http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-the-Bus-Bike-a-9-person-6-wheeled-bi/

Food      Living       Outside        Play        Technology       Workshop

How to make the Bus Bike, a 9 person, 6 wheeled bicycle.by Cleveland Motley on February 11, 2010

Table of Contents

How to make the Bus Bike, a 9 person, 6 wheeled bicycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Intro:   How to make the Bus Bike, a 9 person, 6 wheeled bicycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Step 1:   Get your materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Step 2:   Cut up some bikes and weld them togeather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Step 3:   Drive train . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Step 4:   Steering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Step 5:   Gather peeps and ride it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Related Instructables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Advertisements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-the-Bus-Bike-a-9-person-6-wheeled-bi/

Intro:  How to make the Bus Bike, a 9 person, 6 wheeled bicycle.A few years ago i decided biking with my friends would be more fun than biking alone, and what better way to bike with friends than for everyone to be on the samebicycle!

Thus the Bus Bike was born.

I used nine bicycles, cutting and welding them into three single-speed triple bikes, then welding bars accross them, and finally connecting the three handle bars in anenglish steering setup.

It was pretty straight forward and turned and rode surprisingly well. With nine riders it was akin to a train. Very fast, very powerful and very difficult to stop.

i hand built six wheels for it, using double gauge spokes, rims, and hubs, and put single speed bmx freewheels on the back.I ended up taking this to burning man and all of the wheels eventually taco'd.Foreseeing this possibility i brought innumerable extras and thanks to the rugedness and universality of the design was able to throw random wheels on where ever theywere needed. I did find however that single speed coaster brakes should not be attached because of the riders desire to back-pedal constantly.

I used a standard 110 mig for this project, be careful to grind away all paint when making the connections.Materials included, bikes (9+ extras for donor parts), around 40' 1.5" steel tubing, lots of wire feed, lots of grinding disks, saws-all blades, paint.

I found a saws-all really came in handy for chopping up the bikes and rounding out the connection points, pre-weld.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-the-Bus-Bike-a-9-person-6-wheeled-bi/

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-the-Bus-Bike-a-9-person-6-wheeled-bi/

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-the-Bus-Bike-a-9-person-6-wheeled-bi/

Image Notes1. this particular graphic i made for an earlier instructable that had six wheels, butthe same principal applies here!

Step 1: Get your materialsyour going to need a lot of bikes.not just the obvious nine, but a least half again more for scavenging parts.

i used all new chains, and built all new wheels, but you definitely don't need to do that. The wheels ended up breaking anyway, and the chains were just so that they wereall the same kind and saved time.

your going to need a bunch of steel tubing.

your going to need a lot of disposables, ie: grinding wheels, saws-all blades, and wire feed.

thats really about it.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-the-Bus-Bike-a-9-person-6-wheeled-bi/

Step 2: Cut up some bikes and weld them togeatherSo I wasn't building a beautiful bike. i didn't make a jig. i didn't even have a standard for for them.My strategy with the cut and weld was, make the three triple bikes. anyway possible.

I tried to keep them straight, as best i could for the chain line, and i tried to keep them about the same length.

As far as design goes, you have to start thinking about your drive trains. Basically I used crappy mountain bikes so most of them used multi-speed width chain, whichworked out quite nicely. The way the chain worked was it went, big chainring to big chain ring, little chain ring to little chainring. so the gear ratios were not perfect , but itended up working out basically the same for everyone.

Anyway the only reason you need to think about this now is that when you weld the bikes together make sure you have similarly sized chainrings paired together on thetriple bikes.

Basicaly i cut off the rear triangle of the front bike, the front column and the rear triangle of the second bike, and the front column of the third bike. they ended up sort ofsloping down in the back so that the last set of pedals came a lot closer to the ground then the front, but whatever, they cleared.

Also i used some pieces of the steel tubing to support the connections as you can see in the photos.

the handle bars were removed from the back two and welded where ever they fit.

Step 3: Drive trainunfortunately i don't have a picture of this, but like i said:big chain ring to big chain ring,little to little,and big to free wheel.

also weld on rear derailleurs as chain tensioners in between the chain rings. these have to be welded in such a way that the spring is very tight, as three people pullingsometimes in different directions puts a lot of strain on the tension system. a more traditional tandem setup if you know what that looks like may be easier. i just had thederailleurs and a welder and was on a roll.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-the-Bus-Bike-a-9-person-6-wheeled-bi/

Step 4: Steeringsome of you may be wondering how a beast with 6 wheels can turn. well it turns very well actually using a system called Ackermann steering. ( i always thought it wascalled english steering)Learn all about it!:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann_steering_geometry

basically you have to draw a line from the pivot point of whatever wheels you want to turn to the center of the rear axle. (or in this case the rear center wheel)On these lines i extended a piece of pipe about a foot out from the handle bar stem, then attached a bar across all three of the front wheels. i suppose it would work forany number of wheels.

anyway, it works which is nice.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-the-Bus-Bike-a-9-person-6-wheeled-bi/

Image Notes1. this particular graphic i made for an earlier instructable that had six wheels, butthe same principal applies here!

