Cargo bike comparison

Each of my Mundo wheelskirts was affixed with the usual three 5mm bolts and three(?) zipties. The zipties are not needed. Probably the two top bolts would suffice, meaning you’d only have to remove one to access the brake, even a disc brake. And you certainly could use bags instead of wheelskirts. But you need something — the other day I watched a friend put his 3yo son on his FreeRadical longtail for the first time and the kid’s natural reaction was to pull his heels in as if he were on a horse. You need some protection!

Load height hasn’t seemed to be a problem with kids & normal loads. More important is load position fore-aft. Usually I only carry one or two kids, but sometimes I also carry my wife. She has to sit in the middle of the rack — if she’s on the very back with her weight behind the rear hub, turning stability is significantly degraded. For the kids’ comfort I prefer the Mundo to what I imagine the Edgerunner would (or, it seems, Haul-a-Day might) be. The running boards are just the right drop for my 6yo daughter, and the front foot peg (mine is DIY) is well-placed for my 3yo son. I fear my daughter would feel a little cramped with the rack drop 3 inches or so less.

Step over height — yes, you should consider this. The Yuba kickstand is stable enough for one or two kids to sit on the rack with just the kickstand stabilizing. This means I often mount or dismount with a kid right behind my seat, and can’t swing my leg up & over as I do on my single bike. Fortunately for that, the Mundo seat tube is pretty small and I find it pretty easy to step over as if it were a mixte. (Downside to the short seat tube is less space for water bottle cages.)

I love the Yuba front Bread Basket. Beware, you can’t put anything really tall in the back due to handlebar turning clearance requirements. But I love having some space that’s away from the seating area. (My daughter now uses DIY reins fashioned after Yuba’s Rumble Strap and pretends she’s riding a horse. With the Baguette Bag loaded & stuffed, she calls the bike a fat horse.)

I really like the Hold On stoker bar — my kids love having a bell to ring and a handlebar-mounted water bottle cage. I think Yuba’s new Ring hold-on looks great for riders who have older passengers less often (with the Ring, Mundo looks much more like a normal beach cruiser than it does with the full Hold On stoker bar kit), though.

I love that the rear rack is so well integrated, so solid. It looks like Edgerunner likely requires the Whatchamacollars to make the vertical rack bars stable for passengers. That seems clunky to me. In general, X looks like they’ve gone a little overboard trying to be flexible. E.G., the Sidecar looks really cool, but who *really* wants that, and wants to ride a longtail made so wide as to force you to take the lane, even when there’s a 5 foot bike lane?

I love that there are braze-ons all over the bike, and everything’s pretty standard sizes, e.g. 5×0.8 and 6×1.0.

I have a couple BB7 mechanical discs awaiting installation, but so far I haven’t felt compelled to install them. KoolStop salmons on the stock el cheapo V brakes have been fine.

I love the 7s SRAM drivetrain. Far less finicky than my 9s Shimano CX bike.

I’ve said elsewhere that I also worry about Xtracycle’s financial stability (they’ve seemed to have supply problems the last few years, and the Edgerunner pre-order pitch felt like a Grant/rivbike ploy to preserve desperately needed cash flow). And as a sometime Free-as-in-speech software geek, I really don’t like how they changed direction on their “Longtail Standard” spec documents, going from what looked like a real open source license facilitating widespread adoption to something defended by a clickthrough license agreement with gibberish about needing to protect their IP. Yuba doesn’t have any such pretense of setting any open standard; they just sell well-designed bikes and gear. Xtracycle used to promote others’ X bikes — Big Dummy, Sun Atlas Cargo, etc. Now they don’t, even as Yuba promotes all sorts of weird DIY hacks on http://whatabikecando.com/. In short, X has lost its FOSS hipster shine. They’ve suited up and become cold IMO.

That’s just the way the kickstand is. I hold both brakes while dismounting, then use a foot to pull one of the kickstand legs down, release the brakes, and pull the handlebars back. Easy.

As for roundhousing, at least the local helmet laws mean I haven’t left any visible scars the few times I’ve forgotten how to dismount.

I like the Yuba because having the rear rack area be welded as part of the frame gives the bike a very secure, solid feel while riding it while loaded. It isn’t that the Xtracycle is wobbly… the Yuba just gets points for the ride quality.

Disc brakes make a big deal. Mechanicals are fine. Battleship Stupid has 203mm, Avid BB7 brakes. They work wonderfully. You need to adjust the pads every few weeks (Assuming that you’re riding it daily.). The Xtracycle Hooptie is amazing. (That is the ring that goes around the people riding in back.)

