Brian

That will most likely result in loss of blood or broken bones with him.

East Hill

Oh, yeah. Uh, never mind WTP! No photos necessary .

East Hill

Capn ¡FUN!

nice! are those 16" wheels or 12"?

roughrider504

Cool! Next step is extending the rear?

basscadetz

not really an "alt" bike but this is my daily.

basscadetz

schwinn fleet frame about 1999-2000, not sure, powdercoated for free by a friend of mine
stem from a 1970's fuji
the bars were one purple and on a girls walmart mtn bike shortened, flipped, rattlecanned
gt crank and xs chainring
the back hub is freewheel with the mount for disk brakes, dunno if ill use it
the lights are the old school kind with the generator that touches the wheel, schwinn
mesenger seat from the 50's, chock full of rust, yay.


in case anyone cared...

East Hill

Of course .

It looks very handy.

East Hill

Sledbikes

fresh paint

East Hill

^^^
Electric, and eclectic at the same time .

East Hill

funrover 

Here is my hidious alt ride!! But it's fun!

Sledbikes

Fiberglass it

Fast Eddie

that bike is ridiculous.............. and i love it!
fast eddie outty

East Hill

Do you have to keep adding duct tape? How long have you been working on it? Do you live where it's dry (I think it would not last too long here in Puget Sound )?

And yes, it's fun!

East Hill

Wheelchairman

Are "Alt Trikes" allowed?

Brian

Yes. More photos please. Lots more photos.

East Hill

Is it an alt bike? Yes?

Absolutely! And yes, photos are always good.

East Hill

Wheelchairman

More pics hey? I'll try to mix it up a little


This is the plug. Took 14 weeks to build. About $1000Aus of auto bog in this baby! Weighs about 200kg


This is 1 of 2 fairing moulds. The 2 go together obviously, with the frame bonded to the floor.


The frame/chassis is a carbon fibre space frame construction. Frame is built in a jig containing all steering geometry, wheelbase and track. All tubes are built in house on a mandrel. Front wheel hubs are drum brakes. Hubs are hand built, taking about 12 hours to manufacture 1 hub. Seat is a bucket, allowing some pretty insane cornering, due to being able to push body agaisn't side of seat to lean weight over inside wheel. Steering is "push-pull". Think of a bobcat steering setup and you're on the money. Chainring is 65 tooth. The complete package minus the fairing weighs in at under 10kgs- about as much as a mid range roadbike


The complete vehicle minus paint. Fairing is Kevlar skin, with carbon (and in later vehicles, fibreglass) "rollcage" monocoqued into fairing skin. Entire fairing is vacumn bagged. With paint and external rollbar, the entire complete vehicle weighs in at 19kg/40lbs


Our vehicle is very fast and our riders very fit, being able to average up to 46km/h over 24hrs of racing through up to 200 vehicles at a given track. On the open road we are even faster, being able to average 60km/h+ (see vid below)


Rollovers are common and quite dramatic in our HPV racing. Here is a pic of our vehicle being pushed over whilst going around a very hairy corner.


Some blood on our side windows. Being fully enclosed and strapped in with a 5-point safety harness doesn't guarantee you won't get injured in a rollover. There are gutters, barriers to smash into and occasionally, 50km/h impacts into bridges .


We are an independent, unsupervised team of 16-23yo males from Australia, who love building these things together. Its trhe most labour intensive and life consuming hobby I can think of, with a vehicle taking 10 months to build from scratch to use basically for one race campaign. We are the most successful HPV team in Australia. Website in sig VVVV

VIDEOS

Myself and Rowan riding in a 64km time trial

Me riding my trainer back in the day. Demonstrates the cornering prowness of a tadpole recumbent trike

Footage of our vehicle at the last race we competed in, back in April/May (can't remember)



Hope that's adequate!

Michael.

Brian

Nutters! Great photos and commentary.

CF4L

that thing is just plain fantastic. I love the idea of the push pull stearing, as other HPV's I have seen have always had the most awkward steering arangement.

East Hill

And here I thought I was crazy !

Beautiful, beautiful.

East Hill

Blais

Wheelchairman,
Honestly, no BS, THAT is the cooles thing I've ever seen with pedals and wheels. Seriously, I love it! What's the top speed? How well does it do in competition? How hard was the frame construction? Total weight with rider? Drag coefficient? Total cost?

Edit: In my ecitement, I ovelooked the link in your sig

Wheelchairman

Thanx guys. We work hard for no real reward, so it's good to know people find it interesting!

