Bike Forums - View Single Post - Hmm. Folding bikes are actually pretty heavy!

03-09-15 | 05:33 PM

#68

kurtp13

Senior Member

Joined: Jun 2014

Posts: 133

Likes: 0

From: Southern Maryland

Bikes: Trek 820, Cannondale F500 with Trekking bars and road tires, Bianchi Alfana, Panasonic PCI "Les Maillots", Cannondale M1000 Tandem, Schwinn Johnny, Trek Lime, 1964 Armstrong, 1962 Raleigh Gazelle, 1964 AMF Hercules, Brooklyn Cruiser Driggs

I made a a transport roller from 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe. The PVC pipe goes over the seat post and stops on the seat tube. It's shown on my Genesis folder from Walmart. The seat post is 34 mm. The roller is a simple rubber roller from Amazon (link below). The attachment is a pipe plug from Lowes (link below).

I can't say I invented this method. I found someone on YouTube that had a similar design, although he used a skate wheel. The pipe plug is a little tall so I cut the stud down about 1/4 inch and had to grind the wing nut to clear the wheel. But the wing nut makes contact with the wheel support and tightens using that surface. The trick to me was figuring out how to have some resistance on the seat post so the roller assembly doesn't go flying when you have to lift the bike. And the roller has to stay aligned and not twist on the post. So I came up with the tie strap to fill some of the open space between the ID of the tube and the OD of the seat tube. It provides enough resistance to hold the pipe in the proper orientation. This hasn't been field tested by me. But I rolled it around the driveway. I had to lean the bike to use the roller and the rear wheel but I didn't strap the halves together so I expect it to be a little easier when it's a more constrained package. I don't expect to use it very often so I didn't want something complicated or that had any risk of snagging the ground inadvertently.

I think the advantage of this design is that it can be used with the seat somewhat elevated so that the bike can be steered by the seat. For my use it will store in my bag when I head into the city but I'll leave it out.