Step 5: Gather peeps and ride itit was never very hard to find people to ride, storage was another thing though...

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-the-Bus-Bike-a-9-person-6-wheeled-bi/

Related Instructables

Bicycle TowRack - I Made Itat TechShop! bypgarrow

Buying usedbikes forbeginners byJacobAziza

How to requestbike racksanywhere andeverywhere byabkeil

Failed Project:Tow Child'sBicycle byopenproducts

Painting BikeFrames! bySnotflower

BicycleCleaning bytomfolkes

Advertisements

Comments

34 comments Add Comment

 srichie says:  Jan 3, 2013. 9:03 PM  REPLYI'd love to see a video clip of this bike in action!

 firesirt says:  Oct 30, 2012. 11:11 PM  REPLYYou should paint it so it all matches.

 backward5coconut says:  Oct 11, 2012. 7:54 PM  REPLYnoticed this was at UCSB. nice to see others around here taking an inventive approach to bike riding. i would love to catch a ride on that thing sometime :]

 verger says:  Apr 12, 2012. 7:51 PM  REPLYSo how fast have you had this contraption go up to? 100kph? :)

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-the-Bus-Bike-a-9-person-6-wheeled-bi/

 Owlgirl says:  Feb 19, 2012. 8:00 AM  REPLYSounds intresting.... very creative!

 petedude2lu3 says:  Feb 17, 2010. 6:55 PM  REPLY you are taco'ing wheels because your chassis geometry is probably too rigid, so it does not accommodate uneven terrain.  If you launched over a curb on thisbike, anything less than square off would critically load the corner wheel, with no shock absorption. Going centerline over a bump would give same results.Remember, 3 points make a plane, NOT 6. 

The easiest solution would be to use double suspension forks and frames, followed by a 6-pointed star (2 triangle) articulated frame geometry.

 Cleveland Motley says:  Feb 18, 2010. 5:58 PM  REPLY wow that sounds great, I drew a million plans for this thing before one day i decided that this was the simplest easiest way to do it. i just gathered asmany bikes as possible and made it happen. 

when full, the bike weighed over 1800 lbs so, i think that probably had something to do with the taco'ing. If i made it over again, i wouldn't use existingbikes, and id probably use four motorcycle wheels. or maybe custom giant wheels?

in the interest of simplicity the six wheels and the three triple bikes was the most reliable, easiest way to get everyone pedaling i could think of.

it actually did have a pretty good amount of flex, there was only three steel tubes welded across holding it together widthwise, which allowed it to flexaround a bit at burning man, but yeah, there was no way it was going off a curb!

 petedude2lu3 says:  Feb 18, 2010. 7:50 PM  REPLY I have made 2 bike trailers using salvaged 20" BMX front wheels. I have loaded them both with up to 3 passengers, pushing 600 pounds gross weight.climbed curbs head on at near 10mph, and launched down curbs at speeds beyond 20mph. Over >20miles, the wheels only suffered 1/8" axial runout,and nominal bearing wear. That's 300 pounds extreme live load per wheel, no suspension, 100PSI tires. The only taco I got was when I failed to wheeliefor a curb and rammed it square at 15mph, bike only. You just have to distribute the load. Take a look at the rig at viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm

 zcbaker says:  Sep 8, 2011. 8:46 PM  REPLYI have hit curbs without trying to wheelie before and been fine. What happened???

 espdp2 says:  May 9, 2011. 11:15 AM  REPLYI love the body language on your lady-friend, like "I will NEVER understand men!" Hahaha!

 Whales says:  Sep 19, 2010. 7:40 PM  REPLYDo you have a video of this thing in action?

 Wasagi says:  Apr 21, 2010. 4:45 PM  REPLY That is amazing! You should get a patent, and then when it becomes famous, claim your royalties!! 

But in all honesty, this is one of the greatest bike projects I have ever seen. Good job!!!

 rhbama13 says:  Apr 19, 2010. 4:44 AM  REPLYSo a two wheeled vehicle is a bicycle three wheeled tricycle, does that make this a nine man sexcycle? Very nice.

 Pedal Princess says:  Feb 12, 2010. 9:21 AM  REPLYThat is so cool.

 crazyrog17 says:  Feb 13, 2010. 9:49 AM  REPLY Now build a 9 person trailer with room for cargo! Switch out drivers/passengers every now and then and tadaaaaa.

 mr. clean says:  Feb 13, 2010. 7:36 PM  REPLYthats brillant i bet all 9 people could pull a pretty good size tralier although 9 other people would be hard to pull

 El Mano says:  Mar 13, 2010. 10:58 PM  REPLYI've seen bikes with little gas engines attached, designed to fire when the pedals are used, adding a lot of power. Attach a couple of those (I won'tpretend I know the first thing about what opposing forces might thus be introduced) and you may very well pull that trailer.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-the-Bus-Bike-a-9-person-6-wheeled-bi/

 Cleveland Motley says:  Feb 13, 2010. 8:41 PM  REPLY Thanks, yeah it took a lot of work to get the thing moving but once it was going it was a train. it could certainly have pulled a trailer but definitelynot one with spare riders!

