Moonlander and LOCT seat

The next accesssory to fit on the Moonlander was a pet - more to the point, a pet monkey.

I've been running a LOCT seat on the Baby AC for some time now, replaced the Weeride seat as she had outgrown it. Still pick her up from school on the bike, not to mention the weekend trips.

More stuff fitted to the Moonlander. The LOCT seat for the pet monkey is a fantastic evolution from the Weeride. Very quick to mount and swap to different bikes if needed to, and leaves the rear of the bike to have a big rack for carrying more junk.

'Nuff talk, mo' pics.

So, from the pic above, you can see basically how the LOCT sits. I have dropped the LOCT as low as possible, the monkey is getting tall now and her helmet does sit close to my chin. I can still access the framebag. She does climb up herself, because the BB is 100mm wide, she uses it as a foothold, then next foot onto her footrest then leg over the saddle.

Seatpost/frame mount. Fairly straightforward CNC machined bracket, with brass bushes in the bolted junction to the stainless steel rails. Stainless bolts, supplied with firm rubber isolators to prevent clamp damage to surfaces.

Fork steerer mount. Remove some stem spacers, then slip the mount in between the stem and the headset topcap, replace spacers as required. This mount is plastic and is a basic bearing - the silver alloy bracket is firmly mounted to the stainless steel rails and the plastic rotates within the alloy bracket. Lube occasionally.

You can move the LOCT saddle forward and backwards on the rails, but the footrests are fixed in position, so you have to watch the positioning in relation to the front wheel. The original rubber toestrap was starting to fail, so I've added some generic plastic toe clips to keep her shoes firmly locked in place. The strap running from rail to toe clip is to keep the throat of the toe clip open, and prevent the clip rotating forward.

The footrests are height adjustable - you can see the bolt and multiple mounting holes just above the pedal. I had to shorten them for the Moonlander, so she rides a bit more like a jockey on this bike, but can stretch out on the long travel dually.

I've still got plenty of room in front of my seat, you do have to ride with knees out a little bit, I ride with cleats and NEVER had an issue with sore knees - even on long and multiple day rides. You can see the bartape added, the monkey can even steer the bike with me riding no hands.

The LOCT seat is a very well thought out product and very well made. Materials and small parts are first rate, had it on the Moonlander for a recent weeklong trip on the beach and it looked the same as when we got it years ago.

 If I was to make any suggestions/mods from an out of the box purchase, it would be to change the footrest/pedal to include some sort of toe clip. The rubber toe/foot strap wears through from the childs shoe, if that failed on a rough ride the potential is there that the childs foot could wedge between the fork and tyre.

We used a cheap silicone gel saddle cover, the pet monkey complained the orange seat alone made her tushy sore, no complaints with the gel cover.

I'm a huge fan of front mounted kiddy seats:

•  the weight distribution is superior with less load on the rear wheel
• improved handling
• safer cockpit area for the little one
• better view and interaction on the trail

We love it!

Little half fatbike - mark I

Necessity is the mother of invention. Without inventors and their out of the square ideas for problems, we probably wouldn't have realised we can use a rock to open a nut. Look at bottle cages for example, imagine a world without them - you'd be stuffing your jersey pockets with bottles and looking like a team domestique. Or zip ties, where would we be without zip ties, thank you Thomas and Betts.

 I have a 1 hour ride to and from work each day, this gives me a bit of time to ponder ideas and create stuff. Cogito ergo sum. Great ideas, stupid ideas and off key singing are the specialties on the commute, though on one fine day I pondered the issue of how to carry our pet monkey on our next adventure. I don't recall what I was singing though.

Our pet monkey is getting bigger, she's grown from the Weeride, to the LOCT, as well as a Weehoo iGo recumbent tagalong. We've had a halfwheeler tagalong bike in the shed for a couple of years, used it a few times, but the experience for the monkey was always ho-hum compared to riding up front with daddy. We've toured a fair bit with her on the front of the tandem in her Weeride, lost count of the full daytrips on and offroad with her on the Baby AC bike, so she's familiar with big days in the saddle with daddy.

