bowlofsalad said:
I had never considered making a manually tilting trike. Yours is an interesting design for certain. Great project, thanks for sharing with such intense detail, it's truly inspiring to see others share their creations, I am often too shy to do so myself. I followed your project on and off on bentrider, I am very interested in tilting trikes myself and have plans to make my own.
Thanks for the interest. I’ve been keen on recumbent trikes and wishing more people shared the interest for the last 30 years since I built my first recumbent trike (with a linear-pedalling mechanism) back in my final year at school. As such, I’m glad the net allows us to share our passions in this way.
bowlofsalad said:
Are you happy with how the tilting functions so far? Have you hit any serious knocks yet? A scenario I've imagined is hitting a deep pot hole or something large in the road and the handlebars flailing about, either injuring a hand or causing you to simply lose control rather than retain it, or both, is there any possibility for this to occur?
The tilting handlebars are isolated from sharp bumps to some extent by the suspension spring shocks, but I was also originally worried it would be a problem. However, I’ve found that in practice, it is similar to when you’re going over rough ground on a traditional bike. On a bike, you stand up in the pedals and let your arms and legs go “loose” so they take up the shocks of hitting kerbs or potholes while the front shock forks (and rear shocks if fully suspended) on a mountain bike cushion the worst of the jolts.
It is similar on my trike. I don’t have to stand up (not that I could) as the full suspension and shock-cord mesh seat takes the worst of the jolts for a comfy ride for my body and legs, but I let my arms go “loose” so they can absorb the sideways (lateral) jolts of the tilting handlebars as one or other of the front wheels drops down or bounces up a kerb or pothole. It only took a couple of kerbs to get used to this, but I find I can maintain total control of steering and balance because of the inertia of the trike and rider while instantly reacting to obstructions or drops of up to about 25cm (10 inches) of either front wheel while keeping the trike nice and level. I can see this tilting mechanism has huge potential for an off-road biased recumbent trike that on wider trails could much more readily hold it’s own against it’s two-wheeled brethren.
bowlofsalad said:
Are you satisfied with the level of softness of the ride?
I am shocked at how comfortable it is. The combination of seat and spring shocks is amazing. I had planned to replace the cheap and nasty front spring shocks that I’d scavenged off some cheap bikes that I’d collected off the verge, with some nice light modern air shocks, but they are performing so well. I’m going to delay that for the time being.
Being able to lean into the turns also increases comfort reducing the lateral forces on your body and allowing the suspension to cushion your body even in tighter fast turns is wonderful. The closest analog is sitting on a comfy motorbike as you do leaning turns.
bowlofsalad said:
How did you decide on the seat angle?
I made the seat on my first trike too upright, so I ensured much greater angle and adjustability on this trike. I have already moved the front of the seat up and further forward and leaned it further back once already whereas the seat on my old trike formed part of the space-frame so was completely non-adjustable.
bowlofsalad said:
Which filler material did you use when MIG welding chromoly tubing?
I was recommended to just use standard mild steel filler rod, so hope all my joints will hold!
bowlofsalad said:
Did you decide to heat treat the frame?
I’ve considered it, but neither Greenspeed nor Logo Trikes do so decided I should be pretty safe. Fingers crossed.
bowlofsalad said:
What wall thickness and diameter tubing did you use?
It varies a bit throughout the different tubes used throughout the vehicle. I’ll have to go measure them and let you know. Stay tuned.
bowlofsalad said:
What is your body weight?
I’m 80kgs (176 pounds) and 177cm tall though will hopefully improve my BMI once I get my Schlumpf Speed Drive installed so I can pedal hard at a sensible cadence at top speed.
I'm still awaiting new chain rings for that unit.
bowlofsalad said:
Are you using any sort of torque arm?
Only special thick washers on each side of the axle which have a tab that sticks down into the steel drop-out slot combined with the flattened sides of the axle that stop rotation. That setup has worked fine for the last 5 years I have had this rear wheel hub motor on my old trike so hopefully it’ll continue to do the job. I do have a nice long torque arm on my 250W hub motor-equipped aluminium alloy mountain bike though.
bowlofsalad said:
Why did you use 18" wheels up front?
It was what I had, but I’m glad I went with it as the tilting geometry means larger wheels would have much greater clearance angle problems at full tilt and turning angles. I bought the wheels, hubs with disc brake mounts and king pin assembly all pre-assembled from Martin Arnold of Logo Trikes who happens to live only 15 minutes away from me here in Perth and he only had 18” wheels at the time. That helped significantly as I definitely would have struggled to achieve the accuracy and tolerances and strength needed for those critical components.
bowlofsalad said:
What is the gross weight of the trike (excluding yourself).
Not sure, but I’ve stripped it down for painting so this is a good opportunity to weigh all the components. Thanks for the idea!
bowlofsalad said:
How did you make the telescoping round tube boom?
I found two tubes of exactly the right diameter! What I’m unsure of now though is how do you paint the inner boom without it getting scratched to billio when it slides in and out?
bowlofsalad said:
What is your plan for fenders?
I have a 26” rear mudguard (fender) from a kit yet to fit, but haven’t yet managed to source 18” mudguards. I had previously acquired what I had been told were 18” mudguards, but they look closer to 20” and GreenSpeed tells me they have 16” mudguards that should fit, but I’m a bit leery of that as well. So not sure at this point. :-(
bowlofsalad said:
Some cameras have a macro mode, the cameras I use with this method also have a lens that adjusts for focus, this allows you to take very clear shots of things up close.
Yeah, I tend to be a student of the quick and dirty "she’ll be right school" so I haven’t had the patience to spend more time on my photos.
bowlofsalad said:
You might(I strongly recommend doing this) go to some welding forum(weldingweb.com is probably an excellent forum for this) with a bunch of macro shots of your various joints you welded and ask what they think about the weld bead appearances and maybe discuss your techniques(amps, wire speed, gas flow rate, pre-cleaning, material with it's thickness and so on). I am really curious about how you fit all the tubing together, the technique you used. There are a lot of different methods for fitting round tubing together and the ideal way for doing it. Obviously, the less gap there is in the joint the better.
Heh, you have discovered my Achille’s heel! Not so difficult considering the evidence of my many poor welds. Another symptom of my lack of perfectionism - I’m afraid that with my full-time job and other interests, I haven’t had the time or patience to really hone my welding skills before attacking this project. The old trike managed to hold up for decades of use and abuse so hopefully this one will too as long as you don’t look too closely at the moonscape of beads, filler and grinding!
bowlofsalad said:
How much time have you spent practicing various joints(welding)?
None! Well, maybe 10 minutes. (whistles!)
bowlofsalad said:
Did you use any sort of jigging when fabricating any of the parts on your trike?
Only a simple jig for the front wishbone suspension to ensure they were as parallel and similar to each other as possible.