The next one im working on is a 2X2 on abandoned rails. Made with a custom frame and just welding the bottom brackets etc. i think using theexisting bikes added a lot of extra weight etc. On rails  the steering would be unimportant and the rolling resistance much lower. look for it in theAppalachian mountains this summer!

 El Mano says:  Mar 13, 2010. 10:52 PM  REPLYI'm thinkin' Bikerace.

 007dna says:  Mar 10, 2010. 3:53 PM  REPLY I would love to do this, if I had the time. :)

Good job!

 biofueljunke says:  Mar 10, 2010. 3:33 PM  REPLYparty on wheels win

 thepelton says:  Feb 13, 2010. 10:08 AM  REPLYThat would be fun to ride in a parade, just as long as you had eight other guys willing to go with you.

 roland985 says:  Feb 25, 2010. 8:48 PM  REPLY3 would be fine, but at a cost to performance

 thepelton says:  Feb 26, 2010. 11:36 AM  REPLYThe more people involved in something, as in which way to go in this case, the more chance there is of disaggreement.

 roland985 says:  Feb 28, 2010. 12:37 AM  REPLYAh, earplugs of the guy steering, and only one steering column attached. Simple.

 roland985 says:  Feb 28, 2010. 12:38 AM  REPLYfor sorry, not of!

 Cleveland Motley says:  Feb 28, 2010. 8:43 AM  REPLY To be honest the more people on the bike the more fun it was to ride!

all three people in front could steer,(they were all connected together) though most of the time people were content to just ride, especiallyif they were in the back two rows.  

Also the brake levers were placed semi-randomly around the bike, so there was a lot of communication involved.

just trying to start and stop the thing used a lot of team work. 

At times the heading (especially at burning man where you could literally go in any direction) had to be reached by consensus, but thatwas part of the fun.

compare it to nine people on separate bikes, and i think you'd find that you actually have a much better chance of "staying together" andgoing in the same direction!

 roland985 says:  Mar 1, 2010. 1:16 AM  REPLYHow about hydrolic brakes that are found on cars?

One braking lever, linked to all the brakes on the back of the bike.

Or regenerative braking, putting generators on ALL the wheels, and using wire to make them contact, hard, on the wheel, and usingthe braking power to charge a small battery (or a big capacitor, for that matter) which you could power a small motor, or lights. This isinstructables! Use the imagination to full capacity!

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-the-Bus-Bike-a-9-person-6-wheeled-bi/

 Cleveland Motley says:  Mar 1, 2010. 7:53 AM  REPLY those are all great ideas, make it happen!

remember:power to weight,cost,time,simplicity,and reliability.

 Lokisgodhi says:  Feb 28, 2010. 4:59 AM  REPLYI think it might work better if you removed the  wheel and the front fork from the middle bike and just used it for steering. Likewise for the middle rear wheel. 

 Cleveland Motley says:  Feb 28, 2010. 9:00 AM  REPLY I agree in terms of rolling resistance, but with this configuration the middle wheels were crucial in a few different ways. You can think of the busbike notas a single large bike with a stiff frame, but as three triple bikes welded together.

1. In order to keep the busbike as light as possible the lateral bars that hold the three triple bikes together were as small as possible allowing a lot of flexin the frames. So basically if you removed the two wheels in the middle, the middle bike would sag quite a bit, and put extra force on the outside wheels.

2. The middle rear wheel was extremely crucial. Each triple bike powers the wheel directly behind it. As you can see from the the pictures and step three,the drive train is pretty simple. In order to avoid axles and complicated drive train systems, just using existing bikes architecture worked very well. 

If I removed the rear middle wheel i would be cutting the power by a third, and since the bus bike weights upwards of 1800 lbs fully loaded, i reallyneeded that power. The bus bike wouldn't really work if everyone didn't "pull their own weight".

For the next busbike i intend on building the frame separately where it would be easier to incorporate an axle and a way of changing the drive trainsdirection, so people wouldn't have to sit directly in front of the wheels.

 Mr.Sticky says:  Feb 24, 2010. 2:24 PM  REPLYThis is like SUPER COOL!!!!!!!    A while ago I bought out an old bike shop w/ LOTS of parts & bikes.   This now has become my next project!!!

 Mr.Sticky says:  Feb 24, 2010. 2:26 PM  REPLYAnother thing....Have you looked up www.atomiczombie.com ?    He has some awesome hacked bike creations

 cgshirley says:  Feb 18, 2010. 7:10 AM  REPLY This is great, do you have a video?