Looks like a fun toy. Lots of people in my town drive golf carts around town, this looks like a fun alternative.

Since it doesn't sound like you've ever actually ridden one, I'll speak to the reality of the situation. Everything you said is wrong. With the exception of the braking.

Keep in mind this is for casual riding. Not performance oriented.

Edit: You do realize that many come stock with Skyway Tuff II's right? They're not folding.

It's going well. My family has a beach house in a resort town and that's where this stays. So, it's only in use a few months out of every year. So far I replaced all of the tires with Schwalbe Big Apples. The higher pressure improves the ride in my opinion. I keep them around 65 psi. I replaced some of the steering parts with go-karting equipment to allow for some larger, wider bars - ape hanger like. Re-ran the shifting cables so that the passenger side could access their own - previously they both ran up the steering column which meant the driver had to shift for the passenger. And I got some ground effects LED's for night riding.

Next summer will bring some cleaning up of the surface rust, probably new 1 piece cranks and pedals, and audio.

You've pretty much got it. Although this might have a little bit more range to a more rural suburban setting, but still just for tooling around. Nothing serious.

In MD the definition of bicycles is limited to 3 wheeels. So, it's technically not even a bike around these parts.

That kind of leaves you in limbo. On one hand, it's human-powered so no license should be required. It may not be a bike, but neither is it a car. Is it a "slow-speed vehicle?" Anything not illegal is legal; so you should be good to use it even if it doesn't fit in any definition.

So by your admission not everything I said is wrong...

Everything I said is completely correct and I can back it up.

Spoked wheels are known to buckle on these, there's many reported cases, including ones sold as cargo vehicles with ratings of 700 lbs.

The seats are wrong for a pedal vehicle. They are built like couches, which means they put you in the wrong position for efficient recumbent cycling. Their thick padding means they don't breathe, and are very heavy. The correct kind of seat for this vehicle would be a fabric mesh, or at a pinch some thin padding over a formed base. Observe any proper pedal car or recumbent bicycle from the past 40 years.

The steering geometry is as I said, wrong. They ignore the very basics like kingpin inclination and caster, choosing to build everything at 90 degrees instead. The end result is a car that doesn't have self-centering steering, and even worse, can't track straight at all because every bump in the road becomes steering input. Ask an engineer.

(As an aside, that's also why they don't fit front brakes. Because any imbalance would make it swerve off the road)

The gears are ridiculous. The drivetrain on most models has two freewheels between you and the road. a 6x7 drivetrain giving 42 different sprocket combinations! That's crazy! I would absolutely love to see a gear-inch chart of this monster.

The overall impression is of cheapassness. They welded some 50mm box steel together at 90 degree angles, put seats they bulk buy from a boat factory on it, and then slap wally-world mechanical parts on.

I can even prove much better pedal cars were around in the 1930s, like this beautifully preserved Mochet Velocar:




Observe the tasteful bodywork in black with gold pinstriping, the red leather interior, the built in electric lights and horn. It has bodywork including floorboards, a door, and adjustable windscreen, and you could even get convertible roofs. They were not merely a novelty but a serious vehicle, with pickup truck versions and detachable trailers. And they weigh less because they were built with care.

The Rhoades car might be fun if you have no expectations. But in context with it's competition it's a big failure. Have a look at something like a flevobike orca, which are cheap second hand.

Well, if you want to get specific than.....yes

Wheel buckling - cite your source. I've been googling and found one example.

Seat position - As stated, this isn't about performance. It's about enjoying the ride, which is a subjective experience. I enjoy having the person next to me so we can have a conversation while enjoying a leisurely ride, which is what these were designed for.

Steering - Back to my original point about this not being a performance piece. If self-steering is important to you, or if bump-steering is phrase you utter more than once a year, this isn't the vehicle for you. The geometry references are irrelevant for someone tooling around a beach town at 11 mph. Which is what these were designed for.

Gearing - If you intend to calculate gear inches, this is not for you either.

In short, mini vans don't do well on the drag strips. If you're really into drag racing, stay away from minivans. But no need to hate on said minivan just because it's a minivan. It does it's minivan job very well, and has no business going up against the standards of your gasser.

My real point here is that these aren't crap. They do what they're intended to do fairly well in my opinion, and I've had really good experience with their customer service.

The minivan comparison is foolish because a minivan does the job of a minivan very well. The Rhodes car is a general purpose pedal car that does the job of a a general purpose pedal car poorly.

That is why I'm ripping on it. They sell this thing to carry 700lbs cargo, but the brakes suck and the handling is dangerous.

Do you also not understand the significance of my remarks on gearing? 42 possible gear combinations is an insane nightmare to keep track of. How many of those gears are actually useful? How many are pointless duplicates?

