Melvang

Just curious. But does anyone make a performance-oriented tilting tadpole trike?

BlazingPedals

A fair number of home builders... well, probably not many. I don't know of any commercial builders. Tilting deltas are easier to build, and you won't find any commercial versions there, either. Something about a minuscule segment of an already small target audience.

CliffordK

There was someone one here that had made a tilting front cargo bike, I think, but of an upright design.

https://www.bikeforums.net/utility-c...ont-cargo.html
https://www.bikeforums.net/touring/1...g-touring.html

I'll have to look at how the tilting is achieved, but I think one might be able to make a pretty simple setup with castor & camber to force it to tilt when turning. "foo" Could one get enough tilt without too much with only a few degrees turning the wheels?

Of course, keep in mind that tilting may be fixed with the design and not dependent on road conditions.

BlazingPedals

I'm not up on all the terminology, but the kingpins are supposed to point at the contact patch. The trouble with a tilting tadpole is that if the front wheels tilt, the contact patch moves in and out, destroying the steering geometry.

CliffordK

I'm not sure that would necessarily be true. Yes about the kingpin pointing to the contact patch. The round bicycle wheels tolerate leaning quite well, but one may be able to keep the wheels reasonably parallel with the ground.
@hodala above appeared to achieve the ability to lean the bike using a double wishbone suspension similar to cars, although it appears as if it was leaning with the rider, and not specifically with turning.

However, I could imagine adding adding an extra rod from the steering to the wishbones so that turning not only turns the wheels but pushes the wishbones up and down (possibly both leaning and physically pushing the wishbones). Of course tolerances get tighter with a recumbent.

My proposal was to retain the generally fixed front suspension, but to change all the steering geometry so that turning right actually turns the wheels and tilts the bike. I think it is possible, but am having troubles visualizing the exact geometry at the moment. One would push down on the outer wheel and drop the inner wheel, but with then connected with tie rods and perhaps spring recentering, it should be generally stable as one side gets lifted while the other side is dropped. But, it may not be enough without going to the full wishbones.

Part of the reason for the kingpin angle is to prevent brake steering. But, a split hydraulic disc system should significantly reduce brake steering.

hodala

I like to say: the tilting and steering are independent with each other,tilting won't interfere steering at all if your design OK, its more difficult to handle the geometry trick than sports cars and long travel suspension buggies, you have to use 3D drawing software to design and simulate the moving linkage or it won't work out a precise mechanism

The CG of recumbent is lower than regular bike and you can't build reverse recumbent trike to narrow so don't need to tilt

I'm not an English speaking guy,not so easy to read and to do explanation

BlazingPedals

Leaning delta trike:


I believe the track is something like 17 inches.

Jeff Wills

Steintrikes built (past tense) the Wild Wave. I think they had more success with the non-tilting trikes.

adamrice 

This is an ancient list from an ancient website, but I'll link to it just the same. These are almost all concepts or homebuilds.

There was the Flevotrike, which I don't think is in production anymore. I don't think that was a performance-oriented trike, but it was a tilting delta. I visited the Netherlands in 1997 and vividly recall one whipping past me, which is what got me interested in recumbent trikes.