maddyfish

Beautiful, simple, and elegant. I only ride uprights right now, but love the look of your machine. I like how there's not alot of extra stuff hanging out or off it.

Blais

Wow, I am completely astounded. Sir, you are a magnificent fabricator and you've built a machine to be envious of.


Nice job.

Wheelchairman

Whoops I arrived a little overdue to answer these. If you happen to drop in, then I thank both of you for your kind, flattering words!

UPDATE:
Well it's been over 4 months since I last completed my trike in it's current state. Since then it has actually been in pieces tbh . Not because of unreliability, but rather that the parts were needed elsewhere;
My chain went onto this faired trike. My team did 850km in theWonthaggi Human Powered Grand Prix 24hr race, which is a new record for this tight circuit. It's the third year in a row that we have won Australia's toughest HPV event, and is the third distance record we've set at this track. I myself performed well, with the highlight of my weekend being that I rode a 150minute straight stint, averaging close to 25mph for the duration, as well as lapping 2nd place 3 times in that duration


My front wheels were put on the sister vehicle, piloted by our all female squad. They completed 175 less laps then us in the time, yet they were the 1st female team home, 11 laps up on the 2nd placed female team.



After I eventually got my parts back, I reviewed some areas after some very heavy usage. Here's what I changed;

- Cut a section out of frame, located near rear dropouts, to clear chain in low gears. It runs much smoother in low gears and the chain isn't prone to slapping said area in high gears. I was worried that taking the section out would weaken the frame, but having looked at the race vehicle I race (which is of similar design) I found that I didn't even need it!
- Steering has been totally re-engineered. I pissed off the r-clips holding the kingpins to the frame, and replaced them with nuts- Glad I kept the threads on the ends of the kingpin bolts! I found they allowed to much movement, resulted in decreased efficentcy and thus increased front tyre wear. I also replaced my solid aluminium tie-rod. Being such a soft material, the tapped threads slowly became looser and looser as they wore in, resulting in much steering slop. Pulling on the steering handles, which is natural to do whilst riding, resulted in the fronts toeing out. My new setup is a mild steel tube with high tensile nuts welded on each end. The difference is remarkable, with accerlation being the biggest difference. The trike also sounds eerily quiet in a tail wind on a smooth road.

That's all I needed to do to make it "like new". Now I'm focusing on taking it to another level. I'm planning on chucking a lightweight fairing on it in order to ride it long distances at speed. I was hoping to develop some fairing mounts to make it something temporary, but soon lost interest in that idea and decided to just weld some mounts on;


As you can see I have some McLaren F1 inspired "bullhorns" at the rear and also a tube welded on the bottom of the boom. I plan to hang a space frame from it when I get the money together. Speaking of money, I estimate that it's gonna cost me only 150Aus absolute max. Very cheap upgrade

My hope is that the final product may look similar to this speciman, Tru Blu Racing;


I do plan wheels out rather then in, and a reworking of the nose for the sake of aero, but apart from that, it's a design that fits in well for the proposed useage. Can't wait to see it take shape. I'll keep ya'll updated of course.

That's it for now

Michael

East Hill

I am glad you checked in with us.

Oddly, I'd just been thinking that you had not stopped by to visit us for a while .

Learning curve...

East Hill

Phxn

That seat looks very uncomfortable! Why not throw a decent mesh seat on there?

Wheelchairman

A mesh seat would be great for comfort, no dought. But looks can be decieving- the aluminium seatback is extremely comftable with a thin layer of foam over the top. Before the foam, yes it was slghtly uncomftable, but not now.
There's another reason I did such a seat. The aluminium ties both seat rails together and thus halts any flex created when accerlating, giving back power that may have been robbed from the trike with a mesh seat installed. Happy to say the accerlation is impressive, And I'll never go back to a mesh seat