8Freight Cargo bike - restoration / project
- Thread starter Joe_Rides
- Start date
Aech
Dirt Disciple
Yes I have and I gave you two possible ways to determine the correct way the fork is designed to be mounted, i.e. on the left or on the right.Hi Aech, interesting stuff about trailing edges etc.. but have you not noticed with all the different pictures of these things, that some have the fork on the right, some on the left!? Even models that appear the same, have pics with different orients
For example if the hub retaining bolt tightens the opposite way to the forward rotation of the front wheel then there is a chance it could slacken off as you ride the bike.
Old cars had left hand thread wheel nuts on one side of the car and normal right hand thread nuts on the other, so the normal forward rotation of the wheels tended to tighten the nuts rather undo them. It's a basic safety concept, since it's better to struggle to undo your wheel nuts later on due to them self tightening rather than your wheels falling off as you drive down the road.
Modern cars have long since given up on this as metallurgy has improved so that the nuts can be torqued up enough to prevent them working loose.
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All interesting stuff, but the easiest method to determine which side the fork should be is to just look at the direction of the mudguard mounts on the fork 
There is also a tiny bit of offset in the fork crown, so you will know if the fork is back to front! In a strange way it probably would not make a hiuge difference to the way in which the bike rides, as MB intended to have the head tube very steep - he wanted the handling to be lively up front to compensate for the length of the bike (turning circle is still interesting though!).
The front wheel mounting bolts all tighten clockwise,. The wheel spins on a solid internal threaded axle, similar to a bottom bracket. One end is cast permanently into the fork dropout. Therefore the wheel rotation doesn't affect the wheel bolts, although they can still loosen a little over time! A dab of low strength loctite is your friend.
@Taonut pleased you're liking your 8F by the way. Yours is a later Taiwanese made model, you can tell straight away as the basket tubing is heavier gauge, in fact they pretty much ironed out all of the problem areas of the hand built bikes made over here. It also has sensible things like cable mounts!
There is also a tiny bit of offset in the fork crown, so you will know if the fork is back to front! In a strange way it probably would not make a hiuge difference to the way in which the bike rides, as MB intended to have the head tube very steep - he wanted the handling to be lively up front to compensate for the length of the bike (turning circle is still interesting though!).
The front wheel mounting bolts all tighten clockwise,. The wheel spins on a solid internal threaded axle, similar to a bottom bracket. One end is cast permanently into the fork dropout. Therefore the wheel rotation doesn't affect the wheel bolts, although they can still loosen a little over time! A dab of low strength loctite is your friend.
@Taonut pleased you're liking your 8F by the way. Yours is a later Taiwanese made model, you can tell straight away as the basket tubing is heavier gauge, in fact they pretty much ironed out all of the problem areas of the hand built bikes made over here. It also has sensible things like cable mounts!
