This part of our site is being devoted primarily to all those home builders who have sent in photos and stories of their recumbent creations. I hope you enjoy seeing and reading about these fine and very personal creations.

 

	Woody: This was my first adventure in wood bike building. This bike was  great! Fun to ride, and a real eye catcher. In over 2000 miles Woody never let me down. Because of its 'robustness' (weight) this bike was fast downhill, a bit slow on the climbs. This bike has been decommissioned (a decision I sometimes regret) to make space in the bike garage. I'm sure some of its parts will be reborn in an updated design. I've left the construction sequence for Woody on the site because the information is still as valid as when it was built back in 1997.	Measured drawing of Woody
	TreeBike: This bike was built for my wife Sue and is quite a bit lighter and more responsive than Woody. At first this bike was not too cool. Looked great, rode crummy. It pretty much sat around and collected dust for a year. Much to my surprise, it  just needed to be adjusted a bit. I fixed front wheel alignment by filing a deeper recess in one dropout and shimmed up the rear triangle mounting to compensate for slight twist in the frame beam. This was originally to be Sue's bike but in the Spring of 2001 she got a Wizwheelz TerraTrike (check my TerraTrike Modifications page ). She has been riding the trike so I modified Treebike so I could ride it. Longest ride so far is 52 miles and although it handles badly on gravel (too much weight on rear wheel) it climbs and sprints like a champ.

Background:
In the summer of 1996 I bought a used Maxam DL Reveille recumbent bike. The idea was to see if I really did want to either spend big bucks for a quality manufactured bike (not likely) or at least use the Maxam to see what features I would want to incorporate into a homebuilt recumbent.

The Maxam is not a bad bike. It is a little heavy at 44 lbs (including fenders and luggage rack). The components are not too bad; Shimano Alivio crank, derailleurs and RapidFire shifters. It took me a while to get used to the thing but by the end of the Summer I could ride farther and more importantly, more comfortably on it than on my Peugeot upright bike.

The Project:
The plan was to build two recumbent bikes before the Spring thaw; one each for Sue and I. The following factors were to determine the direction of the design and construction.

• Comfortable to ride

• Proper gearing to allow reasonable pedal effort in our rolling area

• Re-use as much of the old upright bikes as possible (frame & components)

• Durable enough to be trusted on extended tours

Click on one of the two links above to see how the projects turned out.

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