The job: Child too big for trailer… Now live on boat… Need to be able to carry around lead acid batteries and other assorted rubbish.
Step 1: Remove anything unnecessary from the kids trailer.
Step 2. Find small shopping trolley dumped around the corner from your workshop.
Step 3. Weld.
Trailer Trash took some time out of Cambridge to visit Copenhagen last December, to join in with The Bike Bloc for the COP15 summit. We went there to see what was going on, to meet some crazy bike people, to weld from morning ’till dusk and to generally mess around with bikes and have a bit of a holiday. Thankfully, we managed all of that and a lot more.
We were welcomed with open arms into The Bike Bloc, but that might have been because we had a van full of tools, angle grinders and welders… We managed to drive right up into the yard so spent the week living in the middle of a bike graveyard, which has always been a dream. It didn’t take us long before we got stuck into the business at hand, welding up lots of ‘Double Double Trouble’ bikes, a design that the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination had come up with prior to Copenhagen in Bristol. Basically two tall bikes with a platform inbetween, which turns them into some kind of Ben Hur chariot.
Unfortunately we were under constant police surveillance and it felt like only a matter of time before The Bike Bloc was raided. This happened three days into the welding and unfortunately they confiscated two of the ‘Double Double Troubles’ which they labelled ’War Bikes’. A much snappier name in our opinion. Here’s a video of the raid, if you’re interested.
Then came the ‘day of action’ and we’d been having so much fun working with the bike bloc that we didn’t have much of a clue what to get up to on the day. So after a brief look at huge police people beating small people with sticks, we decided to head to the bar and discuss angle iron and gas-less welding instead.
The Candy Factory in Copenhagen, home to The Bike Bloc for the duration of the COP15.
Welcome to The Bike Bloc.
Sssssssssshhh... The police will never know we're here...
A 'Double Double Trouble' in all it's glory.
A 'War Bike' being confiscated by the Danish police, to start their own jousting team.
This video of a peddle powered Buick made us let out a little bit of wee.
There’s ice on the roads and it’s cold out, not the best cycling weather… So why not dream of what you might get up to in the sunny days of the summer to come.
We met a few crazy bike types from Paris during our recent trip to Copenhagen and they got all excited about the first Universal Critical Mass they’re hosting in Paris this Summer. They turned out to be a top bunch of people and Trailer Trash will certainly be there. I see a Cambridge to Paris bike trip on the horizon…
From their website:
http://velorutionuniverselle.org
Bienvenue ! Welcome ! Benvenuto ! Bienvenidos ! Willkommen !
On the year 2010, Parisians will treat themselves with a big breath of fresh air and happiness : Paris will host its first Universal Critical Mass!
A critical mass celebrates all aspects of cycling culture. We’ll happily and joyfully take on the roads for the space of a week end. This will [also] be an occasion to denounce a system entirely based on the use of motor vehicles.
Riding a bicycle is not only an enjoyable activity : it also offers an alternative to our supersonic life-styles and to numerous issues caused by motor vehicles.
During this four-days’ party, cyclists from the entire world will meet to celebrate their joy of living on a bicycle and their pleasure to circulate freely.
Let’s all meet on July 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th, 2010 for a fantastic event that will be remembered in Paris.
We’ve just knocked out another trailer, this one was for Ali who wanted something tough, for general use, for various loads, which can have stuff easily strapped across the top and most importantly fit down the narrow passage way down the side of his house.
Right, that's the plan sorted, lets get started.
Find matching wheels, fix 'em up.
Find some bits of scrap to make a start on the chasis. In this case, yet more dead office furniture.
The basics starting to take shape.
Removable towing arm, for compact trailer storage.
And a towing arm! A pair of old folks and some old chair.
Oh dear, slight problem with the 'new slim fit narrow passage' towing arm...
Now for the fun part, building up 'the cage' from some dead shopping trolley metal.
More trolley, more cage.
Anyone need some trolley handles?
All ready for the paint job...
The all new towing arm, which is a little nuts but we're going to see how it fares... And the hitch all ready for painting.
BONZA!
The customary late night test ride around the car park and it's away! Hope she serves you well...
Trailer Trash has been up and running for a year! Happy birthday to us!
In a year we’ve built about four trailers, a couple of handcarts, a wind turbine, a two-person-trike, several wack bikes, some rocket stoves, a bike powered sound system and ran a series of ‘build your own bike‘ workshops for homeless types. And it was all research.
Reflecting back on the year, our aims seem to be moving more towards ‘intelligent use of locally sourced scrap materials to help minimise our environmental impact’… And ‘bikes are great’ of course.
Our birthday promise to ourselves is to get a bit more organised about making use of all the people who’ve said they’d love to help out down the workshop. Some kind of structure to volunteering on the various projects we’re running. We’re also interested in applying permaculture principles and techniques into how we run our ‘business’.
Although things have been a little quiet on the blog of late, that’s mainly due to a dodgy digital camera. A good chunk of time was spent on a massive post Climate Camp clean-up and stock-take. Otherwise, we’ve been having fun with the following…
A few pictures, as evidence of labour:
The 'Bat Bike'... Next generation power generation bike machine.
