Customising Wilfy’s handlebar

65 days to departure and we have diameter woes! To customise Wilfy’s handlebar setup on the back of Nic’s bike we have parts from four different bikes. Tim has loaned us a longer tandem stoker stem (the long tube that comes from the seatpost to the handlebars) from one of his old tandems (bike #1). That requires a 27.2mm seatpost to clamp onto and the Thorn came with a 28.6mm. So we nabbed the smaller seatpost off our much neglected Orbea (bike #2) and put the Thorn saddle (bike #3) on it. That means we need to put a seatpost shim in to make the new/old seatpost fit snugly. Shim is a wonderful word that weren’t familiar with before and now use wherever possible. Then to get the spacing and grip suitable for Wilf’s little hands we took the handlebars off Hope’s Giant Animator (bike #4), and cut off the padding bar so it could slide onto the stoker stem. The diameter of the BMX bar is, of course, too narrow and also needs a shim to clamp tight onto the stoker stem. We’ve ordered the parts online. With the addition of a special backrest with safety belt and pedal toe-clips with velcro we should have Wilfy ready for a full test run soon.