Bicycle Cars? [Archive]

Fast Eddie

09-11-07, 07:09 PM

it would probably take at least four ppl to pedal it! even stripped down to frame and tire/wheel assembly's it would be wicked heavy. i dont know for sure but i bet it'd be wicked diffucult to convert the differnential to a chain/cog assembly then to turn it on humam power...ouch! but if you do it post pics of the "before" car, the "during" build, and the "after" its done! i wanna see it !!!
fast eddie outty

kill.cactus

09-11-07, 08:15 PM

One necessity:

10x90 gearing.

gosmsgo

09-11-07, 09:10 PM

check out "bicycling tips from a car driver (or somethign like that) here

http://www.bikeforest.com/?m=200705

That is a roades car with an hummer body.

Not anywhere close to the same thing but interesting.

JStrider

09-11-07, 10:12 PM

I've always wanted to try pulling my ford explorer around... just for grins... and maybe a way to get it to the mechanics for repair...

Rollfast

09-16-07, 01:26 AM

One necessity:

10x90 gearing.

That would empower the hamster.

ken cummings

09-16-07, 03:23 AM

I've seen a 4 man pedal car go 60+ MPH on a flattish road. 4 guys from the US track team that is. The machine weighted about half as much as the trackies. Fully faired, body by Pinaforina no less. Pass on the VW, it will be carrying a lot of massive motor vehicle stuff you do not need.

Lurch

09-16-07, 06:27 PM

Given a long enough lever or low enough gearing you can move anything, but you can't necessarily move it fast enough to be useful. I saw an article somewhere on line about a 40-passenger bus that was stripped to the chassis and set up to be pedaled by all 40 passengers sitting on what looked like 40 stationary bikes. Reportedly, it was still only able to move at a slow walking pace even on the level. Divide the weight of the finished vehicle by the number of people pedaling and you will get the single bicycle equivalent. I suspect it will be hundreds of pounds per person even for the stripped Rabbit.

Rollfast

09-17-07, 12:26 AM

StephenH

09-20-07, 09:02 PM

Get your car out in a parking lot, put it in neutral, push it around a bit and see what you think. Try a wee bit of an uphill, if you're not convinced. It would be great if you had four of those guys from "World's Strongest Man" to pedal it around. Otherwise, you'd be moving at a snail's pace.

A minor obstacle: Small cars don't have enough room in them for a lot of pedaling action, especially for 4 people.

Setting it up for human power, you could eliminate a lot of weight (motor, transmission, radiator, etc), but not enough to make that much of a difference.

I remember once in college seeing an actual pedal car on the street on campus. It was the most awkward thing. It was too big to get out of traffic, but had no hope of going at normal traffic speeds, even where the speed limit was 20 mph.

veloculture

09-21-07, 09:54 AM

a guy at the 2006 Burning Man had a pedal powered Le Car. he was pedaling it alone and it seemed pretty darn easy for him to do. he wasn't going too fast of course.

cerewa

09-23-07, 03:51 PM

Setting it up for human power, you could eliminate a lot of weight (motor, transmission, radiator, etc), but not enough to make that much of a difference.

You've seen that photo that is floating around the internet, with a guy carrying a car body on the front of an adult trike? The car in question looks an awful lot like a VW rabbit. If only the image weren't photoshopped, we'd have proof positive that such a thing is possible.

Even minivans, SUVs, and large cars (like Toyota's Avalon) don't provide enough room to use bicycle pedals, front or rear.

Keep in mind that on ground that is near perfectly flat, you can go at a somewhat reasonable speed. With myself and one other person pushing, I got a ~3,500 pound truck moving at about 10 mph on flat ground, enough to start the engine. Mind you, with a vehicle weight like that, accelerating to 10mph took a long time, and pushing up a 2% grade would have been impossible for us.

zoltani

09-24-07, 04:30 PM

yeah it is possible, and has been done
http://www.bikecarmovie.com/

cerewa

09-26-07, 07:45 AM

that bike-car in the bikecarmovie.com site sure ain't based on the frame from a 3000-pound economy car.

