Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Brompton envy leads to bicycle hacking

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I’ve been a little bit envious of how the Brompton folding bicycle can roll around even in the folded state. You can’t always roll a bike around unfolded, and this is especially true when moving around inside of an office space.

My own bike, made by Giant, can be coaxed to roll around when folded, but this requires some tricky acrobatics and awkward body positions. More typically, I just lift the bike up and carry it around when I am indoors. But this often leads to sore muscles, so I decided to do something to fix this.

I hacked together this stabilising roller out of some spare parts lying around in the flat. It is surprisingly stable, with the weight of the bicycle supported mainly by the two large wheels and the additional wheel serving as a rolling stabilizer.

Now my bike can roll around in the folded state and sore muscles from carrying the bike will be a thing of the past.