Tire Wear
 

I've been looking at the Catrike Trail at my local recumbent dealer for a while now and finally decided to rent it for two days. Well I put in 4hrs. yesterday and 4hrs so far today. I've ridden on various road surfaces, gravel paths , smooth roads and tight brick paths. The tire wear has been totally unacceptale, I've never experianced this kind of wear. The trike came with Shwalbe Marathon Racers. Could the alignment be out, I just don't know. I've never had this problem with my other trike. I'm running the Shwalbe Marathon on the front 2 and the Marathon Plus on the rear. These seemed to be new tires when I picked it up. The fourth picture is the rear tire. Any suggestions.......Thankyou

If those are newish tires then something is wrong with them or the trike.

As I said these tires seemed in new condition, and the shop guys said the trike had'nt been rented out before so the wear just does'nt make sense. Could these have been faulty tires. I've never had any problems with Shwalbe tires in the past actually thats the only brand I've ever used, 4yrs now.

It looks like the alignment is off, and wearing down the tread as you ride.

That's definitely not normal. I take it you're not doing power slides and other rough stuff with them, but even if you were that shouldn't happen in just a few hours.

the only rough stuff was riding fast on the gravel paths, definitly no power slides, I'm 56 and not into rough housing anymore. I'll be taking the trike back tomorrow and hopefully get some answers. I really like this trike, but at $2,500 CDN new tires and an alignment will be needed.

That ain't right. You need to fix the alignment, pronto. The alignment should be done with your weight (or equivalent) in the seat or frame flex and bushing play will throw things off.

thanks guys...this forum is awesome, knew I could count on help to this problem. Be heading down to bike shop this morning, and will report back as to the outcome.........Thanks again

Here's a page worth looking at regarding Toe adjustments on the Catrike. http://bicyclepatents.com/setting-to...-catrike/1185/

LBS confirmed , toe in alignment was out. They fixed it , replaced the tires and I bought the trike. I could'nt be happier. Thankyou "altozwei" I bookmarked that article for future reference. And thanks to all who helped out