With an upcoming trip we need more storage for 3, and the soft sands to cover will be better ridden with an additional tyre. The brief was I needed to carry the monkey, a handlebar bag, pannier rack for the Ortleibs and a top bag. Too easy.

Lets start with the basic chassis, standard Giant Halfwheeler tagalong.

These normally come with a 20" wheel, I researched the possiblity of changing to a trials wheel and tyre combo to get more width, but with this I wouldn't achieve a longer footprint which is what you really need in sand.

With sand, you are constantly climbing a 'wave' of sand that rolls in front of the tyre, the longer and narrower the footprint, the better float and less resistance of the 'wave'. Widen the tread and the 'wave' you are pushing gets wider too, adding resistance. Buuuut, the increased surface area may provide additional float - depends on the weight on the tyre. Tyre pressures, sand temperature, grain size and moisture content come into play too.

So I needed to increase the tyre width as well as the length of the footprint, so the only way to do that was upsize the wheel. Several things needed to happen, the wheelbase of the taglong needed to grow, and I need to source a fatter wheel combo. Well, duh.

Velocity make a 44mm wide rim called the Snowcat, I bought the last new one they had - it was a front - a quick dig in my parts box netted me the 32H Shimano rear hub.

Swapped over the hub using the same spokes, hub flanges identical, spoke length perfect as you can see from the pic - nipple threads fully engaged with spoke head.

Any high points need to be cleaned up with the Dremel. Thank you, Albert J. Dremel.

Velocity had no rim strips, so made up a rim strip from the clear polyester adhesive tape I use as frame protection. 100mm wide, fold in half, trim and apply.

Tyre of choice was a Maxxis Hookworm 2.5. These tyres are awesome, had them on the Baby AC (the original monkey carrying bike) for many years with excellent ride and wear characteristics. Look phat and perform well in sand.

To fit this into the Halfwheeler frame, I used a chainstay assembly I've had kicking around in the spares dept for years. Bought on ebay for a couple of bucks, it's the chainstay for a Giant AC. I researched a few other options - Xtracycle classic (didn't have the tyre clearance and unable to integrate into a 20" rear triangle) and even a Puglsey fork (no derailleur hanger, odd angle for axle entry and unsure of strength of fork blade)

I wrapped it and the Halfwheeler seatstays with some old tubes to protect, isolate and to provide a firm and grippy interface.

Mock up of the wheel in place with some rack mounting brackets, allowed me to dial in the position of the wheel for clearance and correct alignment.

Install the AC chainstay. Mounting it below the Halfwheeler chainstays would have been more ideal, but the dropouts and derailleur hanger didn't allow for an optimum fit, plus chain rub on the chainstay (I wasn't going to cut or mutilate the Halfwheeler at this point). Mounting above the seatstays gives me a good chainline, tyre clearance, solid mounting and raises the axle centre about 30mm.

Alloy angle offcuts provide more surface area and using screwband hose clamps for a firm, reliable and adjustable bond. Thank you Lumley Robinson.

* After this pic was taken, 4 more hose clamps were added to provide redundancy.

Drivetrain bits - I'm a zealous recycler/repurposer, so comes as no surprise I have this stuff lying around. The Halfwheeler runs a 7spd twisty, I'm going to run a top normal rear mech to make it easier for the pet monkey to shift. As with the other sand bikes, I'll be running the super dry Ride Mechanic Bike Milk chain lube. Thank you, Owen and Cheryl.

The AC chainstay assembly had bolt mounts for the seatstay suspension pivots (the Giant AC was a 6" dually) and would make excellent mounts for the rack, but needed to step them down to suit an M5 mounting bolt. A mounting nut for road front brakes was the perfect diameter, a quick job with the hacksaw docked them to length.

The nuts were steel, so liberal amounts of grease packed in during assembly. Rack lower legs mounted, stainless hardware.

 The upper rack mounts had a similar serendipitous outcome, there was a breather hole for the stay bridge, perfect diameter to tap an M6 thread.

Added a small extension bracket to get the rack sitting level. The drive side of the stay was angled to allow clearance for the crankset, a few CPS washers (Avid techy name for the concave/convex washers used under their brake calipers) corrected the angle and allowed firm tension on the bolt and extension bracket.

