FAQ: How do I carry children on the Mundo?

Great question! The answer that’s most applicable to you depends greatly on the age of your children. If you’re transporting children between the age of 9 months and about 5 years, and you’re looking for a pre-manufactured bicycling child seat, we recommend the Bobike Maxi. If you’re transporting children between the ages of 5 and 10, you may consider the Bobike Junior. A Bobike seat will attach securely to the seat tube of the Mundo using their special ATB bracket. The Bobike is one of the safest, lightest and most user-friendly child seats available, albeit a bit pricey. Stumptown Mundo doesn’t sell the Bobike seat, but our good friends at Clever Cycles in Portland have an excellent selection and great prices.

This being said, many people may choose to carry older children on a seat/cargo platform mounted securely to the Mundo’s top cargo rails. If this is your transportation mode of choice, we recommend attaching a set of stoker handlebars to the Mundo’s seat post for added stability for your passenger. For this configuration, we recommend using an adjustable stoker stem from our friends at Co-Motion, in Eugene, Oregon. This way you know you’ll have the correct size to fit your seat post. A typical threadless stem for a standard steering tube will either be too big or too small for the Mundo’s seat tube. The Co-Motion stem fits perfectly and doesn’t require any shimming.

Mundo with Co-Motion stem and Profile bars

Please note that if you use the Co-Motion stem, you’ll need to pay special attention to your handlebar selection. I know, those fancy Nitto touring bars would look pretty nice! This being said, most touring and cruiser bars are 24.5mm in diameter. The Co-Motion stem has a 31.8mm handlebar clamp. If you went with a typical touring/cruiser bar, you’d most likely have to shim the heck out of it. Not only would this be very challenging, it’s also not the safest solution. Because of this, we recommend purchasing a set of lightweight base road bars from the folks at Profile Design. They make a bar called the Airwing OS (apx. $30-$50), which fits the Co-Motion stem’s handlebar clamp perfectly. This is the exact setup we use here at Stumptown Mundo. We love that these bars give you a ton of flexibility in meeting your passenger’s preferred position –you can even flip the bars over to add another dimension to the configuration. Once you’ve got the position set, simply throw on your favorite set of grips and you’re ready to roll!

On a related note, Stumptown Mundo is working hard to introduce our own child carrying solutions. This includes a secure bracket for attaching an extra Bobike seat to the Mundo cargo platform, in tandem with a seat tube-mounted Bobike seat. That’s right… two child seats securely attached to your Mundo for maximum family friendliness. Additionally, we’re tooling away on building a non-Bobike fixed tandem seat that may bring down the cost of family haulin’ even further. If you’d like to add your own passenger/cargo top-deck, you can do that too!

FAQ: Will I have enough gears?

Yuba made a very calculated decision to offer a simple, reliable, flexible and affordable transmission on the Mundo. After considerable research, Yuba understood that the vast majority of utility cyclists use a very limited set of gears within a specific range. Yuba set out to provide a reliable, smooth-shifting and affordable transmission that fit within that range. The Mundo’s six-speed transmission employs a heavy duty Shimano derailleur with SRAM twist-grip shifter, a 14-28 freewheel sprocket set in the rear and 38T chainring up front. This essentially provides a 36 - 72 inch gear ratio, offering a wide-range of gearing to meet more than 90 percent of the Mundo’s target activities -even in hilly Portland!

This being said, Yuba has provided the flexibility for Mundo owners to customize their ride with gearing changes to best meet their personal preferences. You could add a wider-range freewheel (Shimano Megarange or IRD Defiant versions) if you feel the need for additional range, or possibly remove the chain guard and add a front clamp-on derailleur and double/triple crank (may require additional customizations). Some owners have expressed interest in adding a Rotor crank to eliminate flat spots in the torque curve -great for heavy loads- as well as adding an internally geared rear hub. You might also consider adding a Schlumpf bottom-bracket gearbox to double your gear range without adding a new freewheel or shifter. As you can see, Yuba provided a reliable, smooth-shifting, low-maintenance, light-weight transmission out-of-the-box. This being said, the Mundo is highly extensible to suit your personal tastes in both performance and functionality.

FAQ: How does the Mundo handle going up hills with a passenger?

Great question! Unfortunately, it’s a complex answer. It depends on several factors, including (in order of importance): the grade of the slope; the length of the slope; the length of the ride with the passenger; the fitness of the rider; and the time of day you encounter the slope (riders tend to have more energy in the morning than after a long day of work). All of these factors will effect the outcome of your trip.

Taking all this into consideration, there are definitely lighter bikes than the Mundo, but unfortunately most can’t handle awkward/heavy loads. Also, if you’re carrying a child, most child seats max out at 40-45 pounds, except the Bobike Junior. Of course, a custom seat would also be an option. You could build-up an Xtracycle that utilized an aluminum-frame bike; this would reduce the weight quite a lot. That being said, Xtracycles flex a good deal if you’re pumping out of the saddle –that’s a big downside to the Xtracycle. A Kona Ute may be a better fit as it could handle the Bobike seat and provide enough room for a set of bags.

That being said, the big issue surrounding the answer to this question is what else do you think you’ll haul with your bike? The Kona Ute is at its best when hauling panniers, especially as part of a daily commute, anywhere from 2 to 20 miles. But if you plan to use your bike to haul large, awkward and/or heavy loads, there are fewer options. The Mundo trumps them all for load capacity and out-of-the-box handling of awkward loads, but it comes at a price: weight. There’s no doubt that the Mundo is a heavy ride, trumped only by the Bakfiet for overall weight, but it takes a heavy grade frame to handle a wide variety of loads.

You can always add more gears to a Mundo, add a new freewheel with lower gears, or setup more advanced crank options. This is a relatively easy/affordable way to add increased ’spinning’ capability, enabling you to handle steeper grades.

FAQ: Does the Mundo come assembled?

We sell the bikes as kits, but do offer assembly for an additional fee. Why an additional fee? Three reasons: time, skill and insurance. This additional fee not only covers the time and expertise necessary to build/tune the bike, but it also covers our insurance. We’re a single-product, low-volume dealer, so our insurance costs are a bit higher than a traditional bicycle retailer. This being said, you can have just about any bike shop assemble the Mundo. Local (Portland) build costs run anywhere from $100 (co-op price) to $200 (pro shop).

Fortunately, if you’ve got a common tool set (wrenches from 13mm through 19mm, allen wrenches, screw drivers, etc.), quality grease, a chain tool, attention to detail and a steady hand, you can build the Mundo yourself –usually in less than three hours. The only bike-specific tools required for building the Mundo are a chain tool (as referenced in the instructions), and a bottom bracket tool compatible with Shimano cartridge-style bottom brackets. This tool is required to loosen the bottom bracket so you can move the chainguard bracket into its proper, upright position.

You can learn more about bottom brackets and how to use a bottom bracket tool, here and here. If you purchase a Mundo kit from us, let us know if you need this tool and we can source one for you and include it in your shipment, or simply have it shipped to you. Or, you can simply purchase one yourself.

You can download and review the Mundo’s build instructions, here.