Recumbent - Homemade recumbents... how to

Any suggestions or website that could help me build a 3 wheel trike recumbent using spare bicycle parts? I could weld but what I need to but the question I have is how to put in a gear system on the rear two wheels across an axle. If I could figure this part out right, I might try to build one myself a see how it works out.

Try the Atomic Zombie website. Most designs are a combination of cut bike frames and square tubing and welding is expected. Most of their rear drive designs use a quasi-differential that probably works better than no differential at all. Just moved into a house w/garage (read: shop). Whoo hoo. I'm going to become a big bike builder someday. Will likely cut my teeth on some A.Z. chops. YMMV.

H

There is a mail-order bike shop outside of San Francisco that has links to homebuilder plans for bikes and trikes. Try www.gaerlan.com. they sell components and parts for homebuilders as does www.poweroncycling.com in Florida. Look in the upper left hand corner of the Gaerlan home page for the builder link. You might also look at the messageboard on www.bentrideronline.com. There is a section on homebuilds there too.

This guy

http://www.rqriley.com/

has plans for two recumbents - one steel or aluminum, and the other hand-laid carbon fiber.

Lee at this site: http://atrikes.com/index.htm Has some pretty good ideas for building trikes on the cheap.
look over his webpage, there is a pretty simple idea there for building a sort of differential drive using two freewheels. I think it would work quite well.
I built a real diff for my trike using gears from two angle grinders and it works good but certainly was a lot more trouble! The main advantage of a real diff is you can drive it in reverse but you ant do that with derailures anyway so the advantage is nearly lost.
Many delta trikes only drive one rear wheel. I've never driven one so I don't know how much of a disadvantage that is.
Ed Service

I should have given you this address for Lees site: http://www.packratworkshop.com/trikmain.htm
it has much more info on it than the other one!
Ed Service

Many delta trikes only drive one rear wheel. I've never driven one so I don't know how much of a disadvantage that is.

My Lightfoot trike has the 'two wheel drive' option, but it only comes into play when you need it.

Most of the time I am shifted up beyond the non-drive wheel and effectively one-wheel drive and I have had no problems with it whatsoever.

I understand Brad at AZ is working on a delta trike for heavier riders called the "loderunner" and am looking forward to seeing the first pics!

Good luck building something, I hope to do the same myself so I better go check out those link,

RD

Wow.

I'm gonna be reading this for quite a while!

Thanks!

RD