(see more words and pics here)
A few people have emailed to ask more about the cool and funky Bicilicuadora – the bicycle smoothie maker – at Maya Pedal. so here's a few close up pics to explain it in a little more detail. This one was built as a mobile smoothie maker by Nina and Ilja as a showpiece to promote the organisation – volunteers here in Iztapa can head down to the market, make smoothies and advertise what's going on in the workshop. the nice thing about this system is that with a few adjustments, it could be mounted to almost any bike. You could also make a smaller one for travelling, or one with a larger board for chopping fruit.
The whole project is pretty straight forward and shouldn't take too long, depending on how much life your donor bike needs breathing back into it – in this case, it needed an overhaul. Building the stand and wooden mount took them a couple of days, with much of the time spent sourcing the materials and painting.
The Bicilicuadora is just one in a range of pedal powered machines built for the local Guatemalan communities – check out Maya Pedal for more info. And if you're feeling flush, make a donation to this awesome initiative!
The 'Schwinncuadora'. Very cool.
The blade is driven by a homemade 'dynamo', made out of a hub, an axle and an piece of an old truck tyre.
It's adjustable by sliding the whole unit away from the stand, so it's not spinning while you're riding around.
The axle can either be cut down, or an appropriate piece welded on, to fit the underside of the blade in the jug. Pedalling provides fast enough revolutions to chop up fruit.
The base is detatchable, and allows the rear wheel to be lifted off the ground. It's made up of pieces of square section steel.
It can also be hinged up above the rack for transportation. neat. As is the matching paint job on the wheel rims.
Ilja and Nina picked this old groovy Schwinn as it's eye catching…
In action. that day, we had a pineapple smoothie, than a strawberry one. delicious.
And some cheeky street munchkins.
No comments:
Post a Comment