Actionbent Alloy T1 Tadpole Trike

[chvidgov.bc.ca]

This is my Actionbent T1 alloy tadpole trike, aquired by mail from Redmond Washington for 1200 dollars Cdn. in December 2010. I assembled it out of the box it came in, and made a considerable number of modifications to the bike, to add a rear 2806 Nine-Continent motor to the trike.

Some of the features of the vehicle include:

Alloy. They mistakenly sent me alloy instead of cromolly but I kept it, but overcompensated on the dropout torque support.
Dual Ping batteries mounted in cutaway steel pannier baskets low under the seat. Baskets pipe clamped to frame on the sides, and to the seat on the front of each one. Can run one or two in parallel depending on range.
Dual disk brakes are stock (Tektro IO) - quite good. I like the friction shifters - they worked easily with the replacement 7 tooth freewheel (I found a Megarange yayyy!)
Dual rear torque arms on both side, consisting of one Amped bikes arm and one from ebikes.ca, on each side.
Pings (48V 15ahr, connected in parallel with ideal diode from Tiberius (Nick) on ES) held in place with self-adhering Velcro into the baskets, inside Plano 1412 marine tackle boxes. Yellow foam inside, except around the BMS. I open the lids while charging.
Replaced original idler with Terracycle idler
Replaced stems with new BMX stems to enable fore-aft adjustability of the handlebars.
Equiped with Veloamp amplifier from ebikes.ca and twin Westmarine waterproof marine speakers (50w per channel). Driven from mp3 player on boom.
Granite gear pack add-on pack under boom.
900 lumen Spiderfire flashlight from DealExtreme. Very bright.
CycleAnalyst standalone model, with 12 mosfet BMS sensorless controller - total output of dual Pings approx 1400 watts. I like these controllers, they will start up from essentially zero, with no Halls, and are quite powerful for the money. No CA connection though - used the standalone model.
Marathon Racer tires on the front 406 sized.
Modified Mirrycle mirrors to support the fenders, by adding extra arm piece to each Mirrycle.
Mesh seat with strapped on Thermorest for winter riding. Nice and warm and very plush. Can remove for summer riding.
Axiom Dutch shopper bags with Arkel tail pack.
Lots of flags for visibility. Flag from PurpleSky.com



Here you can see the two torque arms. The dropouts were very shallow and being alloy need a lot of support to immobilize the motor axle in the dropout so as not to strip them. The arms on each side are opposed, and attached to either the frame with a pipe clamp or via a short piece of steel from the end of the arm up to the seat stay attachments. The dropouts were only 130mm apart so I had to file down the axle shoulder a fair bit so as to get washers inside the dropouts, with only about 2mm of stretch of the frame on each side, which was deemed to be possible after considerable consultation. It took about one week to fashion the rear end. It has been rock solid after two months of riding, around 1200 miles with a couple of substantial hits to the wheel. I'm running 26 by 2.0 BigApple on the rear tire to cushion the wheel (and me).



The ping battery boxes more or less snap right in to the baskets, and are held in the basket with one piece of self-adhering velcro. Right behind the cruciform and down low is the best place for the batteries. I had them on the rack for a while but broke the rack eventually, and experienced minor pedal steer, brake steer, and even shimmy. Moving them fixed those issues, although I still have o-rings inside my headsets, which I put it, to dampen the steering a bit. My toe-in is set to zero which seems to be ideal. I notice the 9C spokes loosen up now and then so I do have to tighten them occasionally.



The bike is an insanely fun ride, and great for cruising up to eighty miles on weekends on moderately hilly terrain around Victoria. It is fine in traffic around 30mph, and is a bit stealth in case the cops wonder how a bike can go that fast.

I keep trying to think up other gear to add, but I can't so I will just ride! Maybe a GPS.

 

[zenon]

Hey nice ride how big is your ping pack and how many amp the controller output.

Zenon

 

[chvidgov.bc.ca]

I'm running twin Ping packs in parallel through an ideal diode. The packs are 48V 15Ahr (each). The amp output of the controller is around 30 amps max I think. It is the BMSBattery 12 mosfet "universal" 48V controller, sensorless - nominally a 500 watt controller (but it is much more that I observe). I see around 1400 watts max on the CycleAnalyst on big hills. In parallel this is 1 C max on each pack, quite within the realm of not damaging them. I do run one pack now and then though, but I try to pedal more in that circumstance, and restrict to flatter road conditions. I've had the bike up some extremely steep hills around Victoria 20% - Mount Finlayson Road. No problem, continuously pedalling in the lowest gear - pulling around 1100 watts continuous.