Rack of choice was another Topeak Super Tourist DX, have these on quite a few bikes. Separate bar for pannier bags, as well as the MTX slide for top bag attachment. Will be using the Ortleib bikepackers for this trip and a dry MTX top bag instead of the drybag pictured. Big squishy saddle (with springs too) just not enough room yet for a suspension seatpost.

The Halfwheeler came with a cutesy fender. Inadequate. The pet monkey was directly in the line of fire from whatever the back wheel throws up, so the fender needed to be mega-upsized.

Back when I worked in industrial automation, we had these sample signs from a supplier. I had a few lying about in the workshop storeroom, perfect size and made from 2mm polyethylene. Printed one side, white the other.

A quick measure up, drill a few mounting holes and routed out two slots with the other Dremel for the velcro strap. Thanks again, Al.

Only issue I had with the material was that it was very white, and would reflect a lot of glare into the monkeys eyes. I had this self adhesive window tinting mesh in my workshop store, perfect.



Dude, is that carbon?

Because of the frame pivot to allow folding, a quick velcro attachment was necessary, the plastic is pretty flexible and will roll well when folding the frame to put in the truck.

Handlebar bag for monkey chow, rainjacket, flowers and shells she collects by the shea shore.

Boat leaves on saturday morning. We had a quick test ride down the street to the big sandpit in the park, I quizzed her to see if she liked the bike "I love it, thank you daddy" she replied whilst enthusiastically nodding her head.

I felt like an inventor.

Time to get immunised - it's a Tandemic!

More history, turning back the crinkly pages of time, this story emerges from mid 2009. Enjoy.


Yep, we've got one here". That was the reply down the phone. Many shops didn't have them, or had some totally unsuitable model for our purposes. You see, our bike room is full of some great bikes built for a specific purpose, however we had a growing need for an addition to the fleet, something that would extend our boundaries even further. We needed something to carry the pet monkey. We needed something to carry a heap of gear with ease. We needed something with more than one seat. We needed a Tandem When researching Tandems on the net, some interesting stuff came up. It turns out that way back in history there was a race of people called the tandemites, they apparently bred camels with two humps so two people could ride them at the same time. These people resided in a land called Tandemia. Now, apparently the Dutch expolorer Abel Tasman (who discovered Tasmania) was a distant descendant of the tandemians, hence when he found Tasmania he named the island in the native tongue 'Van Diemens Land' but also has the latin root of 'van dem' which means to go forth in two and do something constructive with your time. I guess when they wrote the latin language they left it pretty open to individual interpretation, Jean Claude should have taken note of this . We now know this island by the name of Tasmania, with some more googling I found this loose Latin translation of 'tas' meaning two, and 'mania', meaning heads. There is the connection - 2 heads on the one bike. Now if there's one thing we can all agree on, Tasmania is a great place to ride a tandem, you'll always remember it as the place for two heads. Just a basic interpretation, well according to the internet anyways... Back to the bike. Being our first tandem we weren't going to be very fussy with options, nor did we have a huge budget to blow, so a basic entry level unit would do us. A north side store had one on the floor and they were open on Sunday - 'lets go have a look' - which wifey knows is code for 'lets go buy it'. It was an Apollo Tandem Elite, with quite a few features that I liked. The fork and rear triangle will accommodate a 700c wheel with a large tyre, so I could run a second set of road wheels for daytrips, and will easily fit a 2.5 fatty for any offroad work. Cable discs give the wheel size flexibility, yet a rotor upsize is on the cards. At 18kg before any mods, it is about the same weight as my AC trailbike, and about a third of the weight of the Baby AC Speaking of the pet monkey, a critical issue was basically where to put her when we go out as a family, but more on that later...

Simple, durable 8spd drivetrain, with the incredible stopping power of 6" rotors. No, really, apply the brakes and it's incredible that you stop.

Wifey reckons the shed is getting pretty full of bikes, 'Yeah, bit of a tandemic, don't you think?' was my reply. She rolled her eyes and left me to ponder on the next planned mod. Now, where'd I leave that Topeak catalogue...

