Be advised:

This blogger will present some stupid, useless and/or dangerous ideas. Do try it at home!

My other blog about bicycle touring:

Dienstag, 23. April 2013

My bikepacking setup


My bikepacking setup is finally complete. This is the setup for my next 2-month Kyrgyzstan trip.
The trip is going to be a offroad most of the time, including a lot of unrideable stuff. My intension is to carry a setup as light as possible. I need a  hobo stove , and a lot of space to carry food for many days on that trip though. I also need a big sleeping bag, since temperatures at nights can be below 0 degree Celsius.


In the front are my jacket, the sleeping pad and the tarptent. They are mounted on my front bar rack.
 On top, there is a light waterproof bag, originally made as a seatbag. It's this one.

On the frame is my waterbottle, the hobo stove,  a framebag for my tools, and a tennis ball container. The container will carry my precooked food for the day. It might also carry additional water on the end of the day, since I always consume a lot over the night. On the rear rack, there is a light backpack, which I am going to carry on my back when descending on trails. Depending on the steepness, I will move the stuff from the front to the rear rack.

Here is a closeup of the front rack:

It weights about 250gram, is made some brake levers, aluminium and pvc pipes, fiberglass and resin. The joints of all pipes are filled with resin, to prevent the screws from getting loose.

I am not sure about the weight of the bike and the gear, but the combined weight it will be definitely under 20kg.






Montag, 22. April 2013

Similiar Projects

I was just wondering, how many people have built their own full-suspension bikes. I found two interesting projects:

The first one is a electric bike conversion, which is not my thing, but it's done very professionally:
Link to the Specialized Big Hit Mod

The second one is on Instructables.com and it's a Tension Link suspension bike:
Link to the Instructable

Samstag, 20. April 2013

Progress on the full suspension Frame


I made a lot of progress with my steel full suspension frame lately:




The weight including the rear shock  is going to be 4.6 kg, which is acceptable for me. The travel is 160/160mm, but could be as well 180/180 with some modifications.

As previously mentioned, this is not going to be used for high speeds or jumps. I "designed" it specifically for very difficult alpine trails. Hence the flat headset angle and the short wheel distance.
 I just need to add some brake sockets, order some parts do some welding. After some time, I will shorten the seat tube, and remove the top tube and place it much lower. This enables me to lean back as much as possible during steep trail segments.

Dienstag, 16. April 2013

Light and minimalistic USB Flashlight / Bikelight



 Last afternoon, I had some time and wanted to craft something. I decided, that I need a light flashlight. Since I have to carry a powerbank to my bikepacking trips, I made an USB flashlight:


It is made just from a 1 Watt PowerLED, a LM317 Voltage regulator, some resistors and  an old usb cable. These parts are available in nearly every electronics store. If you want to build your own, you can use this link to find out, how much resistance your circuit needs. Just enter the current your LED needs in mA, and you will get the resistance in Ohm. With an USB Port, you can at least run a 2.5 Watt LED. A powerbank should be able to provide a lot more though.



With this small powerbank, my lights shines over 5 hours. I've chosen a not so powerful LED, because I don't want to waste too much energy. 1 Watt is still powerful enough for walking or slowly riding a trail. It could help in incident, like tent damage, nights too cold for your sleeping bag, or if you have to move in the dark due to an emergency.
The circuit before

All electronics covered with expoxid resin
The next step is to make a mount for my bikehelmet, so I can use this solution to save the weight of a 
a headlamp. I could also make an usb port facing in the fron direction of my bike, in order to have a bikelight, but on my trips I almost never ride in the dark.