Originally Posted by
StephenH
I think a more pertinent question is why would anyone ride a trike? There's extra parts, extra bother, etc. But, when you look at the layout of those things, they are just so much more compact than a recumbent 2-wheeler. With the 2-wheeler, the rider either has to be above both wheels (makes it tall) or in between both wheels (makes it very long). With the trike, the layout is very compact and low, and so it makes a lot of sense. But when you go from the trike to the quad, you really don't gain anything you didn't already have. Stability may be a problem on upright adult trikes, but doesn't seem to be on recumbents, so you don't really gain that. It seems to me that any argument you could make for using 4 wheels would apply equally well to 5 or 6 wheels.
Perhaps another factor is that a trike can be built with a rigid frame with no suspension and all the wheels touch the ground. On a quad, if you don't have a suspension system, you can have wheels off the ground while just sitting there.
What??? Is there a question or a statement in your post? Bottom line, a trike has several advantages over a bike, recumbent layout or not. However dynamic stability is worse than a bike unless the track is made wider than the current 28" - 32". A quad with a 32" track front and rear would be more stable than a trike with the same track, period. However that additional stability will come at the price of some additional weight and complexity. But how much does a wheel assembly weigh these days? How much would the extra suspension pieces weigh? The additional complexity, labor and design are what make quad designs so much more expensive and since trikes have 85% - 90% of what make a quad a nice thing to have many commercial fabricators stop there and concentrate on trike designs. The home builder can and IMO may as well go the rest of the way towards 100% satisfaction.
The
width of a trike and quad are what make them unlikely candidates for wide acceptance in metro areas. I have, however seen with my own eyes a trike in Downtown Salem, OR. Seemingly without any effort he left me in the dust on my bike and cruised easily through the traffic with what seemed like only a few pedal strokes compared to my wild spinning. That simply would not happen on the East Coast. The motorists would have been too busy trying to run him off the road to notice that he was quite easily maintaining the prevailing speed of traffic.
H