Cargo Bikes

75kgs is a ridiculously low max load - I am pretty slim but even me + relatively weight weenie road bike would meet that

yeah, its low- you would x2 75kg if using the same tyre front and back (unless you were riding a unicycle.. )

Looking at tyre manufacturers specs the max load always goes down as the wheel / tyre gets smaller. bit counter productive as generally speaking the wheel itself gets inherently stronger and can handle heavier loads the smaller it gets.

Also anecdotally when I was working on repairing cargo bikes the sidewall failures would always happen on the larger tyres, which supposedly have a higher max load.

inquired with Conti and they said something about 'max load' also being influenced by wear rate, as in there are more revolutions to cover the same distance with smaller tyres, so if you exceed the max load then your tyre tread will have a shorter service life.

tl:dr- take the manufacturers spec with a grain of salt, choose reasonable quality tyres with strong sidewalls, keep your tyres pumped up and you'll be alright i reckon :)

You have any real world experience with the Continental Contact Urban yet?
I just ordered some for my bullitt, as I love them on my dad bike, and would be interested to know the sidewalls are up to snuff.
I should say I use the Bullitt for carrying my two-year-old mostly.

I think they’ll do great. They lasted when I trialled them on a few pedal me’s (urban arrow XL) that were at the time tearing through Big Ben and big apple sidewalls on a weekly basis almost (50+ bikes in the fleet so a single failure a week isn’t toooo crazy lol)

I’ve got a set of CCUrban on my omnium too.

Doh - yeah of course there are two tyres so it is spread, I was being dim…

Sounds great! Thanks for the reply. I'm really impressed with them in 650x42 flavour. The roundest cheap tyre I've ever seen.
I'm looking forward to see if they feel different to the 40mm marathons on the bullitt currently.

edit: the picture is not mine, but the bike that made me look into them for the bullitt.

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I'm going to try them out on my omnium too. Mainly because I just changed the gearing and the wheel is now slightly further forward. The 50mm Big Ben plus is just a tiny bit too close to the seatstays for my liking, and as they do the urban in a 47mm version it should give me back a bit of breathing room but still be close enough to 50mm.
It's a shame they don't do a slightly bigger 20" version though.
They're a good amount lighter than the Big Ben plus, but as far as I can see, should be about the same puncture resistance 🤔

I'm interested to see how easily they set up tubeless though. 😁

9 days later...
I had a bit of spare time (hurrah), so armed with replacement gear cables I took the cover off the gear shifter. The cables looked fine so I thought I'll just try a bit of grease...
All I could find to hand was WD40 (I know, it's not a lubricant...) and gave it a good squirt whilst turning the shifter back & forth. Seemed a tad looser but nothing to write home about...
... got on the bike this morning -eureka! Never, even when I had the manual conversion done, has gear shifting been so easy. Now I'm thinking should I regularly use WD40 or maybe lithium grease spray?

Koolstop are pricey but seem to give best life vs power of any pad I've use in last 20 years.

For hybrids used in city my go to regular pad is ebc red, can be used on resin only rotors aswell.

Anything you'd recommend around a 20x1.9 that's a bit nobbly? Using the bike for work and will occasionally be travelling along Bournemouth sea front, lots of sand..

Hmm not really sure. I’d say ballast (bit of weight on the front) will probably be more important for grip. Never had to spec a cargo bike for gravel / sand ;-)

I miss riding along the seafront from Bournemouth to Poole for work! I don't miss a constantly crunchy drivetrain though.

Continental Cross Kings come in 29 x 2.0 and 20 x 2.0, I've found them pretty good for a mixture of surfaces, including Bournemouth seafront sand on occasions

Cheers! Do you sell the 20 at velo?

Pretty sure we have some in stock, I’ll check

Rad! What thickness of ply are you using? I need to knock one up for my AliExpress special

Which one, the green one? It's 9mm ply.

Think the pink one is 12mm ply sides, just some off cuts I had, with 6mm HDPE base

Awesome, think I need to knock some up

Missed this, sorry. I've got a template that I found online for a battery holder under the load bed that I can send.

Had to google egg controller, looks interesting, will have to read into it a bit

It’s the last batch they’re producing of the Big Dummy, also there are new bags and as I read they will finally make a kickstand:
https://surlybikes.com/bikes/big_dummy

Torrel I know you are reading this thread! Which user are you?

home-made creation spotted in Bristol.

What in tarnation!!

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ver. punk.

You wooden catch me riding that.