Got a few challenges already, the BOB skewer doesn't like the rear rack so there will be some custom manufacturing going on there, the OEM seats are far from comfy (no surprise there), front pannier rack is yet to be decided upon and the pet monkey needs something to rest her head on.Rode the beast into the city the other day with the girls, had a couple chase us down for a km or so along the riverside, they are planning a trip in Singapore next year and had all sorts of questions."AW - you gotta get one mate, they are great fun, although riding any form of singletrack would be a challenge for many reasons - poor turning circle, strange COG, poor rampover and lack of suspension", I'm glad we have two nimble bikes for this purpose. Ha, loaded it up with the half wheeler and the whole shebang is as long as the Mav. I'm curious to see how it would handle with the halfwheeler, and the BOB attached to the halfwheeler. Self powered B-double...


So, what has 2 wheels and three seats - from my other builds you may have already guessed - tandem with a Weerider attached. As the Pet Monkey still has a bit of time in the weerider until she is ready to go onto a half-wheeler for extended rides, she remains my little travelling buddy, my snack feeder, flower gatherer and general curious monkey. Like the other builds, this new weerider was a cinch to fit (don't worry folks, the Baby AC and its weerider are still in service) and even more comfy to tour with after a custom mod from my workshop, but more on that later.

As I have mentioned, the 6" brakes were inadequate for our purposes - loaded touring with the BOB - so an upgrade was a necessity. The first stage is a rotor upsize, an 8" for the front but could only fit a 7" rotor on the rear due to clearance issues with the stays. The Tektro cable brakes will remain until another upgrade to Saints later on.

I've got the Topeak pannier rack mounted, I can use it with either the DX Trunkbag with flip out panniers, or with my larger Axiom pannier bags as this model rack has the hook bar for panniers.

Only one issue, this model rack allows clearance for disc brakes, unfortunately the bulky extension block prevents the BOB fork mounting on the skewer. I've got some manufacturing to do...

With a few more items from the Topeak and BBB catalogues the bike is almost complete - BBB ergo grips, Topeak Turbo Morph floor pump with guage, Topeak seat pack, Topeak bottle cages, handlebar bag and Tribag.

We've done a few shakedown runs now, one thing that did need attention was the gearing - factory standard granny was 28-32. With 3 on board, loaded panniers and a trailer it felt like we needed a bit more bottom end. It was off with the 28 and on with a 22, man it looks small. Also rebuilt the cassette to include a 34 sprocket - old SRAM cassettes are great to keep in the graveyard.

The pet monkey isn't getting any smaller, with all the bushwalking/running/jumping that she does her widdle wegs are getting wonger by the week. The head tube of the bike is short, the fork crown height is pretty low and the stack height is around 35mm, so my bars were pretty low. On went a BBB 130mm adjustable stem and this corrected my position and gave the monkey plenty of wegwoom for now and the future. She's 15kg so still has plenty of time left in the seat, just no room if she wants to bring home a boyfriend from college :)

Which brings me to the new mod - the Baby AC sported a pair of bars for her to hang onto for singletrack, on this build she doesn't need to hang on so tight, the premise here is long days in the saddle with her sleeping whenever she wants. Anyone who has had a fully relaxed sleeping child on a weerider knows that they are just a big floppy thing sliding off left and right. If you can control the head, the body will follow suit. Well, it works with horses. And snakes. Apparently.

So into the workshop, my favourite part of the house. It's my domain, where I can make lots of noise, make stuff from other stuff, be a guy, watch whatever I want on the plasma, scratch, fart and basically be the master of my universe. Full of some really cool toys and tools - stuff that can take off an arm in the blink of an eye and some real noisemakers too. Yep, bloke heaven. So, by harnessing the power of the universe, keeping my fingers away from the bitey bits of the machinery and having the odd scratch - I made up a little cushion for the pet monkey to rest her head when she has a sleep. I should have made one of these years ago, but it took a while to get the power of the universe connected to the shed, all sorts of balanced encabulation issues - I won't bore you with the details - anyways it works a treat. Pet monkey loves it.

I'm sure she remembers every bit of the days ride...



