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off road recumbants and adult bigwheels

Old 12-03-08, 04:10 PM
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off road recumbants and adult bigwheels

we all know they make mountain bikes and they make recumbant bikes, but what if they made an off road recumbant bike. not just a recumbant with knobbie tires, but a built for off road recumbant.

an adult sized "big wheel" would be cool too. complete with turbo action powerslide brake. that would be too cool for school. if these products exist, let a brother know and if they don't...
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Old 12-03-08, 06:32 PM
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I've seen Gallagher use an adult-sized BigWheel.

There's some goofy "recumbents" with direct drive that show up on Craigslist on occasion, can't think what they're called.

Off-road recumbents have been made, I'm just not sure if they've been in production or custom jobs. I don't think it could very well be an exact replacement for a mountain bike, and it might take two or three different ones depending on what you wanted it to do.

Here's the recumbent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1A-my4wDmQ
Irritating sound track. Works great going down wide stairs. What do you do on singletrack trails, though? Maybe they need a little bulldozer blade on the front. Looks like a bunch of other videos on this trike.

Here's a Mountain Bike, looks more suitable:
https://www.lightfootcycles.com/ranger.htm
I see some foot-forward bikes that aren't actually recumbents, too.

Here's the goofy tricycle, the Triton:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7tQCaf86Hg
Note the pedaling speed on the trail-ride section near the end- video has been sped up. That's sad!
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Old 12-03-08, 07:13 PM
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thanks for the links. i just checked out the triton tricycle and it looks hella cool. not exactly what i was originally talking about, but i still want one. for some reason i am intruiged by front wheel driven tricyclyes, fwd bicycles if they existed and two wheel drive bicycles that do.
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Old 12-03-08, 08:55 PM
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Seems like I have read of 2 or 3 different 2-wheel drive bicycles as well. I haven't used one. The impression I get from reading is that they're kind of a gimmick thing, intended to sell to people that haven't used bicycles much (similar to the auto-shift bikes, shaft drive bikes, and the Triton up there). I think the problem in bicycling is more often a lack of power than a lack of traction under power, so 2-wheel drive doesn't gain much.

They have made 2-wheel drive motorcycles. I gather from the reading that they are somewhat useful, but have to be used in different ways. With a 1-wheel drive motorcycle, you can go over lots of things or up steep slopes, but with a lot of speed and spinning. With the 2-wheel drive, you can go the same places, but slowly. So it's not necessarily the improvement you'd expect, and you don't hear too much of the motorcycle that can do it.
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Old 12-03-08, 09:15 PM
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For real mountain biking (not just dirt roads), 'bents have some drawbacks. The long wheelbase is awkward, and you can't get your weight over the pedals to climb, or shift your body fore and aft to keep the front wheel down or increase traction in back. When I was learning to ride technical stuff, 20 years or so ago, I was amazed how much difference it made just to move your head forward or back to change weight distribution. Hard to do that when you're sitting.
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Old 12-03-08, 10:56 PM
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FWD bikes don't hold much interest for me, but some folks dig 'em:

https://www.cruzbike.com/
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Old 12-04-08, 02:21 AM
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One of the first "safety" bikes was a FWD called the Bantam. It had the cranks on the front axle and had a single speed planetary gear set to give a higher wheel rotation speed than the cranks in order to get a decent gear inches. Made circa 1885 in England.
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Old 12-04-08, 02:50 AM
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Originally Posted by JanMM
FWD bikes don't hold much interest for me, but some folks dig 'em:

https://www.cruzbike.com/

They look like a solution in search of a problem.
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Old 12-04-08, 04:50 AM
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Originally Posted by ogbigbird
we all know they make mountain bikes and they make recumbant bikes, but what if they made an off road recumbant bike. not just a recumbant with knobbie tires, but a built for off road recumbant.
There have been a few off-road recumbents built and sold commercially.
Two of the "bigger" models (-"bigger" being a very relative term here-)

The Haluzak Traverse was a limited-edition full-suspension version of the Horizon model (Haluzak bikes are no longer made and I found a post elsewhere by an owner that says only about 30 Traverses were ever produced).

Azub has made a model over the years, currently called the Hardcore. Azubs are still available, but cost $$$$. 2,376 Euros = 2,993.88 US dollars, and remember that's only the starting price.

Note that these bikes were marketed specifically for unpaved use, they were not just full-suspended models.

A fairly-well-known home built effort has been made by Richard Ehrlich. The page linked is somewhat dated now, as last I remember Richard had switched to using a 26" front wheel.