Cowtown Cumuter

09-26-07, 09:35 AM

This one is expensive but sounds interesting...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWIKE

talofa

09-29-07, 10:50 AM

Instead of the rabbit trick try this: There are several companies in CA. that make fiberglass car bodies. Find a small light body and put it on a welded tubular frame. It would still weigh more than several bikes,but a tandem set up might work.

hotbike

09-29-07, 11:17 AM

http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/hotbike/Type6Velomobile1990.jpg

This bicycle has a roof , gull-wing doors, front and rear fairings with cargo space.
It weighs about 90 pounds.
Streamlined enough that it went 47 MPH on flat ground.
Enough Kevlar to qualify as a tank.

Unfortunately it is only 20 inches wide at it's widest. The rear fairing and the bottom of the front fairing are only 14 inches wide.

It's in a class by itself.

Streamlined recumbent bicycles:
http://www.speed101.com

Velomobiles:
http://www.velomobile.de

http://www.velomobiel.nl

djkenny

09-29-07, 11:45 AM

If you go electric...

www.PlasmaBoyRacing.com

That will be my plan (maybe not as performance oriented as this guy) with my 92 GTI several yrs down the road when the motor goes south/to the point of needing a rebuild, or technology creates a alternative fuel source conversion that I will find hard to pass up for it.

VW Rabbits are commonly converted by companies to electric.

My 87 Turbocharged Chevrolet Sprint is likely about the same weight as that Le Car from burning man, and would be easier to peddle around than the slightly more weighty Rabbit.

StephenH

09-29-07, 08:27 PM

Was thinking about this a little more.

Converting a car to pedal power, there is a LOT you don't need. If you're not driving down the road at night, you can get rid of the entire electric system. You don't have a source of power for heating or AC, so those systems can go. If you start looking at all the gunk that's built in under the dash, you could open up a lot of room there, allowing better pedaling access in the front seats, at least. Rear seats would be a problem.

If you're not driving in bad weather, remove all the glass and the doors as well. A big chunck of weight goes there.

lz4005

09-29-07, 08:57 PM

Converting a car to pedal power, there is a LOT you don't need.

The problem with that logic is that all you're actually going to need is two wheels, pedals, crank, and a very basic frame/fork. Wonder what that'd end up looking like.

Capn ¡FUN!

10-05-07, 09:40 AM

been done better!
http://www.thepiton.com/2007/10/pedal-powered-l.html
http://www.thepiton.com/images/2007/10/04/car1.jpg

East Hill

10-05-07, 11:19 AM

Like a ghost car...ha! That's in Manchester :) .

East Hill

Greenblazer

10-08-07, 05:33 AM

I would doubt that a wabbit wheighs 3000 pounds like one reply suggested. I think a usable conversion would probably be more expensive than fixing it, but I believe it would be possible. Eliminate virtually everything but the sheet metal. Even the floor has got to go using a modified rhodes 4 person chassis or build yer own. You could probably get fiberglass body parts for the hood, hatch, and maybe the doors. Toss the glass and get a plastic windshield. VW Rabbits were popular race cars, and you could probably get a lot of fiberglass body parts to get the weight down enough to make an HPV if you had deep enough pockets and the desire, but it certainly would not be practical to drive or cheap to build. If you do build it bring it to Burning Man and I'll help you pedal it.

Later,

Allan Greenblazer

Sianelle

10-08-07, 05:44 PM

Sir Lunch-a-lot

10-08-07, 06:56 PM

Does this vehicle have a rear seat? If so, perhaps you could just remove the front seats and have that whole area for the pedaling gear. Granted, you may then want to move the rear seat up a foot or few (or you could remove the back seat and move the front seats back a foot or two). Sure, you don't have as many people pedaling. Hmm... something like this would have been great for junkyard wars back in the day.

