Wheel Mounting

Brakes

Single sided or "stub" mounted front wheels on the Flying Ferret, using 20" BMX wheels with 14mm axles.

One of the trickiest things to do is to attach your wheels to your cartie. The main factor that controls how you can do this is the thickness of the axles. If they are 14mm or thicker, you can get away with mounting them as "stub axles" just using the bolt on one side of the wheel to hold it in place. (You may need to slacken off the nuts holding the axle in the hub and screw the bearing cones as far to one end as possible so you have enough thread to do this.)

This approach has the advantage of being really simple, but the downside is that you then have nowhere to mount caliper brakes, and have to then consider disk brakes or making your own bracket for the rim brakes.

The Greased Weasel has stub mounted front wheels and fork mounted rear wheels. The rear forks are, in fact, BMX front forks mounted horizontally.

The Slammer solves wheel and brake mounting problems by just welding two bikes together.

The alternative to stub axles is to use forks instead, usually cannibalised from push bikes. This has the advantage of allowing much thinner axles and also means that the brakes already mounted on the bike frame can be used.

BMX front forks can be used for this as they are sturdy and already have the brake mounting bosses in the right place.

One of the simplest and most effective methods, which solves all of the problems of wheel mounting and brakes, is the "two bikes welded together" technique (see right). This is a quick and effective way to get a rolling chassis built and has been used very effectively by teams such as The Cheats and Once a Fortnight is Plenty.