Xtracycle Sport Utility Bike

Xtracycle Sport Utility Bicycles

Xtracycle’s FreeRadical allows you to turn your favorite bicycle into an SUB. And we guarantee that you’ll start using your bicycle in ways you never thought possible beforehand.

“Isn’t that just like a bike trailer?”

Not at all. Trailers get left at home because they’re not fun to ride. The Xtracycle is even more fun than a normal bike, because it’s long wheelbase has unique and positive ride characteristics, and because you have a place to give your friends a ride.

Shopping for a week’s groceries, going camping for the weekend, picking up your friend from the train station; these are all things you can do spontaneously, without having to plan when you need the capacity to do so. With a trailer you have have think ahead of time, “Am I going to need my trailer today?”

Turn your bicycle into an S.U.B.

The FreeRadical is the coolest, lightest, most maneuverable, easiest-to-use way of adding serious cargo capacity to your bicycle.

We’ve been riding and selling the Xtracycle for over 5 years, and we use it to drop off packages to the FEDEX depot in Berkeley when you place an order for the Down Low Glow. It’s super quick to load, fast and nimble to ride, and it’s always ready when you need a place to carry sports equipment, picnic supplies, musical equipment, and your friends. Did we mention you can carry people? It’s not a joke. You really can carry people miles and miles with this bike.

The FreeRadical kit comes from Xtracycle, a socially responsible business in California. It helps you lead a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle, without sacrificing your own sense of fun and style.

 

The kit includes:
— FreeRadical frame extension
— Two FreeLoader bags (choose between blue or grey)
— One plastic tech deck
— Hooks
— One build kit with chain extension and longer cables.

Installation takes about 2-3 hours, but is a one-time deal. You have to be comfortable dealing with cables and cable housing. A good test is whether you’ve installed a rear derailleur or a pair of brakes before. If you haven’t, it’s better to take your Xtracycle-ready bike and the FreeRadical to a trusted mechanic. If you’re in the Bay Area we will gladly install your FreeRadical on your bike for a fee of $80.

View the Free Radical’s Photo Gallery

• We Sell Three Types of Cargo Bikes

  Take the “car” out of cargo. Rock the Bike has been selling, customizing, and designing Cargo Bikes and Sport Utility Bikes since before we began in 2002.  We noe focus on three models of cargo bikes, and we can help you find the best one for your needs. We currently offer the V3 and V4 Yuba Mundo, the Mundo 500 (electric cargo bike and generator),  and the Xtracycle FreeRadical, which you can use to convert your existing mountain bike or city bike.

  What’s Great About Our Cargo Bikes?

  Carry large loads and passengers.
   

  Offer handling, stability, and comfort superior to standard bicycles thanks to the long wheelbase.
  

  Highly Customizable to the needs of your family, business, or project.
  

  Body Position Analysis: We fit your bike to you at our shop, give you a test ride, and make adjustments as needed.
  

  We know commuting, take our bikes on Public Transit and can offer specific tips on how to fit a load-carrying bicycle into your lifestyle, and enhance it! Read Paul’s analysis of taking a Mundo on BART or using a BART elevator to get the Mundo to Berkeley.

  We focus on cargo bikes.

  Most bike shops focus on ‘performance’ categories like road biking and mountain biking. We focus on load-carrying bikes, always have. We are constantly attaching loads of various sizes, riding in the rain, testing, improving, selling, customizing, and sharing our Cargo Bikes. We use them to make our deliveries. We use them to haul our gear to our Pedal Powered Stage music events. A shop that sells all styles of bikes won’t know the particular strengths and weaknesses for each and will speak from brochures.  We use our products and speak from experience. 
  
  

  We got skill.

  
  – We recently hired a dedicated mechanic, Spencer, in 2011
  – We offer all customers a tune up 30-days after purchase, and you can always stop by to make adjustments on your bike
  – If you choose to convert the bike you already have into a Sports Utility Bike by buying the Xtracycle FreeRadical, our build includes a tune up on the donor bike.
  – Get your creative juices are flowing, let’s customize your cargo ride!

  We’re part of the community.

  • Rock the Bike includes a co-founder and the lead product engineer of Yuba since 2007, and we’ve been part of the Xtracycle community since 2000.
  • We co-founded the Bicycle Music Festival, which uses cargo bikes to transport all music and festival gear.
  • Regularly suggest and test new features for Yuba and Xtracycle products
  • We’ve been part of ground breaking bike tours, such as the Pleasant Revolution Tour
  • Founder Paul Freedman was a co-founder of Worldbike.org, an international nonprofit developing low-cost cargo bikes for developing countries.

  So You Want A Cargo Bike … Please ask yourself a few questions:

  If you simply imagine carrying a laptop and lunch to work, then a cargo bike is overkill for your needs. We can share options and accessories for regular city bikes with a rack and panniers. If you imagine yourself dropping off two kids at school, then a long-wheelbase bicycle is a must. Both the Xtracycle and Mundo are good options at this point. Cost may be the deciding factor.  The Mundo is a cheaper solution if you are looking for a complete bike. The Xtracycle FreeRadical is less expensive if you already have a mountain bike or city bike you are willing to convert.

  
  above: Surfing on a Mundo and XtraCycle SUB

  When investigating our Cargo Bikes, here are some of the many things to consider:

  • The loads you’ll be carrying
  • What type of use: Daily commuting? Distance touring? Deliveries? Vacation use?
    