Design for our latest trailer commission.
Materials for the trailer... Some would call it 'scrap'.
The infamous Workshop54 "Wheel Pile" is no more.
A years worth of metal collecting. Nearly all of our scrap metal came from businesses based in the same building or the area close to Workshop54.
We love this: Montana Transit Authority
ATTENTION ALL BIKE HACKERS
JOIN THE BIKE BLOC
COPENHAGEN DEC 2009
A couple of years ago the main protagonist behind Trailer Trash helped build a bicycle powered cinema, which is still doing the rounds. We decided to have another crack at some bike generators, mainly to take along to Climate Camp but also to see if we could remember how we did it the first time around.
The basic bike generator design involves attaching a skate board wheel to a 250W 24V electric scooter motor, then attaching the motor to a Turbo Trainer, so when a bike is placed in the trainer, the back wheel turns the skate board wheel, which then spins the motor to produce some lovely DC electricity.
In the past we’ve had problems attaching the skate wheels to the motor, but this time around we were quite successful by wedging the wheel onto the motor axle and then using Aralidite between the wheel and axle. We bought motors with the ‘belt drive’ axle on them, which gives a lot more purchase for the glue and also seems to fit the skate wheels quite nicely.
The motor is wired to a Schottky diode (so the electricity can only flow from the motor to the battery and not the other way around) which we salvaged from old computer PSUs. Then an Ammeter to measure the Amps coming out of the motor and finally a 10A blade fuse.
Each generator is then wired into the ‘main rail’, which has the following all wired in parallel…
After we got the basic generators and kit working we decided to build a hand cart to lug everything around at the Climate Camp and to hold some rather silly large speakers for our bike powered sound system.
Hand cart chassis, made from scrap table iron and a couple of front wheels.
The hand cart with silly speakers and 'power box' attached.
One of the bike generator stands attached to the 'power box'.
And a bike attached to a generator.
Inside the 'power box'.
Some pretty basic instructions for use.
Close up of the guts... Power capacitor, main rail, battery switch and 12V + USB charger at the top.
We used a salvaged UPS system as our invertor.
Close up of the motor / generator. Quite a bit of wear on the skate wheel.
A rather bad photograph of the back of the generator, showing the wiring to the diode, ammeter and fuse.
We’re looking into loosing the Turbo Trainers from the setup, instead attaching the motor / generator directly to the bikes. So that you can charge batteries on the move and to make the kit more mobile and quicker to setup. The Turbo Trainers are quite hard and expensive to get hold of and pretty awkward to carry around.
We’re also looking for events to power by bike, so if you’re hosting an event in a field or on the move and need some power, please do get in touch. Each bike can knock out anything between 50 and 100 Watts of power and we currently have two generators.
We’d also like to work on some D.I.Y. electric assisted vehicles, but maybe not quite as polished as the eROCKIT.
We’ve just got back from the Camp for Climate Action and it was great to see some of the kit we’ve built at Workshop54 in action in the field. The wind turbine was a great success as it was such a windy site, often putting out 300W+ even though we were running at 12V instead of the 24V that it was designed for. The rocket stoves were in constant use keeping people warm with many, many cups of tea. We also built a couple of bike generators, details to follow soon, to help charge phones, cameras and power a rather silly looking sound system.
All in all it was an interesting experience and we’re looking forward to working on more D.I.Y. ‘green’ technology at Workshop54. Sign up to our mailing list if you’re interested in hearing about future workshops.
The entrance to the climate camp, tripods mandatory.
The wind turbine in all it's glory.
It spins, it furls, it generates LOTS of power.
Rocket stoves primed and ready to cook.
Bike powered sound system and mobile phone charging unit.
Keeping to the theme of D.I.Y green technology using waste materials, we had an afternoon of Rocket Stove making at Workshop54. Rocket Stoves were developed in 1980 by Dr. Larry Winiarski, the design of the stoves means that they can operate on about half as much fuel as a traditional open fire and can use smaller diameter wood. More information and plans on www.rocketstove.org
And look, some ART.
Click on the thumbnail below to see an article about the Councils new ‘work bike’ fleet which was in the Cambridge News last week.
And some links… Pimp Bikes and a leg powered hoovercraft. Nice.
Vicky from the Environment and recycling department and Cambridge Matters magazine at Cambridge City Council picked up her trailer the other day. We were particulary pleased with how it looked after a lovely green paint job. Vicky gave us the following testimonial about the Trailer Trash service…
“We’re really pleased with our new recycled bike trailer, which was specially designed to help us take the recycling message out to small events around the city. Andy involved us throughout the whole process of designing the trailer to exactly meet our needs, and invited us for regular testing sessions throughout its development. Nothing was done without our input, we got a really personalised service. The finished article is perfect for us – getting out to give talks and hold stalls will be so much easier and greener without the hassle of using a car. Thanks Trailer Trash!”
Oh yeah. BauBike.
