Woody & TreeBike
A few years ago (like over 25 years ago) I decided that I absolutely had to have a recumbent bicycle but being a humble homesteader-type it was obvious that if I was going to ride a recumbent I'd have to build it myself. Since I am a wood worker with limited welding skills, it seemed logical to build my bike out of wood. What followed was the construction of two wood-framed recumbents; first 'Woody' and a bit later, 'TreeBike' and below you'll find links to the documentation of these two projects.
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
 |
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. |
|
 |
TreeBike:
This bike was built for 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. |
|