Couldn't agree more. We've trialed many different setups for R&D and have always disliked them. Wether it was the feel of the steering or even the way it forced your body into certain positions.... I don't think you can beat our setup for practicality, altough the setup is complicated initially. Here's a pic of one of our kingpins- the things that steer the trike;


4130 Axel and kingpin, with carbon fibre steerer and ackerman arms.

I'll imperialise it for youse non-metric folks . We run at different speeds depending on the disipline. In a typical 24hr circuit race we run a 65t ring. We are clocked through the speed trap at one circuit, consistantly, at 43.5mph. On open road time trials we run up to a 72t ring and have clocked 60mph on a flat with a tailwind and 74.6mph down a hill in similar conditions
In competition we go pretty well. We have been beaten only twice since debut in 2003, and one of them was in very dodgy circumstances. Our run of results goes something like; 1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 1st, 1st, 2nd. We hold lap records at every track we race at and a couple of distance records at times (it's very competitive racing). Here's a race report I wrote on our last 24hr campaign we did, back in March. It's a good read! https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=281703

Building a carbon frame is easy, yet extremely time consuming. Some of us have been doing carbon since our mid teens, and actually find it easier then welding, if you'll believe that!
Total weight with rider depends on the rider, but with me in it the entire thing weighs 220lbs/ 100kg (80kg weight plus vehicle)
Drag co. is unknown, yet we had an older vehicle wind tunnel tested for half a day and that is how we developed this shape. Wool tuft tests are also common.
Cost is quite high. $10KAus per vehicle constructed, which includes traveling to the race. We put in 40% of total cost, and sponsers and fundraising efforts pay the rest. We have some very good sponsers, willing to give a unknown sport such as ours a chance.

StephenH

One thing I have wondered about is that it seems a major problem would be the rider getting overheated without the airflow as on a standard bicycle. Do you still have to work a good draft up through there? Or race on cold days?

Brian

AU$10k is not so bad. When you factor in the much lower cost in the US, (for everything) it could probably be almost affordably over 10 months. Where can I get plans? After all, this thing starts at US$10k.

Wheelchairman

That is an issue we are constantly fighting. It's extremely easy to get air inside the fairing, but making that air "blow" onto the face is an art. It seems to be about aero and cutting an intake and an outtake that, due to their dimensions, produces adequate pressure. We have a intake on the "hat" above our windscreen and "shark gills" on the section after the door opening. Here's the inside of the intake, just after layup;

It's the best system I've ever experienced, and I've raced in 6 different vehicles since I was 16. We concerntrate on the upper body only. The legs are fine mostly because they're disturbing air as they rotate.
Hot days are pretty common, with half our races being late spring- mid summer. Hot days are unavoidable, and cold days are much appreaciated . Some races have seen 38*c/100*F days, so our fairing heats up to close to 60*C/140*F. All you can do is rotate riders quickly, or race with a head out design, like this vehicle;

This is "Tru-Blu" which came 3rd in this years Australian International Pedal Prix

The thing about us is that we use very exotic materials, which accounts for most of our costs, plus we build a new plug each year as our vehicle's design evolves, so there's a grand there......
Here's a good example.


THis is "Blueshift". They're a fellow competitor and our biggest rival. Sure, their vehicle looks advanced, but it certainly isn't. The fairing is made from coroplast sheeting and their windows from polycarbonate. Their chassis is a cro-mo spaceframe. Total weight is 50lbs. I estimate that this vehicle cost, at the most, $4000Aus to construct. It's simple yet effective. Blueshift just prove you don't need to spend big money to go fast.

Plans? We don't have any on offer I'm afraid. Plans from greenspeed trikes are easy to get though. IMO though, if you want something fast, you have to build it yourself from nothing. Most recumbent trikes manus' design things with the "recumbent rider stereotype" in mind. That is, a big fat old guy with a santa claus beard who rides at walking pace speed with a talking parrot on his shoulder . They can't be pushed to the limits of adheasion that one of ours can. Its a weird issue, and I certainly can't help from over here
As for that link to the velomobile........ no wonder popularity is lacking in this area. That thing is ugly and agricultural. Plus the aero is all wrong and it's typically heavy. If you want a real velomobile then people gotta stop looking at Europe and at Australia instead.


Take Trisled for example. This velomobile came 4th at AIPP. And it's a production trike racing custom rides. Having HPV races over here allows local manufactures to test their designs and ideas to their limits, and this only benifits the customer. You can pick the above machine up for $7000ish Aus. It's aero, its sub 44lbs and it's practical to work on etc.