Sianelle

10-08-07, 08:50 PM

This might be of interest..... http://www.humancar.com/overview.htm

Doug5150

10-09-07, 03:32 AM

This might be of interest..... http://www.humancar.com/overview.htm
That thing looks fantastically heavy, and the videos only seem to show them coasting downhill with it. And it don't even gots a roof yet.

Generally speaking--human-powered vehicle attempts that try to duplicate the layout of a motor-car end up WAY too heavy to be practical.
~

Sianelle

10-10-07, 05:24 AM

I have to agree with you about that.

KtecR

10-10-07, 09:22 AM

I wonder how they got it up the hill they rolled down from

JSteiner

10-30-07, 11:10 AM

As long as we're not talking about building something that's practical, and you don't mind putting a LOT of effort in, I'm a firm believer that you can do it. According to Wikipedia (which we know is always correct, that car had a curb weight of under 1900 lbs. If you subtract the weight of the motor, gearbox, interior, and other unnecessary stuff, I think you can totally get it down to a useable weight. But you'll have to be good with metalwork.

There's a couple ways to go about it- you can still have the car's 4 wheels on the ground and add in (homemade recumbent) bikes inside to propel it, but with their wheels on the ground as well, or you could have the entire weight supported by the bikes. If you get rid of the car's wheels, you can also do away with the suspension and steering. It will be lighter, but you will still need some mighty 48-spoke tandem wheels to even have a hope of not buckling under the weight. And even then it might.

I think having 4 people inside would pose a lot of tricky problems, as well. You can't fit 4 people across, and you can't do 2x2. Not saying it's not possible, just not easy.

Really we are talking about making a totally custom multiple-person frame that basically has the shell of an old compact car on it, which would need a custom drivetrain to be geared in a useable manner. Quite a fun, challenging, interesting project that I would love to see! But I can't say I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't very very familiar with framebuilding of some sort (bikes, tubular drag-car frames, etc)

P.S. That wireframe Lamborghini is awesome!

lyeinyoureye

11-10-07, 12:45 AM

Not if ya fix it yerself it ain't. That being said, they make good low speed EVs. Wayyyy too heavy (a rolling shell w/o glass/doors/drivetrain still weighs a few hundred pounds) for a HPV unless yer always going downhill. ;)

Doug5150

11-10-07, 08:02 AM

The problem with that logic is that all you're actually going to need is two wheels, pedals, crank, and a very basic frame/fork. Wonder what that'd end up looking like.
Yea--there's a couple delta designs in the works, most velomobiles are tadpole trikes mounting a hard full fairing, and keeping weight low is a big concern. 60 lbs empty is considered rather light and 100 lbs empty is quite heavy. Any car unibody {with enough pieces left on that the car model is recognizable} is going to weight a LOT more than 100 lbs.

The delta trikes would seem to make the most sense to me (-because they put the majority of the interior room near the rider's torso instead of at his feet, as a tadpole layout does-) but I haven't ever tried building or using either type.
~

Sianelle

11-10-07, 02:19 PM

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/6864/threewheelbicyclecarag5.jpg

I've always liked this vintage delta trike design. Very practical to my mind :)

East Hill

11-10-07, 03:20 PM

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/6864/threewheelbicyclecarag5.jpg

I've always liked this vintage delta trike design. Very practical to my mind :)

Not only that, with a bit of modification it looks as if it could be used as a boat in a pinch :D .

East Hill

Sianelle

11-10-07, 04:19 PM

Not only that, with a bit of modification it looks as if it could be used as a boat in a pinch :D .

East Hill

And with a little more work it would make a great wee lightweight flying machine ;)

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/8104/ader1mm3.th.jpg (http://img444.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ader1mm3.jpg)

Doug5150

11-11-07, 04:05 AM

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/6864/threewheelbicyclecarag5.jpg

I've always liked this vintage delta trike design. Very practical to my mind :)
This is a lot like what I'd want--except that the body would just be an upper shell that tilted forward to get in and out, and there'd be a 1 or 1.5 HP motor on it, geared to 20 or 25 mph tops.