All these problems could be fixed and it wouldn't actually make it any more expensive. It wouldn't make it less fun to ride at 11mph. It would make it safer, faster, better handling, and more reliable, therefore also making it easier to use and more fun. For that reason it's not defensible.

So we have a poster who owns one and likes it and a poster who doesn't own one and is ranting about it.

That's good. It means the universe is unfolding as it should. It would be silly if the guy who owned it was the person who hated it.

I'll remember that it's not defensible while I'm riding a 12 year old, original stock drive train, perfectly safe and functioning, pedal car and enjoying myself with my family.

I'm not defending the Rhodes, because I think it's a POS, too. But I had a 'bent with 63 gears and can tell you that in that configuration it was faster than it is now with a standard 3x9 transmission. With a 'bent, and especially with a heavy machine like the RC, lots of gears are a Good Thing(tm), even if there are duplicates.

PS. It sounds like the OP made some changes that got it working better than new. So why not enjoy it???

The Rhodes car you describe ("perfectly safe and functioning") does not exist. The brakes are bad and dangerous handling characteristics are innate to the design.

That you haven't crashed or broke it yet doesn't disprove the very real problems because you're on the extremely gentle end of what the Rhodes car is claimed to be suitable for. They have been sold before now with max cargo ratings of 1200lbs, and are still sold as suitable for 700lbs. The wheels have tacoed at 450lbs on cargo models.

I'm glad you've found some fun in occasional light use of one, but that doesn't change the fact it's a poorly engineered product with a massive price tag.

It's an equivalent situation to my nephew's bike. "sunrun" six speed gears, plastic V-Brakes, by all accounts worth about £75 in a supermarket. His parents got it for him off the hire-purchase catalogue for somewhere nearer to £500 after it's paid off. He never rode it, so it never even got a flat tyre in three years. It hasn't broken yet, so it must be worth the money? No.

Now yours was a $200 purchase. A new one that'll fit a family, a four seater, is $3,765. What's okay at $200 is nuts at almost four grand.

How long did it take to get used to a setup like that?

Lol, well the Rhoades Car from a purely engineering stand point IS a mess. But it's also meant to be tooling around at only ~5-10mph on mostly flat ground (it was designed and originally sold in Tennessee after all) and the engineering "oversights" are not deal breaking.

Though this does remind me of a quote in the comment section of the Jalopnik review of the Rhoads Car from 2008:

Same where I live only it's more restrictive. Legaly a bike is defined as two wheels in tandem with at least one larger then 20" here. So that rules out Dicycles, all adult trikes delta/traditional/recumbent/tadpole, quadracycles and other configurations like the 8Rad (a 8 wheeled flatbed cargo bike).

I know that because of a Rhoades Car, in Ohio their definition was changed last year to remove the wheel number verbiage making quadracycles legal there.

The high end 1930 Mochet also sold for the current equivalent of ~$2,500.

Ads from 1930 list 4,000fr for the most expensive model, though there were basic models that sold for 2,500fr (~$1,500 in 2017). In 1930 the exchange rate was 25.48Fr per US dollar, so a 1930's USD equivalent of ~$156.99. Dropping that into an inflation calculator gives you ~$2,300 in current USD.

Pretty quickly. It was a standard (for the time) 3x7 with an underdrive and an overdrive available if I needed them. Think of it as 9 chainrings, with about half the ones in the middle not used. The significant combinations were at the high and low end, and for the middle any of them would do equally well.

The Rhoades Car is essentially a quadracycle 'bent. Topic comes up every now and then on the 'Bent forum here.

Anything not a wedgie, is a bent, period.

Because how dare anyone enjoy something that someone else thinks is a piece of solid organic waste?

This minivan do...

They rent surreys for use on the MUP along Kelly Drive in Philly. They are too wide for that path when it's crowded, which is usually is during nice weekend days.

I have a Rhoades car so I feel I can throw in my $.02

Everything said above is correct...lol. It is heavy, handles like crap, steering is iffy, brakes are a pipe dream and it has boat seats. It sucks on anything except flat ground; otherwise you will be three-wheeling.

But, my kids like it. It's fun to tool around on. Frame is a tank. Engineering wise...it needs to be updated and the price is ridiculous. I paid $300 for mine off craigslist

Yup.

For that price, get a normal recumbent bike. Much lighter and easier to pedal and steer than a quadracycle.

Isn't that what you bought it for? Assuming that's the case, I'd say it's performing it's function well.

after page 1 i still had no clue what it was, page 2 didnt do much better, google told me its ****ty contraption screaming old people

but i like to comment about vw beetles on the dragstrip