  • Terrain. What does your local terrain look like?
  • Body issues: Do you have any special considerations like back pain, neck pain, that we should know about?
    
  • What’s your bike parking situation like where you live, work and hang out? Will you be lifting this bike alot, carrying it up stairs?
  • Do you already have a bike that fits you well? If so, can you bring it with you when you visit Rock The Bike?
    
  • Color. Have you checked out the colors available on the bikes we sell? 

   

• Every Xtracycle customer gets a quick and dirty body position analysis

  

  When you start carrying heavy loads on your bicycle, things like seat height, seat angle, and handlebar height make more of an impact on your comfort, enjoyment, and power.

  After 12 years building up bikes, reading guidebooks, and comparing notes with professional bicycle fit experts like Curtis Cramblett, we’ve got the basics down. We are not physical therapists or bike coaches, but you probably don’t need a professional fitting right off the bat. What you need is to get your bike to a safe, comfortable position, and then try it out for a while and listen to what your body tells you.

  In about 5-10 minutes of fitting, we can get a customer 80% of the way to an ideal fit, and prevent most serious problems like knee pain.

  This service is available for free as part of our standard installation, and is only available to our customers in the Bay Area.

• Carry your kids on the Xtracycle's sturdy Snap Deck

  

  The woman in the photo had never ridden an Xtracycle SUB before. She tried it first unloaded, then with her two kids. She reported that the ride was stable and fun, not much different from a ‘regular’ bike.

  In this video, you can see her taking a turn into the parking lot at the end of her test ride:

• Carry adult passengers in style and safety

  
  If you’re like a lot of Rock the Bike readers, you’ve been building up a base of stength in your legs over the course of 5, 10, or even 20+ years. Sure, you may not measure your electrolytes or enter the local Sunday morning races, but you’re certainly an athlete, and you can’t be blaimed for wanting to show off now and then. We all do.

  So what to do with your legs of steel? You could get a nice light bike and go fast, or you can get a heavy duty utility or sport utility bike and dazzle your friends as you ferry them around town. Carrying passengers is one of the beautiful win / win activities. You get the appreciation of your passenger and admiration of onlookers. Your passenger gets a ride from the train station or to the picnic. And you get a little workout as you spin up hills or cruise the flats.

  Passenger-carrying is fun and social — you can talk as you cruise — and definitely sends out the bike vibe. It’s also one of those activities that looks harder than it is. It’s not unreasonable for a strong cyclist to carry a passenger 5-10 miles. The speeds will be noticeably slower on hills, but not on the flats.

• If there's something you find reassuring about having a tailight this powerful, this large, on your long bike or commuter bike, trust your instincts. Get the Down Low Glow.

  
  Down Low Glow as a rear taillight. Photo: Rob Arnaud

  For years we’ve been selling the Down Low Glow as a Side Visibilty and Ground Effects light for bicycles. Some of our customers have been trying it out as rear light, and I finally set it up that way for myself. The results are in. Never has it been this much fun to take the lane.

  The Down Low Glow makes a killer taillight on any bike with a rear rack. The complete sweep of visibily of the Down Low Glow outdoes anything else on the market, and the bright red light around your bike communicates to drivers what part of the road is theirs and what part of the road is yours.

  You can rotate the DLG’s light tube so its brightest light hits the eyes of drivers. The DLG is brightest at the extreme angles of its light tube, as you can see by the hard transition to from the Plush Red on the ground near the rear wheel to the Royale Purple from the DLG system mounted on the downtube and chainstay of this Mundo. The other bright band from this rear-mounted tube is the one aiming right at the camera. Stand your bike up near a wall and rotate the light tube until the brightest band of light come up the wall light. Angle it up at eye level of drivers approaching you from the rear in cars and trucks.

  Speaking of trucks, have any of you driven at night on a highway with decent truck traffic lately? It’s obvious when you see a trucker who cares about their rig and their own safety, because they illuminate it with large bright lights and reflective tape. Why do they do it? Because driving probably feels a little better, a little less stressful with all that safety gear, and because they probably have pride in their rig and don’t mind communicating that pride. You can do the same with your bicycle. Make a bold statement about bike culture and your own safety at the same time. And with the Down Low Glow, you won’t need a CB radio to talk to other bike people. You can just say “Hi.”

  One last point. I have yet to verify this with an neurobiologist, but anecdotal and visual evidence suggests to me that the Down Low Glow could be an inherently more effective bike light because of its size. My theory is that our brains are wired to think that bigger is more important. Therefore, a point source of light, like a strobe or an ultrabright blinky, even if it gives off as  many lumens, can’t catch the eye of drivers like the Down Low Glow. The Down Low Glow has a 1-foot-long, 1-inch wide light tube. My theory is that this longer, wider source of light simply trumps the importance of smaller ones in the brains of drivers.

  Try the Down Low Glow risk free for 30 days. We look forward to getting you Glowing.