Revamping one of my deltas

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Hugh: Thanks for providing me with an idea. A top like that may very well end up as a substitute for a planned body that, with the current speed of things, may be really too long in materialising. Simple, cheap, light, easily removed, and effective.
 
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Paul it does not give any sensation of tippyness at all, having said that I,m fully aware of the dynamics of delta trikes. As such, no fast corners, it gets treated as a cruising trike. My other with the 20" wheels satisfies faster handling urges. At 68 the ride and the scenery is of more interest anyway
 
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Paul it does not give any sensation of tippyness at all, having said that I,m fully aware of the dynamics of delta trikes. As such, no fast corners, it gets treated as a cruising trike.
With you on that , it is the unexpected that can catch you out ....Mercedes-a-class-moose-test-crisis-recalled

At 68 the ride and the scenery is of more interest anyway
2 years behind you and I second that (y) with the destination being a bonus ;)

Paul
 
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This will be the last of the pictures. The windscreen was added and the trike got a shorter but good test with it in place. Notice the black section under the seat with a rectangular hole. It provides a good base for the seat and also some storage. The piece of blue coro sitting on the seat just slides into the brackets on the edges, that offers some water proofing and hides the storage to a casual eye. It is a great spot for some tools, a phone, my wallet, etc. Also a couple short pieces of wood that in case of a flat can be used as a shim when standing the trike on end allowing an easier method of wheel removal. The pictures were taken on a local nearby trail. Its very dry here, without rain we may be heading into a drought.

 
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I think that looks a lot better than it's previous incarnation. If you put a backwards facing seat at the rear you'd have a tuktuk esque trike. :unsure: Have you thought about a pair of rolled up polythene sides, perhaps stored rolled on the roof but able to drop down if it rains? You could make them completely detatchable for those times you're certain it won't rain. They'd not necessarily need to be all enclosing but perhaps just enough to stave off the worst.
 
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Well 2 issues to report. I did manage to tip over at a super slow speed. I was coming home from a nice downtown ride and had reached a short section of a paved asphalt trail along the river. There was a bench at the top of a small rise with a few older gentlemen standing around and one guy on a mobility trike on the path. So I veered off the path to give them and me room. It was on a bit of a downhill camber. Trike went up on 2 wheels, I steered into it and recovered. Then I turned back up hill and over we went, prob at about 1 kph. No damage and the only damage to me was to my ego. Worse though is the rear hub motor I got from Ali Express. A lot of the spokes are loose and can't be tightened because the factory did not thread the spokes enough to allow any adjustment. I sent the company a message and their reply was thanks we will talk to the team about it. That wheel is now being removed, I am going to sell a Bafang mid drive motor and use the money to pay for a direct drive with regenerative braking hub motor. It is also Chinese, a Magic Pie motor but the vendor is in Canada, I've dealt with them before and the service is very good. Interestingly enough you can run it with a 24, 36, 48 or 52 volt battery. And Popshot I had not thought of roll down screens, seem's like a pretty good idea, just not sure where to go to source such a thing. Maybe a boat place.
 
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Ye Chinese aren't looking ad that. They use what fits and is cheap.
It is possible that they change it in the future, but then they are out of stock from what they have, or they need to order other ones as they aren't produced anymore.
 
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I did manage to tip over at a super slow speed. I was coming home from a nice downtown ride and had reached a short section of a paved asphalt trail along the river. There was a bench at the top of a small rise with a few older gentlemen standing around and one guy on a mobility trike on the path. So I veered off the path to give them and me room. It was on a bit of a downhill camber. Trike went up on 2 wheels, I steered into it and recovered. Then I turned back up hill and over we went, prob at about 1 kph. No damage and the only damage to me was to my ego.
Spooky I have tipped my Flevo/Python hybrid over this week as well , low speed and embarrassment as a lady in a car pulled up and asked the 66 year old sprawling on the pavement if they were ok :oops:

Paul
 
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Thick (1 to 2mm) clear pvc can be found on ebay. It's prime use would appear to be as a table protector but ought to fullfill the roll (sic) here should you opt for it.
 
