The tinkering with bikes started out early ...
Unicycles, watercraft, trailers, attempts abound to make something special out of any old bike laying around. But making an ordinary means of transportation a bit more aerodynamic means changing the posture on the bike. So, one day wandering through the museum of transport in Glasgow, Scotland, I came across a recumbent build around 1930.
This design apparently disappeared for decades but got back in production in the 1980's in both the UK and the Netherlands in the designs of Kings cycles and Roulandt. But still, at the end of the 20th century the concept was pretty much ignored by the majority of the cyclists.
So what to do with this info ...
Of the different recumbent designs, the flevo racer concept struck me most.
So I took a saw, a welding machine and some official flevo parts and reformed
my conventional racebike into something you see on right picture.
Before welding a good plan certainly saves torch operation, so I made
a sketch of the racer in Autocad (r) to check dimensions and
steering stability criteria. You may download this sketch over here:
RACER2.ZIP (12KB)
The sketch contains a side view of the racer and a 3D model of
the seat superimposed on it. Final version of the racer is drawn in red ink.
This first project succeeded and nowadays, in the neighbourhood of Ede,
you might spot me and my son on a day off.
Both comfortable, with a clear view on the beautiful nature of the Veluwe.
In order to have a bit more transport capacity, I started to design a trike based on the flevotrike idea. As I didn't want to spend much money on implementation the design uses mostly standard mountainbike parts. With the large 28" wheel in front it also runs smoother compared to the stock 20" wheeled trike. Major drawback of a large front wheel is the risk of breaking spokes in sharp turns! It costed me one spoke per month when I first used the racer front end on the trike part.
Some detailed views of the adjustable crank axle (left) and the double hinged balance principle of the trike. It allows you to lean into a curve just like a two wheeled recumbent.
And to complete the collection. A second hand original flevo trike, manufactured 1991.
