Mooncroozer! This bike frame is a design evolution/exploration of my previous 20” Mini Velo cargo bike.
Project goals: Explore riding impact on increased wheel/tire size while maintaining similar cargo-carrying capacity.
Notable design changes over 20” prototype:
Tire size: Moving from 20” to 24”
Seat tube: Steeper seat tube angle - 73 degrees to 76 degrees. I do a lot of climbing on my cargo bikes and currently have my saddle slammed forward on my 20” frame. Hopefully, this geometry change will better suit my preferred/comfortable riding position.
Mechanical trail: I’m investigating a large (around 104mm) and small (around 54mm) mechanical trail by using two different forks. I’m excited to see if this positively or negatively impacts my riding experience on the bike. It appears that conventional wisdom is to use shorter trail figures to compensate for the steering response impact when adding a front load. I want to experience this handling dynamic for myself and compare against my original 20” design which has around 77mm of mechanical trail.
8/3/24: Tubes and 3DP parts have arrived! I purchased 4130 tubes from Wick’s Aircraft and shipped them directly to Precision Tube Laser in Nevada for laser cutting. Their service is awesome! I’m happy with how the 3DP SUS316L parts turned out. I bought these from JLCPCB. The NDS dropout has a flatmount (180mm rotor spec) built-in and both dropouts are symmetrical about the frame centerline (tricky with UDH dropouts, which typically push the DS dropout 7mm outboard). I’m using a small “oval” nub to serve as a rotational stop for the UDH hanger.
