long bike in the tradion of Xtracycle, Big Dummy, the Xtrabike, the Big Boda, and others. I.e., it's an extended wheelbase general-utility two-wheeled hauler, that carries the load behind the rider. It's great for family transport, agricultural transport, passenger transport (taxi work), and for specific functions such as AIDS outreach education in developing countries. Due to the strong, rigid frame, the limitation on the carrying capacity is often the legs of the rider, not the strength of the components. That said, it's important to realize that Worldbike owners will typically load the bikes to capacity, and the components have to be tuned and ready for that use.

Materials:
Typically, the Chop 'N Drop Worldbike is made from a used steel mountain bike frame, reclaimed bicycle tubing or inexpensive steel, and a mix of used and new parts. The steel used can be mild steel, conduit, or more advanced alloys of steel. Aluminum mountain bikes are much more prevalent in today's shops and mass retailers. We will leave it as an open challenge to apply the Chop 'N Drop design in aluminum. For now, steel is the dependable, logical choice.
Cost:
$100
Purchase Information:
Assuming that the original base bike has at least half of the original components working, the main costs are in upgrading the components: wheels, tires, brake pads, etc. As this happens one at a time, the benefits of the scale of the project do not apply, and builders may find themselves paying retail for parts. However, if the build is done in association with a community bicycle project, the cost could be lower than the figure above.
Requirements:
MIG, TIG, or Brazing are all appropriate techniques for welding the Worldbike. General metal working tools apply here. In addition, you'll need good cloth-backed sand paper roll for stripping paint without chemicals, and a flat table for layout. Large paper is useful to make a full-sized drawing.
License:
Open Source

Reply

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <img> <br> <img> <a> <h2> <h3> <p>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

To combat spam, please enter the code in the image.

Log in to Worldbike or create an account