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A bit of an overdue update on the delta. I did purchase a Magic Pie direct drive hub motor. And since these are normally pretty basic, they are throttle operated and have a series of lights to indicate battery strength so I upgraded it. I want it to have a PAS system where the rider sets the assist level and by pedaling the motor kicks in and helps out. For this motor that meant adding a couple parts from a British Columbia company called Grin Tech. They sell a piece called a cycle analyst which combined with a 12 sensor magnet that is on the pedal crank that is supposed to make the Magic Pie motor into a PAS system. For the life of me I could not program it to make it work. After a couple weeks of back and forth the vendor said if I sent it back they would try to get it to work. It was just returned to me today. Only thing is the wife and I had taken our travel trailer to a park about 300 km's away the week before and I put my back out riding the fatbike in the hills. So it's gonna take me some time to set the trike up again. We've been experiencing a heat wave here just like much of the western U.S. so I'm looking forward to riding a trike with a roof as a sunshade.
 
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Hugh, I'm not seeing any pictures, something that worked for me was uploading the pictures in the builder's gallery and then bringing each picture up in the gallery, right clicking to get copy picture link and then pasting that in the picture url box, might be the hard way to do it, but it worked as I had a problem with FB links changing and making the pictures go away as well
 
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There is a couple pictures about 8 posts up on this topic. The only change from those 2 pictures is I finally converted to disc brakes and a larger hub motor. This trike is 2wd, I pedal the left rear wheel via a jackshaft and the hub motor powers the right rear wheel. That type of drive system might not work on a shorter lighter trike but on my 8' long fairly heavy trike it works well, fairly smooth and no jerkiness when power is applied.
 
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Well my back is much better now and I have re installed all the components on the trike. I had added a power up/down switch from Grin Tech and the folks at Golden Motor had hooked that up as well. Yesterday, Aug 2/21 I finally got a chance to take the trike out for a ride. The Golden Motor people did a superb job of setting up the programming on the Cycle Analyst. I put a little over 32 km's on it riding around town and it is a real pleasure to ride. The trike is heavy but with me pedaling and using the lower power levels it took almost 6 volts to go 32 km's. The battery is a 17.5 AH 48V, charged up it's 54.6 so I estimate a range of about 40 plus km's per charge and I have 2 of them. The ride was mostly on the flat, a mix of moderate head and tailwind and a cruising speed of 23 kph on the longer trail sections. A fair bit of stop and go because I do like to be responsible and stop at stop signs. The roof and windshield kept the sun off my head and I still get a fair bit of breeze.
 
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The plan is to use the trike all this summer into around early November. After that I plan to remake the frame. One of the main things will be to lose the 2 rear bike triangles that currently hold the rear wheels and build Warrior style rear wheel holders. Also trim the weight down where and if possible. The seat height and pedal position plus knee clearance is just about ideal and the 2wd system work's better than I had hoped for.
 
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The fall weather is here now, we've had some rain so things are looking up. We are taking our trailer to a campground in the southeast corner of the province for a week then after arriving home I go pick up the thin walled tubing for the new improved 2wd delta. I found an inspiration on the web for a body style that I feel will look great. I will enclose a link to it. The builder is an artist, hence all the extra arty touches, what I like is the shape.
 
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Picked up the thinner tubing a couple days ago. I want to proceed on this version slowly. The weight lost by using thinner tubing will likely be mostly regained by the 1/2" electrical conduit that will be used to make the body outline. There are a few design constraints that I need to work around. Overall width is the first major one. Distance between the posts set up around my city to keep cars, quads, etc off bicycle paths is 36". So that defines the overall width.
On a positive note after several sketches for a main frame I'm getting closer to finalizing the frame design. A couple hours every day along with refining the dimensions and soon the cutting and welding will begin. I'm lowering the seat by approx 6" and raising the bottom brkt by an inch or two. This will increase ground clearance and lower the center of gravity with the lower seat height.
 
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Hugh

As your trike is open sided ? you could adopt my tilting seat solution to a narrow track 24" and high seat 18" ?

Tilting seat Pythons.

Paul
 
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When finished the trike won't be open sided. Like the link to the delta made by the artist fellow entry will be thru the open roof. Depending of course on this soon to be 69 yr olds agility. When I was finished with the fat tire version delta I determined never again to go with a full body due to the heat generated. However the aerodynamic benefits due to even my efforts at streamlining got me motivated to try again. This time the front will have a screen covered grill opening similar to a Lotus super 7. Coupled with enough rear venting I am hoping to be able to modify the air flow for comfort's sake.

I've been playing this game for years now. Not bicycle related but I used to modify older Jeeps to improve their off road performance. One was a 1976 CJ5. On that one I built a steel hardtop in order to get some heat in our winter weather. First test ride it had no rear vents and when I got it out on the road and up to about 60 kph the air pressure was painful on the ears. Back to the garage and designed and built 2 rear vents and problem solved.
 
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