kiltedcelt
100 W
I've embarked on creating what might be the most outlandish tandem trike ever created and decided to share a build log with all you fine folks. I hope you'll enjoy seeing the progress of the build. Feel free to chime in with questions as I post updates.
First, a little background. I've been fascinated by recumbents ever since seeing a film about the first HPV event back in the early 80s in high school science class. I still wish I could find that film on YouTube or something but I've not had any luck though I periodically search for it. Who knows, it might have been a NOVA program and we watched it on VHS or something. This was probably about 35/36 years ago so, anyway... What I remember about this video was all the cool HPV vehicles. Some were insane tandem streamlined velomobiles built for speed, while others were little more than 10 speed road bikes with janky aero covers built over them. That little taste was enough to pique my interest in recumbents though it wasn't until a few years ago that I bought my first recumbent.
I'd been commuting to work and living a mostly car-free lifestyle when saddle discomfort issues finally got me to consider buying a 'bent. I went to a local shop (Amling's near Chicago), and ended up buying a Bacchetta Giro 20. I rode that Giro for about 7 months or so before later selling it and going back to riding regular "upright" bikes for the next few years. In those intervening years I still continued to search for the perfect saddle, fiddled with bike fit, but still never had anything that I could stand being on for more than about 30 miles. As I racked up the 2-wheel miles, I also had numerous crashes (never with cars, just solo wipeouts), that resulted in the worst cases a broken rib, a badly messed up wrist (that one was actually the result of carrying a bike into my apartment), and a badly jacked up knee. The final straw was riding my cargo bike (that I built myself), through a pothole last year. The subsequent health issues from taking a saddle to the nethers at speed and with substantial force eventually subsided, but not before I thought at length about my lifetime of cycling, my car-free living of the last 10 years, and ultimately *what* I personally wanted from a human-powered-wheeled-conveyance, especially since I was looking for a new project to build.
So, that brings me to the latest project. I decided that I've had my fill of falls and spills. I also disliked how unstable a heavily loaded two-wheeled cargo bike can be. There were a few times when I had a load of tools or construction materials on my cargo bike and managed to dump it in the middle of the road, or even just trying pull away from a stop after loading. So, my future vehicle I decided needed to be recumbent to eliminate those lower back and saddle-related issues I'd struggled with for a number of years, and a trike for the sake of stability and greatly-lessened likelihood tip-over/crashes/etc related to wet-pavement, ice, etc
I also wanted the trike to be able to haul cargo and so that led me to thinking of either tadpole or quad design. Ultimately, I ruled out quads because they're uncommon enough here in the U.S. that I didn't want to having any issues with whether I could utilize cycling infrastructure, especially since this would also be Class 2 e-assist. Tadpole configuration seemed most logical since even unloaded, the force of the braking would be on the front two wheels, versus a single front wheel and two rear wheels as in a delta configuration. When the trike would be mostly unloaded, a delta would not have as much braking force, whereas the tadpole would always have more stopping power, even when unloaded.
At some point during the design phase I got the idea to make it tandem and have the stoker seat removeable so the trike could be converted to single-rider cargo-hauling duty. That is the current configuration of the design. A few other things became major considerations as well while designing the end-product. One major thing was making the ride comfortable without needing costly/complex suspension systems. From all my work on building my own bikes and fabricating my cargo bike, I decided to go with a full-fat tubeless system, but also being able to easily build a second set of wheels for a mid-fat option. As I wanted the most versatility, I chose to build the full-fat wheels to begin with. I had a Pugsley fat bike that I commuted 100 miles per week on all of a year or so in Chicago, and found it was very comfortable and the 4.0 off-road tread suffered very little wear from all the pavement riding.
So, that's all the background - design philosophy, etc. The closest thing I've even found that resembles what I'm building is a custom quad built by the folks at Utah Trikes. Just imagine this with a single rear wheel and almost everything else would be the same.
First, a little background. I've been fascinated by recumbents ever since seeing a film about the first HPV event back in the early 80s in high school science class. I still wish I could find that film on YouTube or something but I've not had any luck though I periodically search for it. Who knows, it might have been a NOVA program and we watched it on VHS or something. This was probably about 35/36 years ago so, anyway... What I remember about this video was all the cool HPV vehicles. Some were insane tandem streamlined velomobiles built for speed, while others were little more than 10 speed road bikes with janky aero covers built over them. That little taste was enough to pique my interest in recumbents though it wasn't until a few years ago that I bought my first recumbent.
I'd been commuting to work and living a mostly car-free lifestyle when saddle discomfort issues finally got me to consider buying a 'bent. I went to a local shop (Amling's near Chicago), and ended up buying a Bacchetta Giro 20. I rode that Giro for about 7 months or so before later selling it and going back to riding regular "upright" bikes for the next few years. In those intervening years I still continued to search for the perfect saddle, fiddled with bike fit, but still never had anything that I could stand being on for more than about 30 miles. As I racked up the 2-wheel miles, I also had numerous crashes (never with cars, just solo wipeouts), that resulted in the worst cases a broken rib, a badly messed up wrist (that one was actually the result of carrying a bike into my apartment), and a badly jacked up knee. The final straw was riding my cargo bike (that I built myself), through a pothole last year. The subsequent health issues from taking a saddle to the nethers at speed and with substantial force eventually subsided, but not before I thought at length about my lifetime of cycling, my car-free living of the last 10 years, and ultimately *what* I personally wanted from a human-powered-wheeled-conveyance, especially since I was looking for a new project to build.
So, that brings me to the latest project. I decided that I've had my fill of falls and spills. I also disliked how unstable a heavily loaded two-wheeled cargo bike can be. There were a few times when I had a load of tools or construction materials on my cargo bike and managed to dump it in the middle of the road, or even just trying pull away from a stop after loading. So, my future vehicle I decided needed to be recumbent to eliminate those lower back and saddle-related issues I'd struggled with for a number of years, and a trike for the sake of stability and greatly-lessened likelihood tip-over/crashes/etc related to wet-pavement, ice, etc
I also wanted the trike to be able to haul cargo and so that led me to thinking of either tadpole or quad design. Ultimately, I ruled out quads because they're uncommon enough here in the U.S. that I didn't want to having any issues with whether I could utilize cycling infrastructure, especially since this would also be Class 2 e-assist. Tadpole configuration seemed most logical since even unloaded, the force of the braking would be on the front two wheels, versus a single front wheel and two rear wheels as in a delta configuration. When the trike would be mostly unloaded, a delta would not have as much braking force, whereas the tadpole would always have more stopping power, even when unloaded.
At some point during the design phase I got the idea to make it tandem and have the stoker seat removeable so the trike could be converted to single-rider cargo-hauling duty. That is the current configuration of the design. A few other things became major considerations as well while designing the end-product. One major thing was making the ride comfortable without needing costly/complex suspension systems. From all my work on building my own bikes and fabricating my cargo bike, I decided to go with a full-fat tubeless system, but also being able to easily build a second set of wheels for a mid-fat option. As I wanted the most versatility, I chose to build the full-fat wheels to begin with. I had a Pugsley fat bike that I commuted 100 miles per week on all of a year or so in Chicago, and found it was very comfortable and the 4.0 off-road tread suffered very little wear from all the pavement riding.
So, that's all the background - design philosophy, etc. The closest thing I've even found that resembles what I'm building is a custom quad built by the folks at Utah Trikes. Just imagine this with a single rear wheel and almost everything else would be the same.