Recce trip prequel

 

Old lightweight tailbox

Corflute about 4 years old and showing much......

dirt and signs of wear.

Stripped down plywood seat frame

Some new stickers!

Plywood frame before refurb.

Initial coreflute construction was....

moved inside when it got dark and rainy. This is creasing the coreflute so that it bends only at fold lines.

Off we go!

 

Hi

For a while I have been trying to improve the general image of my bikes, and that has included overhauling several tailboxes. Over the same time, I have been finalising a home made, front wheel drive, moving bottom bracket bike. The bike has been going well with a heavy, load carrying tailbox, and I wanted to swap to the faster lighter version which is on Thingiverse.   I was initially slow in overhauling the lightweight tailbox.

But once I had overcome a fear of the very big Bunnings near us and bought replacement coreflute, I fairly quickly made the bottom part of the tailbox back, and cleaned up and revarnished the timber. Then for a few weeks it sat there, until I booked up a trip to Coleraine for ongoing organisation of this years OzHPV challenge (woohoo it has its own webpage! ) With a few days to go, I decided to do the trip by train and bike but wanted to have fitted aero wheels and the faster, refurbed tailbox before the ride. The changes would add a few kph to the speed and subtract a few kg from the weight. 

I only had a day and an evening (the Tuesday after Easter) to fit the new tailbox corflute lower, and make and fit a new corflute upper and back, as well as pack for a 3 day bike trip. I hadn't bike toured for a while, so had to hunt around for the spare tubes and things I needed. To finish off the tailbox, I installed a water bottle mount (ok, its part of a 2l milk bottle which holds another 2l milk bottle, made a catch for the lid, and installed timber reinforcement at the top of the seat frame.  Eventually I got to bed at 1 am, and was up at 6am the next day to catch an 8:15am train to Ararat, one of the nearest stations to Coleraine but still about 140k from Coleraine.

In the morning I made 4 rounds of sandwiches which stood me in good stead, ate my usual muesli breakfast and rode in to Southern Cross Station. There was plenty of time to catch the train and I was off to Ararat and Coleraine. 

Tailbox interior with water bottle holder, spare tubes, pump, light and....

new reinforcing timber at top of seat frame

Boot lid catch - quite proud of this!

Bike on the road