Bike on a Bike, Fr8 style

eddy-fr8-loopfiets

The WorkCycles Fr8’s “Massive Rack” front carrier easily has room for a second child with their own “loopfiets”.

Trivia: This is one of two galvanized Fr8’s. What seemed a cool idea turned out to be a nightmare to manufacture. The “twin” of this bike is on display at WorkCycles Lijnbaansgracht shop, and not for sale… unless somebody really wants to lay down some serious cash for it.

Thanks for the photo Eddy!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 22:50 and is filed under Bikes in use, Child and family transport, Cool & Interesting bikes, Uncategorized, Workbike / Transportfiets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

5 Responses to “Bike on a Bike, Fr8 style”

  1. Todd Edelman Says:
    May 23rd, 2009 at 23:21

    Galvanized? What were the planned advantages and unplanned problems?

  2. henry Says:
    May 24th, 2009 at 23:12

    Todd, “Hot dip” Galvanizing is just a matter of dipping the steel frame in molten zinc. From Wikipedia:

    In addition to forming a physical barrier against corrosion, zinc, applied as a hot-dip galvanized coating, cathodically protects exposed steel. Furthermore, galvanizing for protection of iron and steel is favored because of its low cost, the ease of application, and the extended maintenance-free service that it provides.

    And…

    Zinc coatings prevent corrosion of the protected metal by forming a physical barrier, and by acting as a sacrificial anode if this barrier is damaged. When exposed to the atmosphere, zinc reacts with oxygen to form zinc oxide, which further reacts with water molecules in the air to form zinc hydroxide. Finally zinc hydroxide reacts with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to yield a thin, impermeable, tenacious and quite insoluble dull grey layer of zinc carbonate which adheres extremely well to the underlying zinc, so protecting it from further corrosion, in a way similar to the protection afforded to aluminium and stainless steels by their oxide layers.

    The problem is that the zinc gets all over everything including screw threads, press fit areas, fork ends etc and requires much too much time consuming finish work to be practical.

    That it tends to collect in the ends of tubes, adding up to a couple kilos to the bike isn’t really a plus either.

  3. Rick Wilson Says:
    May 27th, 2009 at 06:12

    ah, but the galvanizing is sooooooooooo lovely! perhaps the most \honest\ of metal finishes, really – it adds such a nice industrial quality to a stout bike like the massive rack FR8.

  4. henry Says:
    May 27th, 2009 at 06:46

    Rick, We agree and we’re working on it!

  5. Eddy de Bruyn Says:
    July 17th, 2009 at 15:41

    Well, as the owner I can say it is quite an eyecatcher. anybody with any knowledge of bikes and/or metallurgy stops, stares and asks questions…

    cheers,
    Eddy

Leave a Reply