 

[mikebikerad]

Nice Trike! Where did you get the fenders? How are you liking your veloamp?

Thanks for posting and happy trikin!

Mike

 

[chvidgov.bc.ca]

The fenders are off an old 20" folding bike, that I had in my parts bin. They are working pretty good, now that I have the mirrors really tightened up, and a bit of extra reinforcement over to the handlebars. I don't think they would be wide enough for a Big Apple 2.0" tire though, but they work with the Marathon racer tires. The veloamp is truly excellent - very good sound with the marine speakers. I can hear it really well, even at thirty mph with a lot of windstream noise. I've got it housed in an aluminum camping box to absorb heat and keep it dry, and no issues so far...I'm very happy with the trike so far, the handling is excellent with the dual battery pack down low.
I found my mp3 player jack malfunctioned from the boom vibration, and I had to put a heavy springy paper clip on the player to reinforce the player jack.

Cheers, Chris.

 

[chvidgov.bc.ca]

Update...

Just checked the CycleAnalyst for mileage stats for my year so far:

3300 miles
112 cycles around 30 miles per cycle
1150 Ahr

I had a lovely summer with lots of triking around Victoria British Columbia mixed with lots of sea kayaking, a nice mix for me.
The Veloamp is working well with no issues at all.

The back wheel build has held up very well, with just a bit of spoke loosening, but I haven't had to take the wheel off so far.

I LOVE THIS THING. tRIKES rULE. i'm running one Headway pack 48/16Ahr and one Ping pack 48/15 in parallel, and I've had the machine up to 43mph so far.
The 9C is enough motor for me and is running well in sensorless mode. I find it will start from maybe 0.5 mph

I find that I prefer the Maxxis Hookworms over the Marathon Racers - nice and cushy and tough, yet still pretty efficient, around 70-80psi.

 

[zombiess]

Do you have a beard yet?

I really want to try a tadpole trike out myself because i've heard great things.

 

[chvidgov.bc.ca]

No beard yet. I just joined the 5000 mile club on my trike...5050 miles. 162 cycles. Average 31 miles per cycle. Both Ping packs are holding up well. I put 14.8 Ahr into one of them last week after it got close to BMS shutdown. Generally, that is less than 50% per cycle on the two paralleled packs. I'm having a lot of fun on this machine, including some longer multi-day overnight trips with full camping gear (generally less than 35 pounds). The GVW when loaded for camping is around 260 lbs, which is just less than the trike is rated at, although I'm sure it would be fine with another 100 lbs of weight. I haven't had to change the rear Big Apple yet, although there is now noticeable wear on the tires. The Maxxis Hookworms are holding up very well, with the zero toe-in setting, very little wear visible. I went in the Victoria parade last month with my nephews rock act, and a stylin Nehru jacket with a pith helmet - kind of the Sargeant Pepper meme...lots of flowers on the trike. Still inhaling the magic...

 

[chvidgov.bc.ca]

Update: Just crossed 7000 miles even on the CA - that's about 4000 miles per year at the current rate since June. The trike is running great - I had to do a 9C bearing replacement job on it a few months ago, which took about half a day, as I had to remove the motor covers which was a bit tricky. The replacement bearings can be had from ebikes.ca. I typically put in 80-100 miles per weekend, and I did a longer 300 mile trip last summer across Vancouver Island loaded with camping gear. I'm updating the lighting to the new ebikes.ca potted 12LED illumination - it is wide range 12-100V input, and should look kinda like car headlights, one over either wheel. I've also put holes in the motor covers for better ventilation, but the inside of the motor was pretty clean when I did the bearing replacement. I've seen one or two e-trikes here around Victoria, including a pretty fast Bionx Catrike. I also switched out the BMS on one of the Ping packs to a BMS from bmsbattery.com, which in my estimation is better than the Signalab BMS for general robustness and heat dissipation. My dropouts are holding up well, and I've spun out a few times on loose surfaces on the Galloping Goose trail. The stereo is awesome. The original set of Maxxis Hookworms show some wear after this distance and I'll replace them this year probably. I've switched to Marathon Xtreme HR on the back, a better tire than the Big Apple, as it doesn't bounce around as much on wooden trail bridges, and is probably a bit faster. The Pings are now in polycarbonate battery boxes from Westmarine. I've also upgraded to Ortlieb City Roller panniers - love the waterproofing and toughness of them, and very easy to remove.

Lotsa fun...