Bianchi Milano Xtracycle

I recently built one of my Bianchi Milanos into a long bike, more specifically, an Xtracycle using a free radical kit.  You can see all my pictures here. All in all, it was a pretty easy conversion. The trick is that the Milano has a Nexus 7-speed hub instead of a derailleur like most bikes that the free radical is designed to go on.

The bike has been a great acquisition.  My wife is riding it and doing many more errands on it than I ever expected.  She is going to the grocery store and shuttling the kids back and forth to school.  Interestingly, when we first got it, she complained that she needed a little “assistance” when hauling things with the bike.  Now after only a couple of weeks, she is stronger and able to climb the small hill up to our house without a problem.

Now, onto details about the build.

Call Xtracycle with questions.  They are great people and seem to love what they do.

Get familiar with the anatomy of the free radical in the owner’s manual.

If you have not subscribed to roots radicals, you should.  Lots of good info and a great place to answer questions.

Because the kit is designed to work for a mountain bike with derailleurs instead of the Nexus hub, I had to purchase a few extra parts to get it to go together.  These were:

1. Extra cable housing.  My Milano has housing running the full length of all of the cables.  I forget the exact measurements, but I needed about 5 feet of both brake and shifter housing.
2. Anti-rotation washers.  These are best explained here.  I bought both a green (8L) and a blue (8R) one.  However, because of how the chain tensioner I bought mounts, I am only using one of them right now.  It seems to work.  I was able to special order these from my local bike shop.  But it was a little hard explaining to them exactly what I needed until I pointed them at the Sheldon Brown page.
3. Chain tensioner.  I bought the Sette Chain Tensioner.  It seems to work well, but I assume pretty much any chain tensioner will work.  A good source of these is anywhere that does single speeds or fixed gear bikes. The anti-rotation washer on the chain side caused the chain tensioner to also need a couple washers on the part that connects to the dropout bolt.
   

   I bought mine from Price Point, because that is what showed up when I Googled it.

4. Rubber coated pipe hanger.  The tubes on the xtracycle seemed to be a bit bigger than the chainstays on my Milano, so I needed a slightly bigger clamp to attach the drum brake.  I found this at the hardware store.
5. Washers.  A couple of the bolts seemed to me like they needed washers, so I simply added a few where I felt it made sense.

 

Issues:

(maybe not issues, but things that were not completely straight forward) 

The xtracycle free radical webpage has a bunch of good information.  For me it was specifically this one.

1. Chain.  There is a lot of information in the install guide about checking to make sure you have the right chain.  It turns out that the 8-speed chain links that were supplied with my kit worked perfectly well with my single speed chain that I had on my Milano.
2. FAP.  I tried to mount the FAP through my kickstand plate, but the distance from the tongue to the front uprights wasn’t quite long enough to match my Milano.  So I took a clue from the Radish I saw at Interbike.  I simply put the tongue on the kickstand plate and mounted the FAP below the chainstays.
   

    

3. Rear Brake.  On my Nexus 7-speed hub, the rear brake is a drum brake similar to the old coaster brakes we all had on our first bikes.  I have read that you should avoid coaster brakes on the xtracycle at all costs and be a little wary of drum brakes.  We have had no issues with ours, but we live in a relatively flat place and are only using the bike for around town. In order to mount my brake arm to the long stay of the free radical, I had to get a larger clamp (see rubber coated pipe hanger above).  I also had to put a couple washers in for spacers.  It may have been possible to bend the brake arm a bit, but I didn’t have to with mine.
   

4. Fenders.  The rear fender that came with my Milano doesn’t fit right on the free radical.  Because of where the eyelets are on the long stay, it mounts up too high.  I have not found a good solution for this (probably involves modifying the fender stays).  However, until it starts raining here and we ride on wet roads, it is not an issue.

Extras:

1. Footsies.  Kids love these, make it easy to haul them around.  I am not sure if my smallest one’s feet actually reach though.
2. Magic Carpet.  Makes it a better place to sit while you ride on back.  I went ahead and bought one directly from Xtracycle.  I found this link describing how to make one yourself.
3. Stoker Bars – Shim.  This was harder than I thought it should be.  Finally, someone on the roots radicals list explained the simple way to do it.  Put a 1.4mm shim on my 27.2mm seat post to make it fit a standard 1-1/8 inch stem.   I bought a really cheap set of bar’s and stem off of Craigslist.  I ended cutting about 3 inches off each end of the bars to make it easier to get my leg over the seat. 

Please feel free to contact me (greer@greer.org) with any questions or comments.  I had a great time building this thing.  Now we are having even more fun riding it around town.  I am not sure exactly why, but the long bike is much better than a bike with a trailer ever was.