[trikes] steering design question

[Julian Edgar]

I agree with Ian. I spent a few hours recently in shop selling equipment for
disabled people and wasn't very impressed by the standard of the
non-motorised equipment. That said, I haven't seen the equipment the OP is
talking about - but the shop I was in was very successful and was selling
what purported to be top equipment. 


Regards,

Julian Edgar
www.julianedgar.com



-----Original Message-----
From: trikes-bounces at bikelist.org [mailto:trikes-bounces at bikelist.org] On
Behalf Of Ian Sims
Sent: Saturday, 30 October 2010 4:44 PM
To: trikes at bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [trikes] steering design question

In my biased opinion all these machines are compromised against normal
bicycles from an efficiency and performance point of view.

For a start you have only one person providing the motive power, so that the
non-active person is deprived of exercise, and the other person is
overworked. Then you have the increase in weight and drag over a couple of
bikes. And finally terrible road holding, handling and balance compared to a
bicycle.

This is why we have built recumbent tandem trikes, where one rider has hand
cranks, and the other foot cranks.
These machines have performance that is on a par, or better than standard
bikes. Plus the stability is better than ordinary bikes. 

With such a machine, Karen Darke and her partner toured New Zealand and the
Himalayas.

http://www.greenspeed.com.au/ownerweb.html


Regards, Ian
Ian Sims, Director
Unit5/31 Rushdale Street
Knoxfield VIC 3180
AUSTRALIA
Phone +61 3 9753 3644
Fax +61 3 9753 4434
Email ian at greenspeed.com.au
Web www.greenspeed.com.au

Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 21:36:46 +0100
From: John Turvey <johnturvey at onetel.com>
Subject: Re: [trikes] steering design question
To: Alex Richards <alex.richards at orange.fr>
Cc: trikes at bikelist.org
Message-ID: <154F9E59-E2D3-11DF-B60E-00306566DC3C at onetel.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed


On Thursday, October 28, 2010, at 07:21 PM, Alex Richards wrote:

> My wife was recently told she should use a wheelchair due to her ME. 
> As keen cyclists we'd like to continue, and so I've been looking at 
> designing an attachment for her chair which would convey it to 
> something like a Vietnamese cyclo rickshaw
>
> http://www.rfleming.net/diarypics/Huecyclo2.jpg
>
> Only thing I'm not certain about is the location of the steering 
> pivot; should it be between the wheels like a kids soapbox kart, or 
> behind the wheels like another conversion I've seen?
>
> Any advice would be gratefully received.
>
> Alex
>
>
There are several commercial machines available which are similar to this,
where the wheelchair front and the 'cycle' rear can be split so the
wheelchair can be used separately (in cafes etc) - however, the wheelchair
part is much sturdier than a wheelchair, as it has to withstand the higher
speeds of cycling - from my recollection of these sorts of machines, the
steering pivot is slightly in front of the front wheel centres - to provide
some trail and (presumably) damping to the steering.

Have you looked for this sort of machine on the web - a good starting point
is the Velovision Special Needs Cycling Guide at

http://www.velovision.com/cgi-bin/show_comments.pl?storynum=559




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