Thursday 21 April 2011

The cargobike bloke....

Who is he. Nobody knows. He's a Manc mystery on wheels wrapped in an 3/4 length enigma. He pops up in more places than Droopy the Master Detective and even has his own 8 Freight fan page. Well here he is now on tape. Well ok his backside on tape. ....Never noticed the cargobay on 8 Freight was uncentred til now. Interesting that.




p.s I'm not wheelhugging. It's just a cheapo camera that's not very wide angle.
p.p.s @ 0.55 it sound like a tram honks at me!.....it was actually warning an ipod zombie about to cross the tracks.

3 comments:

  1. I was interested in the 8freight, until I heard about the frame breakages. Then I lost all interest. IIRC, the frame is Aluminium and it appears it's overstressed. In general, I think Aluminium is not terribly suitable for cargo bikes, however if I do get one, it might be a Bullitt, Aluminium-framed, but IMHO much better designed and very light. AFAICT, there have been no incidents of Bullitt frame failure, so far. But it's a new design and time will tell. The other candidate is the Bakfiets.nl or something very similar (steel-framed).

    Another reason I'm less keen on the 8Freight, is the trailing load, which means difficulties with the rear wheel cutting corners and the wide rear-projecting load causing problems while filtering.

    I think it's extremely significant that every cargo bike I can think of has the load up-front. Can they all the others be wrong? I think it's nice to have the cargo where I can see it and avoid the trailing load.

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  2. It's an interesting bike, but I don't think I'd want one. There's just too many quirky features that appear to be there just for the sake of it. I'd want a hub gear for starters and not a derailuer that is a couple of inches from the ground. & monoblades on a bike that is supposed to be a heavyweight carrying workhorse just doesn't compute in my head. But it obviously works for this guy, day in day out, so fair doos.

    The Bullitts look excellent & I can't imagine them suffering from frame failures. Shame they don't have a chaincase as standard though.

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  3. "The Bullitts look excellent & I can't imagine them suffering from frame failures. Shame they don't have a chaincase as standard though."

    I agree, especially considering the faffing about that Dave42 went through.

    The Bullitt is really so close, but even so remains still so very far from perfection in so many ways.

    Shame.... :(

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