Tadpole trike steering damper

[BalorNG]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/606522906789818/permalink/1192606508181452/

It looks pretty okay in that short flyby, though that's much faster than I'd go with kids aboard. However, my experience with center steering suggests that in a jackknife crash, you'll get catapulted but they'll just fall over.

Here's my own primary experiment with center steering. Many test pilots were flung off of it:
Screenshot_20220719-104356.png

The steering damper is helping quite a bit with the handling, now the major steering events are uneven braking on the front wheels, so have ordered hydraulic calipers to even that out.

Well, when the first one oils its rotor, you'll have imbalanced braking every time. So be mentally prepared for it.

Wow, that's wild. How does one steer it, anyway? Are those underseat bars? What's the front 'crossbar' is for?

 

[Chalo]

Here's my own primary experiment with center steering. Many test pilots were flung off of it:

Wow, that's wild. How does one steer it, anyway? Are those underseat bars? What's the front 'crossbar' is for?

The steering axis is the vertical tube just behind the slave seat. The handlebars that steer are attached to the seatpost. The front bars don't do anything but provide a place to hold on. They originally had a shifter for a 7 speed internal gear hub, but after finding out how this bike behaved, I decided it didn't need gears.

 

[ynot]

So it is actually a delta trike, but with the front wheel unable to rotate about it's center pivot, much of the turning moment is passed to the back wheels. It appears that as the front wheel begins to steer into the turn, a lot of the steering effort turns the back wheels into the turn effectively narrowing the horizontal cross section and shortening the wheel base on the inside of the turn. Do you think it might have been more stable if the rear wheels were cross linked so that as the front wheel turned leftward, the rear axle turned rightward, making the trike very nimble in corners.
Done on semi's carrying very long loads such as yachts and wind turbine blades.

 

[Chalo]

Do you think it might have been more stable if the rear wheels were cross linked so that as the front wheel turned leftward, the rear axle turned rightward, making the trike very nimble in corners.
Done on semi's carrying very long loads such as yachts and wind turbine blades.

It sort of does that. From the trike's frame of reference, steering happens when you move the steering pivot to one side or the other, so the front wheel points opposite this movement and the rear wheels point towards it. Because the distance between pivot and wheel is shorter in the year, there's more steering angle in the rear and it behaves somewhat like a rear steering vehicle.

Nimble isn't the word I'd use for this contraption.

 

[ynot]

Nimble isn't the word I'd use for this contraption.

Didn't wanna be rude <grin>

 

[LewTwo]

... wheel is shorter in the year ...

There are some things that spell checkers do not catch :wink:

By the way: I once saw someone make a DIY steering dampener by putting a 1/4 x 2 inch long eye bolt through the fork cross piece. Then he cut a bit of old inner-tube, ran that through the eye bolt and tied it to the down tube. It actually worked.

 

[BalorNG]

... wheel is shorter in the year ...

There are some things that spell checkers do not catch :wink:

By the way: I once saw someone make a DIY steering dampener by putting a 1/4 x 2 inch long eye bolt through the fork cross piece. Then he cut a bit of old inner-tube, ran that through the eye bolt and tied it to the down tube. It actually worked.

This is not a damper, but a centering spring with *some* damping.
It kind of does same job though, but in a different way.