A few guys have asked me to post a thread about triking. For all you guys stateside riding on 3 wheels must seem like a curious 'old world' anachronism. Why drag around another wheel and all that extra weight? The answer is it requires a lot of skill and gives a lot of satisfaction when you do it right and a lot of bruises and broken bones when you get it wrong!
How did I start triking? Well it goes back to when I was 15 and in a club. This guy had a trike and it looked like fun and he was selling it. I looked at the club TT records for a trike and thought 'how hard can that be to beat' well the answer as it turns out is very difficult. 46'39" for a 25 is no slouch.
So I got the trike, a Holdsworth, and am still riding it 50 years later.
The first thing people say is 'at least you can't fall off'. How wrong can they be, staying on and upright is the hardest thing. Trikes have only one desire, they want to go straight on at a corner and ideally rollover at least once.
Learning to ride one becomes harder the better a cyclist you are because years of riding 2 wheels has given you a completely automatic knowledge of balance and steering which you try to use on a trike. Most cyclists either push off with one of their feet and proceed to run-over their own leg with the back axle. This is funny to watch as they have traveled no more than 10 feet and are in a body/trike heap on the ground. If they do the correct thing and make themselves comfortable and with both feet on the pedals simply ride away they will generally be OK until the first bend or camber change on the road. Now bike riders don't generally notice camber but usually the road has a crown and it falls away to the kerb. With a trike you must constantly turn into the camber if you don't then a trip to the kerb and a crash is the result.
Ok you are slowly and carefully riding then you come to a slight bend the bike rider leans but does not steer. Putting more weight on the inside wheel actually has the effect of steering the trike out of the bend. The bike rider leans some more the effect is increased and crash!
The secret is leaning and steering and the correct amount of each, you must get your body weight out far enough so that the CofG remains in the inside corner side of your top tube, if it goes the other side then you will do a victory roll and if your cleats are tight you will need to tuck your head in stick your elbows out and with luck you will do a full 360 and just have a bit of skin loss.
You need to steer enough to get around the corner but there is another problem the front wheel wants to go straight on and the tire is trying to slide across the road this means that as well as getting your bodyweight out to the side you also have to move it forward to add loading on the front wheel.
Another aspect to triking is braking. The weight all transfers onto the front when braking which means that brakes on the rear wheels do very little before they lock so usually trikes have 2 brakes on the front wheel. Over the years I have tried various combinations and have found that a good cantilever on the rim and a good hub brake is the best combo. The cantilever does the stopping and the hub brake acts like a drag brake and controls your speed on a descent. If you have both brakes on the rim a long descent will make the rim so hot it can blow out a tire.
Well after 50 years you will be pleased to know I nearly have it mastered but on fast twisty descents you need to concentrate all the time.
The next pic taken on a french alpine descent shows the technique, 2 pics joined together
As part of a 1000 mile tour from London to Nice and leaving the Bags at the bottom I climbed Mont Ventoux, of TdF fame. I think I was the fastest trike that day. OK, I was the only trike that day, that week and probably that month. The French don't 'do' trikes and the most common comment was C'est magnifique , mais pourquoi?
You can buy new trikes with Disk brakes and differential 2 wheel drive see here
Lightweight Racing and Touring Tricycles and Conversions
but most of the racing is still done on classic machines, lightweight 531 frames from the '50s to '70s go here for a laugh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k-o2-1IA4A
That's enough for now we don't even want to mention Tandem Trikes!
- Alan