sonnetg said:
Back pain and serious ankle injury is really taking the joy out of my bike riding experience, so I really need a have a plan-b in place to be able to continue riding.
You should find someone local and test ride various seat designs and heights. You may have problems getting in and out of very low laid-back 'bent seats, though it might be possible (depending on trike design) to add support bar/frame you can pull yourself up with and lower yourself down with.
You might find that a seat more like a normal chair (like mine), often called semi-recumbent, is easier on you with the problems you've got.
Reading most of the post, it seems suspension and a fast motor is a must. Since I will have no way to haul it, I will have to ride it on the roads. These recumbent bikes are so low, it will take some nerve to ride these on the busy streets.
That's one reason I don't build the lowracer types; it's just too dangerous in traffic, and if I can't ride in traffic there's too many places I simply can't go, which makes the whole thing impractical for transportation. Might be more fun with a lowracer, but I'm into all this as my main transportation.
So I built CrazyBike2 as my first 'bent (see my signature), and used the same basic seat height for SB Cruiser because it turned out to be the best practical compromise between low COG/handling, and visibility to others as well as ability to see the rest of the road myself. I end up about the same eye height as a typical car driver (whereas a typical bicycle puts the eyes up about where a small truck driver would be).
Regarding suspension--I only have front suspension, on either CrazyBike2 or SB Cruiser. None on Delta Tripper. Roads here aren't as bad as they could be, but there's some wheelbreaking stuff around. I use moped tires on SB Cruiser partly for that reason, as they are fatter and soak up the bumps pretty well for unsuspended small wheels on a heavy trike. I'm not sure but I might say they're as good as the front suspension fork is (suntour xcv?), which while not great is adequate for most of the stuff I encounter on an average trip.
And then there is a risk of flipping sideways with these fast trikes, but I am not sure how fast one needs to be riding to filp one.
That depends on the trike design, weight distribution, tires (traction they provide, including how aired up they are), road conditions, and rider skill.
It also depends on the speeds you're going, and whether you're using your judgment to avoid situations in which you'd have to make a turn at a speed higher than the trike and you could keep it rubber-side-down.
You seemed to own several utilitarian trikes. How fast are your machines? Can you keep up in the traffic and busy streets?
Here in AZ, it's only legal to ride under 20MPH, so I'm not allowed to try to keep up.
So I avoid traffic situations, wherever possible, that I'd be creating a traffic hazard or delay to others--I'm not going to ride any distance on a 40MPH+ road in rush hour traffic, for instance. But most of the time I'm riding at night when traffic is a lot less anyway, or I'll pick a time during the day when I know traffic will be less, if I have to use a high-speed road.
Even so, there's occasionally an impatient driver--though almost all simply go around me in the next lane just as they would around any other slower traffic. That's partly due to the size of my trikes/bikes, and partly from their appearance, and the lighting. They do not look like bicycles, so they do not usually generate the same attitude/emotional reaction from drivers that bicycles do (even when the bicycles are moving at the same speed or even faster than I am, drivers actually get angry at them for even existing, sometimes).
Drivers around here usually drive 45 mph in 35 mph zone. They usually get very impatient when cyclist takeing up a lane. Most drivers do give you the required 3 feet of space per Maryland law, but doing so can endanger other drivers using the opposing lane. And a trike can take up so much space.
The only thing I can recommend is avoiding such situations, and if you can't avoid the roads, then time your trips on them to coincide with lower-traffic time periods.
I am thinking of a mid-drive, due to it's efficiency (by that, I mean it would require less power than a non-geared hum motor like mxus and such). I would also need a trike which I can hawl a big battery.
The middrive will almost certainly be more efficient especially in stop-start traffic, as long as you are shifting gears for it properly. If you aren't gearshifting, it's no different than a hubmotor for that part.
Also Trike maintenance may be another thing to consider, since there are more moving parts to it, but i dont consider maintenance to be an issue, but it may require some time than I am used to giving my bicycles.
It's just one extra wheel and the brakes/etc that go with it, as far as that goes. Tires can wear out faster because of scrub if it's a non-leaning trike; a leaner might have less of that depending on how it's designed and setup. Steering can be just as simple as a bike, or as complicated as a car, with equivalent maintenance for either, depends on design of trike.
My CrazyBike2 has remote steering, so it's got two headtubes/bearing sets/ steerers, plus the bearings in the linkage rod. So it's not as complicated as say, a USS tadpole trike could be.
But it's more complicated than the tiller steering I use on SB Cruiser, which is no different than that on any bicycle, except my "stem" is much longer (a "tiller" instead).
PS: By the way, I have seen the build pictures of the link you posted. It's amazing how you built these trikes from recycled parts. I wish I had welding and fabrication skills like you. Hats off to you!
[/quote]
Thanks--you could do the same thing I do, if you do what I did: Get a crappy welder and start building things, and when they break or don't do what you want, cut them up and rebuild them or start over with different stuff/ideas. Materials can be just like mine--old junk other people were tossing out, old bikes from thrift stores, yard sales, trash piles, etc. Or you can buy new stuff if you have the money.
Most of the ideas on how to do things when I started just came off the internet and other people's existing build pics. Nowadays some of it is that and some is my own experience in what works for me and my purposes...and then it just comes down to refining what i end up with into better and better versions.
Anybody could do the same thing, given time and materials to work with, and desire to do it.
But honestly, if I could afford to pay someone to do this stuff for me, I'd be glad to draw up what I want and have someone that actually knew what they were doing build it all for me, so I could just ride. :lol:
There are no existing things that do what I want in the way I want to do it, so I have to design and build them (or at least modify them to one degree or another)...not just my transportation, but other stuff too.
