building a 4” tire set for a Warrior

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Mar 5, 2016
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Delaware
Aloha folks. I want to build a set of 4” wheels/tires for my Warrior project. I live near the beach and there are miles of beaches, sand dunes, and farm land.

I have built standard wheels a couple times. My truing stand can handle 6” hubs so I think I am ok there.

But I don’t know anything about 4” wheels, except that I need the floatation in the sand. I understand I need to modify the dimensions on the Warrior, but I want to build the wheels so I can base the trike dimensions on that.

Do I need some kind of special hubs, or will 36x110x20 mm hubs work? spoke considerations? I don’t know all the things I don’t know.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
Joined
Apr 15, 2013
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I myself am planning to build a fat warrior as well.
be pre-warned that the rims and tires get expensive plus the wheels. Your looking at $100 + per completed wheel.
Sourcing 36 x 4 rims is not easy. The tires are available from Bicycle Warehouse
then you will need spokes. Where did you source the hubs? I am using a pair of hubs w/ 20mm bearings but making them wider as they were/are for a narrow rim.
You wheel track (distance between front wheel centers) will need to be wider so they don't hit your leg when turning. My 20inch Street fighter track is 32" but looking at 36" for the fat trike.
for spokes I go to ebay and purchase from a guy called childhood dreams (can't find my bookmark).
good luck
 
Joined
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I used 36x110x20 on mine. The reality is there's no effective lateral bracing as the two sets of spokes are pretty much parallel making a "soft" wheel. Whether I'll get away with it or not remains to be seen. They were massively cheaper than anything specifically for fat rims, hence my choice. If I need to go to fat specific hubs I'll do so after exceeding what these std ones can do. I suspect sand will exert less lateral force than tarmac. The 20mm axle bolts weigh a ton and that'd be even worse for wider fat specific hubs. The completed pair of wheels, tyres and axle bolts weigh 6.5kg more than the very skinny pair below.


Both these are nominally 20" wheels. You really need the wheels before you make the chassis given the substantive difference.



Plenty of work left to do but I'm still working through this Covid so no vast amounts of free time.

 
Joined
Mar 5, 2016
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Delaware
thank you both

I found Childhood Dreams on ebay for spokes

I plan to use Origin8 hubs (36x110x20 front, and 36x170x20 back)

There are a number of 20”x4” rims available in searches using Google.

There are a lot of different tires to choose from. Where I live there isn’t much snow anymore, but there is always sand.

thank you for the side-by-side tire pictures. It looks like the Warrior plans are going to take a lot of changes.

Are those 180 mm brake discs?

As far as I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be any special tricks to the wheel build. I guess I will find out.
 
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hey popshot, that is an interesting front wheel assembly. No cross bar??
The hubs I am going to use are originally for a standard narrow wheel I cut the hubs in half then going to epoxy the spacer in between then add some fiberglass. I have some pics somewhere on my phone.
YES the completed wheels will weight a lot
 
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The wheels came with a donor bike that had hardly been ridden. It's called an Avigo Monster over here. There are others too. I ended up buying two as I wanted a set for another project too. One was £80 and the other £60 IIRC. I'd pay that for just the tyres seperately. The spokes were even the right length to reuse too making the decision to use a 110mm hub even easier. The rear spokes required a kiss with the grinder to take a couple of mm off.

The disc is a 203mm. The smaller one on the orange wheel is 160mm. You can see the 4 alloy spacers each side I had to use to stand the discs off to clear the planned calipers (Yamaha R1 4 pot single piece casting ones). To get regular bike ones on would have needed only one spacer. The spacers used were the ones designed to screw on for a disc mount which I drilled the tapped rotor holes through. I had to space the discs because of the lack of angle of the spokes.

The wheels are 22.5" and 18.25" diameter.

The front end uses a piece of car anti-roll bar as a torsion suspension arrangement. It works very well as suspension but I'm unhappy with it's ability to locate the wheel. I tried the lateral stay to tie the two ends together somewhat which helped but it's not good enough. I need to do one of two things. Either make each wheel a sway axle or use double wishbones. Sway axles have horrible geometry but given the suspension only moves an inch or so the geometry shouldn't be a major issue. Double wish bones would be best and given the location assisstance from the suspension could be quite delicate. I'm also tempted to scrap the front suspension entirely and weld a solid axle in. The tryes have plenty of give anyway compared to regular sized ones.
 
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Joined
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A note to Oldguy, if you are planning to add an electric motor then a mid drive has more power for off road but the chain will be abused a lot so chain life is an issue BUT to be street legal, in most states, 20mph max. I just cobbled the rear derailer so it STAYS in low gear (the larger sprocket) and using a #41 chain. No need to switch gears anyway. Works well and lots of low end torque. Using a bafang
 
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Thanks for the suggestion. I thought about a motor, but my riding is for fun and most importantly, exercise. I have been a road bike guy my entire life. for many years I rode 15 miles each way to work, daily. But the east coast roads have become to crowded, especially in the Mid-Atlantic area. Being in my upper 60’s, 6’4”, and 300#, it seemed a little late in life to start Mountain biking, so a Tadpole was my choice.
 
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you may find you want the motor when you become a senior as you already there.
the motor has a peddle assist feature. will maintain speed even though you are not peddling as fast. A really nice feature when you get tired.
 
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