Sometimes life gets in between, and now is just such a moment like that. Me and my partner are separating so this past month and these coming months are going to be a rollercoaster. This also means I will not have a car anymore (which I anyway was lobbying to ditch) so my plans to get or make a cargo bike has to be accelerated quite a bit. So maybe I go and buy myself a cargobike of some kind, but I will still build a tilting trike, just not now, I hope to start when the spring comes around and shines some healing rays on my poor soul.
The steering
This is a quick Lego prototype of how the steering will work. The steering will be using double steering rods (as seen from the below photo) to avoid a sloppy steering, and it will probably go underneth/beside the main frame and the go up to the drag links.
Originally I wanted to combine the tilting with the steering but I'm missing some vital pieces, and since the Lego I have originates back to 1988 it's impossible to find. But, if you have a set of these please leave a comment!
A collection of links
Luckily for me there are quite a bunch of talented people out there that I can draw inspiration from. Both from successes and from failures, and here is a collection of useful links.
- A Google Group for tilting vehicles
- A tilting cargo trike on Instructables
- Tripendo, awesome recumebent trike with suspension
- Onya Cycles, a beatiful tilting trike with a nice close up of the suspension!
- Peter Elands fantastic page!, see through the 90's web design and check out the steering geometry and the Excel sheets that does (almost) all the heavy calculations for you! Awesome!
- International Human Powered Vehicle Association
- Some handy indian built a tadpole
- And my own Pinboarded links if you like to dig some more=)
If you got a nice rescource please post in the comments!
The tilting mechanism - take 1
The tilting mechanism... Some of my colleagues has adviced me not to try to build a tilting trike but to build a regular two wheeled Long John-styled bike, but that's too easy.
As I am not the first one to build a tilting trike, and not the first one to build a tilting cargo trike there are some inspiration to find on the web. For a long time I used this (failed) project as guideline, until I realized the steering "frame" are way too over sized, there is also no kingpin steering (although quite possible to add). Plus is that it's an easy construction (ie. can be easily modified). Minus is that transfering the power from the handlebar is hard to a steering design with just one link between the steering arms.
I found a german trike maker that have a very interesting tilting mechanism, and it doesn't seem that hard to accomplish. It's clean, it got a steering mechanism with two independent steering links which makes everything much easier, and it got suspension as well (which you can just replace with a fixed rod instead).
So I built a first version of the tilting mechanism, in Lego of course.
And a quick video as well =)
Start of a project
This is the start of a new project, a project where I aim to build a cargo bike and not just any bike, I'm going to build myself a tilting trike. And I'm a web developer from Västerås, Sweden, I write random stuff about zombies and gender (in swedish), or how to bend django, Javascript etc.
What?
A trike is a bicycle with three wheels, two in the front and one in the back. The reason for this is to be able to have a big space for cargo like groceries etc. To make things a bit harder I'm also gonna make so the bike can be tilted to improve curve handling.
But, but why?
Simple answer, I want to do something with my hands. I have been working with computers for the last decade and have been fiddling with them on my spare time ever since. I contributed to open source projects and started own projects as well. But sitting in front of the computer is only so much fun and I'm feeling my juices for late night hacking is draining so I have to do something completely different.
The plan
The plan right now is to clear out the garage to have some place to build. And to be able to do that I (or the carpenter) have to install a hacth up to the attic, and so on.
The actual build will me made almost the same way as I build stuff on the web:
- A sketch
- Prototype in Lego
- Drawing
- Scale model in wood
- Building and welding
Oh, I can't weld either, so this is going to be one hell of a ride =)
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