Of course on a recumbent you still could not do a lot of things that would be easy on an upright MTB--but then, MTB riding is not usually about going very far, as much as it is about interesting technical riding. If you had to cover a lot of miles on unpaved roads, a suspended recumbent would be a lot nicer than a MTB.

an adult sized "big wheel" would be cool too. complete with turbo action powerslide brake. that would be too cool for school. if these products exist, let a brother know and if they don't...
I know I've seen a website for a guy who was building front-wheel-drive delta trikes that had a pair of little caster wheels in the rear. He had a fancy website set up, with nice videos and everything. He was posting at bentrideronline and said that it was not really intended as a regular-use bike to cover miles on, but more as a parking-lot toy for adults. I couldn't find it with Google but you might ask on the trikes section of Bentrideronline if you are really interested, someone there may remember (-this is really nothing new of course, lots of home-builders have done it over the years but his were finished pretty nice-).
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Old 12-04-08, 09:57 PM
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Here's a 2-wheel drive bike I just saw:
https://cgi.ebay.com/Dual-Wheel-Drive...3A3%7C294%3A50
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Old 12-04-08, 10:26 PM
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Originally Posted by Doug5150
There have been a few off-road recumbents built and sold commercially.
Two of the "bigger" models (-"bigger" being a very relative term here-)

The Haluzak Traverse was a limited-edition full-suspension version of the Horizon model (Haluzak bikes are no longer made and I found a post elsewhere by an owner that says only about 30 Traverses were ever produced).

Azub has made a model over the years, currently called the Hardcore. Azubs are still available, but cost $$$$. 2,376 Euros = 2,993.88 US dollars, and remember that's only the starting price.

Note that these bikes were marketed specifically for unpaved use, they were not just full-suspended models.

A fairly-well-known home built effort has been made by Richard Ehrlich. The page linked is somewhat dated now, as last I remember Richard had switched to using a 26" front wheel.

Of course on a recumbent you still could not do a lot of things that would be easy on an upright MTB--but then, MTB riding is not usually about going very far, as much as it is about interesting technical riding. If you had to cover a lot of miles on unpaved roads, a suspended recumbent would be a lot nicer than a MTB.


I know I've seen a website for a guy who was building front-wheel-drive delta trikes that had a pair of little caster wheels in the rear. He had a fancy website set up, with nice videos and everything. He was posting at bentrideronline and said that it was not really intended as a regular-use bike to cover miles on, but more as a parking-lot toy for adults. I couldn't find it with Google but you might ask on the trikes section of Bentrideronline if you are really interested, someone there may remember (-this is really nothing new of course, lots of home-builders have done it over the years but his were finished pretty nice-).
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Something like this?
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Old 12-04-08, 11:37 PM
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Originally Posted by ogbigbird
we all know they make mountain bikes and they make recumbant bikes, but what if they made an off road recumbant bike. not just a recumbant with knobbie tires, but a built for off road recumbant.

an adult sized "big wheel" would be cool too. complete with turbo action powerslide brake. that would be too cool for school. if these products exist, let a brother know and if they don't...
The Crank-It quad was a full-on off-road recumbent, with suspension on all wheels and drive to both rear wheels. Too bad it's out of production:
https://www.crank-it.com/quadhome.html

It's not hard to do a powerslide on a recumbent trike. It just takes a slippery surface:
https://home.comcast.net/~jeff_wills/...es/river12.htm
https://home.comcast.net/~jeff_wills/...es/river11.htm
From https://home.comcast.net/~jeff_wills/aerocoupe/index.htm
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Old 12-05-08, 12:02 AM
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I suspect the Atomic Zombie is the one referenced up there:
https://www.atomiczombie.com/product-spincycle.htm
And a cool video:
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0e7_1222697943
(these links from a similar post on www.ratrodbikes.com, perhaps inspired by this post, perhaps coincidence.)
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Old 12-05-08, 10:19 AM
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This might be what you're after. The fiberglass ladies bicycle was designed by my Daughter Mellisa.
It has that "Big-Wheel" style frame tube.

The fairing has a compartment inside, like a glove compartment in a car. It can carry heavy loads.

So is this close to what you were thinking of?
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Old 12-05-08, 05:36 PM
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no, it was the "big wheel" like i rode as a yute.
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Old 12-05-08, 10:26 PM
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Originally Posted by hotbike




This might be what you're after. The fiberglass ladies bicycle was designed by my Daughter Mellisa.
It has that "Big-Wheel" style frame tube.

The fairing has a compartment inside, like a glove compartment in a car. It can carry heavy loads.

So is this close to what you were thinking of?
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Old 12-06-08, 11:16 AM
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"serious" off-roading on a recumbent would pose difficulties; pulling the front wheel up to clear logs and such would be.....problematic.
A lot of rough-terrain riding is dependent on being able to throw your weight around; you spend a lot of time off the saddle.
I won't say "can't"....I see some folks ride knobby-tired unicycles in the woods....
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Old 12-06-08, 12:05 PM
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I've done a lot of hiking and walking, and a fair bit of that has been on single-track trails. I will say that on those trails, probably 98% or more of the trail, you could ride with any bike, provided it didn't fall apart. So I can see an off-road recumbent being useful on a lot of trails, although it presumably wouldn't be able to do some things a regular mountain bike could. It seems to me that the ability to get a foot on the ground in a hurry would be handy but would be especially awkward with the recumbents. The foot-forward designs look sort of goofy but might actually work better than a true recumbent on off-road.
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Old 12-06-08, 12:27 PM
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here is one guy.I know of another who does races on a bent and wins. check out youtube for more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekefr3xH3y8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGo5eeb0OBI
he hops logs and everything. but the bikes are custom built.
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Old 12-09-08, 11:35 AM
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Originally Posted by no1mad
Something like this?
Yea--but this guy's were adult-sized, and with chains and 3-speed hubs on the front, so you could get up to some decent speeds on the thing.
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