With Wednesdays off I get the chance to make progress on the tandem. But first I get to spend a bit of time with the pet monkey before we ride to daycare. We colour in, talk about world news and current affairs (I had no idea she knew so much about the commodities market) and watch a bit of Play School. Occasionally we fight over the red Playdoh, but we sort it out - I find sulking really works. It's a good routine we have, she likes the pattern we have and throws the best tantrums when the routine is broken - should have some really good video for her 21st...


Which brings me to the next project on the tandem, fitting the BOB. The Topeak rack fouled on the fork of BOB so some extension plates needed to be fabbed up. Instead of hacking into some alloy stock with reckless abandon, the job has to be carefully measured and planned out, taking into consideration the travel path of the BOB fork and clearance during coupling and decoupling among other points. Once measured, I made a rough pattern out of 2mm polyethelene, rigid enough to hold the rack in place yet able to be cut with scissors and machined with ease. I can adjust the pattern with accuracy and speed, ensuring zero wastage of my alloy stock. A second pattern is made once the spacings are confirmed, this becomes the accurate template for reference, but I still mark out the alloy stock from scratch instead of transposing lines and drill marks.

40 x 6 alloy flatbar stock

All shaping by hand, rough out with a bastard cut, drawfile smooth, arris the edge.

Completed product, etch primed and shot matte black.

The top bolt mount on the non- drive side uses the top brake tab bolt for reinforcement, whereas on the drive side I tapped the derailleur hanger bolt and used that for mounting.

So with the rear rack sorted out, turn the attention to the front rack. An Axiom Odyssey rack sorted the front end panniers.

The cassette also had some surgery - it was an 8 spd 11-32, but it somewhat 'lacked in size down low' - it needed an enlargement. I keep all my old parts and found a worn 9spd 11-34, split off the 34 and replaced the 32 on the 8 spd. The slight thickness difference of the sprocket didn't matter as it is on the outside of the stack. SRAM cassettes are easier without the alloy/riveted carriers as with Shimano.

Upon road testing I found the change down from the middle chainring to the 22T a bit too much of a drop and a few dropped chains were the result. Limits were set correctly, I even had a few times when the chain would not drop - I blame it on my stoker not backing off when I change - it seems she has selective mind reading abilities :)

I can get hold of chain guides/dog fangs easy enough from suppliers, but I was running short on time due to an upcoming trip - I needed a solution now to dropped chains. I scrounged around in my parts bins and found the perfect donor part, with a bit of modification it would do the job perfectly.

It's a front reflector bracket to suit oversized bars, made of thermomouldable plastic. Using my Belgian made heat transfer tool, I re-aligned the molecular structure of the transverse plane to reflect the angular requirement - or in laymans terms I bent it to shape.

I swapped out the stand from the commuter (Goldwing) but the chain rubbed in certain gear combos. Fabbed up a riser block out of some 60 x 12 flatbar stock, countersunk some M5 capscrews to secure the block.

With a few shakedown runs I was certain the OEM Innova tyres were not up to the task of loaded riding. With a pressure rating of just 65 psi, with them inflated to the rating it left no room for the natural increase when loaded. They were just too squirmy, plus with no real puncture protection barrier. Punctures on a loaded tandem are best prevented than repaired. I've always been a fan of Vittoria tyres, talking to the distributor at Ausbike reinforced this as they have a passion for the quality of their tyres.

The Randonneur is a gem of a tyre and had the features I needed - puncture belt (doubles as a wear indicator), pressure rated to 95psi, reflective sidewall, all in a 26x1.5 package. You can get a folding bead without the reflective sidewall.

I can barely see the gear indicators with the Weerider fitted, so fitting a computer on the bars would be futile. I still needed trip data though, and Wilson needed somewhere to sit to stop him whining (you'll have to read my SoCal adventure to know the Wilson story). I bent up a piece of conduit and screwed it to the bottom of my custom Weerider headrest, Wilson and the backup battery pack are highly visible now. He's a bit of an attention seeker so it suits him to be prominent.

Lighting, hmmm, where to mount? With so much stuff crowding the cockpit, this was the logical spot for the Ayups.

That's about it. For the moment anyways. Bike is ready for the trip now, the report for that will be appearing soon...