But we have a dog now, at 6kg and "small" he fits really nice in a Nihola box, and surprise surprise its not a bad way to take the dog out past boring car-filled places to somewhere he can stretch his legs. Quite relaxing on a trike really, easy to start and stop. I can just go slowly along and he runs around sniffing, then back up on board when we come to somewhere overrun with cars. I would say the speed of a Nihola is well suited to giving a dog of this size a nice gentle run. Our particular dog seems well aware that getting squashed would be bad, and he likes to run in the proximity of the rear wheel, but at a safe distance.
We have a foam mattress section in the bottom of the box, wrapped in a towel. We take a roll-up leash and lock at at a length so that it hangs from his neck when he stands up, to remind him where he is supposed to be. He's not totally wild about bumpy roads or sudden changes in direction, but also we haven't done this too many times yet.
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| quite a big fancy truck for Norway, which does not impress the small dog |
A fellow traveler: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7RCRmUgUXok2NU7g6
ReplyDeleteVery nice. Looks like a very comfortable size for getting some wind in the nose.
DeleteMy pup also enjoys riding in the Nihola - she's a larger dog at 22 kilos, but the Nihola Family is abundantly large for her. She enjoys sticking her head out of the step-through cutout in front of the right wheel, and I would like to further optimize the bike for her - I want to see if I can add the transparent front piece Nihola sells with the door hardware so it can open and close.
ReplyDeleteI did encounter one serious issue with the Nihola recently - I had the cargo bay tube welds crack apart in the middle of the bike, where they join the upright tube that the steerer runs through. All four medium-sized tubes cracked by the time I got around to looking for the source of the awful noise (which took me days longer than it should have). I was able to find a good welder to reattach them, and they added reinforcement brackets which, in retrospect, seem like they should have been part of the original design. With the load limits of the bike, there is the potential for a huge amount of stress on those four tubes, and it looked a bit as if the welds were ripped out of the upright tube, which may not have enough thickness itself to join the two halves of the bike together. I can send pictures of the damage and repair if you are interested.
That must be a Nihola-4 you have there, with the cutout. I don't think that has ever been available with the Nihola Family. Very interesting that the frame has cracked. If I'm guessing right about it being a "4", then maybe its party due to that larger box. They have made a lot of postal service Niholas that get hard use. Do you think you put unusual load on your trike?
DeleteYes, it's the '4' model, and I would suspect that the larger box puts additional stresses on the welds due to leverage from the box tubes. That's a lot of what stood out about the bike when I got it - it looked like it was defying gravity, just sitting there with that huge cargo bay cantilevered out. I couldn't believe it made it over speed bumps and sidewalk ramps (though it does strike on steeper transitions sometimes). I don't load it amazingly heavy, but I was riding it a bit wild, letting on wheel go up in the air on sharp turns (unloaded), I had a move for doing that at low speed to get one wheel up on a curb to assist in parking. But I think just looking at the size of the welds and how much force joins the bike together in the middle there, it would've made sense to add some triangular bracing, similar to how the welds from the back half of the bike seem to join more solidly to that same tube...
ReplyDeleteExcellent, the wheel-lift maneuver for climbing curbs. ;) A person can climb pretty high curbs with an unloaded nihola.
DeleteEven the "family" box hits the ground/curbs sometimes. (The paint there doesn't last long for most adventurous riders, I expect.) The frame at least seems to hold up a bit better it seems. I've not been kind to mine, and it seems OK. One of them does have cracked paint around the chainstay-bottom-bracket area, I wonder if there is some flex in the frame there.
I sometimes wonder how the aluminum-framed cargo bike/trikes do in the long run.
Oh yes, and bottoming out on steep ramps can often be avoided by lifting a wheel and steering across the gradient at the bottom of the ramp. If the damage there ever seems to be getting severe, I will try to add a skid-plate, but that part does seem pretty rugged.
ReplyDeleteAll-in-all the bikes seem to be pretty tough. I believe the corner fittings that were added by the welder where the tubes join will be sufficient prevent the welds from separating again, and anyone who is concerned about the leverage the cantilevered body can exert on the welds in the 'Family 4' could find a skilled welder to add that kind of triangulated support (I think it was called a 'gusset'). It will just take some corrosion-resistant primer or enamel over the welds to prevent them from becoming a source of rust.
I'm curious whether internal corrosion could be an issue with your bottom bracket. Do they use salt to melt the snow on the roads where you live? If aluminum frames are beefy enough, I would expect that they could be stronger than steel, but that wouldn't necessarily make them lighter. And if they do begin to crack for any reason, or get jarred by an impact, the metal can crack more easily than steel.