The top would keep the rain and cold winter air off you (so it could be used all year round, even in cold/rainy weather) and the motor would allow you to get places without being a sweaty mess.
~

JeanCoutu

11-11-07, 10:23 AM

I'm thinking you could retrofit a VW van with pedals for the front passengers, and add a treadmill for a horse in the back. Maybe something like this:

http://fleethorse.com/
http://fleethorse.net/images/14.jpg
Guess it would have to be a small stubby horse to fit in a VW van, but having a hot sweaty horse head between driver & passenger would be so sexXxy.

X-LinkedRider

11-11-07, 11:02 AM

been done better!
http://www.thepiton.com/2007/10/pedal-powered-l.html
http://www.thepiton.com/images/2007/10/04/car1.jpg

Now that is awesome. I was wondering why somebody wouldn't just take a stock Body mold and basically replicate it in aero-alum piping or wiring. Really just a very light Polyurethane or fiberglass paneling or body can be put on that. I would think anyways. Though I am quite often wrong and somebody will most likely find some detail that won't work on it. But I say, you would definitely make someone feel bad for getting 10 MPG in their Ol' Buick when you pedal past em in a Lambo bodied bicycle.

Doug5150

11-12-07, 08:50 AM

And with a little more work it would make a great wee lightweight flying machine ;)
...
This video's pretty funny (Top Gear - Peel P50):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYtro7PnBA8
~

East Hill

11-12-07, 10:53 AM

Sianelle

11-13-07, 03:51 PM

This video's pretty funny (Top Gear - Peel P50):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYtro7PnBA8
~

Ooooooo I thought that little Peel was absolutely wonderful :D I want one!
Did you notice how at the end he said that he thought the Peel P50 was the best car they'd ever road tested on the show.

dijos

11-13-07, 07:15 PM

well, there are already surreys, and if I was going to have a horse lug me around, I'd just ride him. Yeah, I said him-I don't generally like mares.

ACD

11-13-07, 09:18 PM

While not exactly a car more like a train my dad does have this rig. It's a railrider commercially made in either NH or VT. I must say this thing makes for some of the most relaxing easy riding ever. This section of track by his camp is abandoned (No trains) and runs about 80 miles. Sadly the track is in disrepair and scheduled to be pulled up to make a multi use trail.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n305/MUSTASKWIFE/Moped/RR.jpg

Wouldn't be hard to convert this to a quad bike. It weighs 125 pounds with the rail wheels (aluminum) and each rider has a 3-spd hub to select from and can pedal independently of each other. Google Railrider to find the companies website.

Chetti

12-06-07, 01:34 AM

http://www.zanyvideos.com/videos/four_person_pedal_car_pulled_over_by_police

posted in the Car Free Forum,
Looks like it fits shadowchamelion's original concept, Cops didnt like it at all though.

Sianelle

12-06-07, 02:21 AM

HEY I REALLY LIKE THAT! :D A smaller lighter bodyshell would be good though.

FlatTop

12-06-07, 09:04 AM

http://www.zanyvideos.com/videos/four_person_pedal_car_pulled_over_by_police

posted in the Car Free Forum,
Looks like it fits shadowchamelion's original concept, Cops didnt like it at all though.

Yes, but the cops were amazingly restrained in their handling of a unique situation. I guess we can thank Mr. Video Camera for that, huh?
Or maybe the battery on his taser needed charging...

StephenH

12-06-07, 10:17 PM

I think the policeman was having a hard time keeping a straight face, myself.

Meanwhile, check out this version of a pedicab which comes close to being a pedal car (of course, only one person pedals!):
http://cgi.ebay.com/Rickshaw-Pedicab-carriage-bike-taxi_W0QQitemZ140186906192QQihZ004QQcategoryZ2904QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

The main drawback I see is that riders of different heights couldn't all see out that same window easily. You'd still be susceptible to a side wind or being splashed.