Building a recumbent bike - part 3

This weekend Mike and I made some good progress on our bikes.

First up, we weren't happy with the alignment of the rear triangle on Mike's Marauder bike, so we cut it off, adjusted, aligned, cursed, tack welded, adjusted, and finally re-welded the rear triangle. Note the "sacrificial hub" in the back forks. We needed something to keep the forks aligned while welding, but couldn't have a whole wheel in there as it would get in the way and probably catch on fire from the heat of the welder. So we cut up a wheel and used the hub.







Then we built the seats. They're just plywood, jigsawed into the roughly-correct shape, and connected to each other with angle brackets and bolts. The seat angle is roughly 120 degrees, which gives a fairly comfortable riding position. Here's Mike's bike with the seat just sitting on the frame.







And of course you can't resist a "test ride".











We fabricated a couple of support tabs to get my seat up off the main bar, and to provide the correct angles.










And here it is with the seat actually attached to the tabs.










And of course a "test ride". Looks like the distance to the cranks will be correct.










Next up, we need to move on to the steering hardware. That should be interesting as it's "remote steering" using a couple of ball joints and a connecting rod. And we'll set the locations of the bottom bracket (the pedals) based on what is comfortable for the rider. But before we get to that, we need to source the foam for the seats, as the measurements will be changed by the extra inch or two of form padding in the seat. We plan on getting together once more this week to make some progress on it as we'll not be around next weekend -- we'll be down home for Thanksgiving.


And finally, after a hard day of work in the garage, there's nothing nicer than lounging on the couch with the dog, watching poker.



Cheers,
Grant