When it comes to test riding, try to do so with some load on the bike.

I look forward to hearing what you think.

Pete

Hooptie looks pretty cool, but I think Bike Friday’s U-shaped bars look better: http://www.tinyhelmetsbigbikes.com/1/post/2014/04/the-bike-friday-haul-a-day.html Do folks with Hoopties just hoist their kids in for each ride? With the Hooptie bars set “narrow”, kids can’t climb in or out solo if they’re wearing their helmets. Both my kids love that they can climb on & off the Mundo unaided. At playgrounds my son especially will just climb down & start running for the climbing structures with his helmet still on (he doesn’t have the dexterity yet to release the chin buckle, or maybe is just afraid of pinching himself).

Speaking of Hooptie: note how close the front bar is to the seat on the Radish. That’s better than Yuba’s Monkey Bars, at least the pre-production beta units I saw. My impression is that Xtracycle racks sit further back from the seatpost than Yuba’s — consider that even though Edgerunner’s rear wheel is only 20″, it’s still a longer bike than the Mundo (an inch, I think). Rack setback, I think. Both are right around the max length officially allowed on MetroRail. Anyhow, the Monkey Bars problem that was demonstrated to me is that the Bars interfere with the saddle at specific saddle heights, as the front bar of the Monkey Bars is pretty close to the seatpost.

Longtails are awesome. Over the last few days I’ve brought out the Burley trailer again (5 mile ride with 3yo in chilly morning weather — I wanted the windscreen to keep him happy) and the Trail-a-Bike (6yo wanted to pedal). Once you’re accustomed to just having the kids strap on helmets and climb on the rear rack, the little routines of hitching trailing contraptions to singles seems even more annoying than it already was. And the Mundo with both kids is far easier to ride than the single with my 6yo on the Trail-a-Bike. It’s crazy how much lateral instability the Trail-a-Bike introduces to my all-rounder. I need to figure out a good bike-towing setup so that I can counter Trail-a-Bike requests with suggestions that we take her two-wheeler and tow it when she tires or on busy sections.

On longer rides I think I’d like Hooptie-style bars, as a safeguard for sleepy kids. I wish the rails weren’t so permanent, that there was something simpler like the 2×4 sockets that most pickup trucks have around their beds, something that would make it easy to add rails if a kid was getting sleepy, but leave the rails stashed until then. I’m sure I could rig something with my meager carpentry skills, but someone with aluminum welding skills could do much better…

@jrenaut 83617 wrote:

You’re making my wife very happy. How hard is it to adjust the pads?.

Super easy. On the BB7s there’s a click dial for the inside and outside pads on each caliper. You can look down through the top of the caliper and see how much light is between the brake pad and rotor. When the brake levers are getting a little close to the handlebar, reach down and do a couple clicks in 4 places on the bike and you’re ready to go. When the brakes feel tight, but are kind of losing their stopping power, it is time for new pads. That process takes about 15-20 minutes.

Sorry jrenaut. Hope you figure it out soon.

Thanks for this thread. I’m leaning more and more towards a Boda Boda (ok, the el version), because: 1) I don’t really need a long tail; 2) step-through; 3) it takes up less garage space; and 4) potential for on-bus travel.

I was reluctant because: A) no hooptie option; I was worried about the higher rack — though I feel better about that after reading reviews; C) it’s not cheaper than a long-tail.

I would add on: (i) disc brakes (recommendations?), (ii) wheel skirts, (iii) double kick stand (should I go with Yuba’s or another?), (iv) deflopilater (do I need it?), (v) dynahub (any recommendations? I think Yuba sells a Shimano hub for $180) and (vi) lights for the dynahub (recs?); and possibly (vii) bread basket; and (viii) foot pegs (necessary?)

As for the ersatz-hooptie, I’m considering ape-bars, and maybe a bobike jr, in hopes of creating sort of a hug-and-back situation. Thoughts? Suggestions on where to get ape bars? Phoenix?

Jrenault: yikes, that stinks. Increasing weight and slope decrease stability for me, but I think that’s mainly a function of speed & inertia.

dasgeh: kickstand: why would you buy any other? Deflopilator: I expect that would interfere with flipping the wheel around for bus racks, so you might try doing without for starters. Foot pegs: depends on your kids, try without first. One safety downside of pegs is they’re an enticing but suboptimal platform on which for a child to stand.

Ape bars: the first Yuba dealer I talked with said they often put longer bars in back so a kid on back can hold the grips and hug the kid up front.