The Mark Garvey Recumbent Trike Is The First Recumbent Homebuilder Of The Month Club Member
The Mark Garvey Recumbent Trike project took the TrailMate FunCycle frame and made a number of modifications. Just to name a few, gears were added along with V-brakes for the front. Here is the full account by Mark himself.
Why would I bother modifying a recumbent trike that is essentially a “kiddy trike”? AH! You underestimate my cheapness! With a new recumbent trike running at 2 large or more, coming up with the funds on my paycheck is difficult! So some sort of inexpensive option was necessary.
The Trailmate Fun Cycle is about $450 fresh out of the box, which is better, but still more than I wanted to spend. Also the only way to obtain a complete cycle is from an authorized dealer. The closest one was over 2 hours away and would have to order one. But I COULD order “spare parts” from Trailmate Customer Service! I purchased a frame only (3 pieces) for $150 and supplied the rest myself (I also purchased a Trailmate Fender for $25 later) SO this is a LOW BUCKS recumbent trike! Don’t think that just because your cash outlay will be small that the performance will also be small. Within it’s limitations, the Fun cycle is perfectly useable and quite a good value. I do not mean to say that the Trailmate is an equal to such as the Greenspeed or Terra Trike or such. It is definitely on a slightly lower tier. BUT remember, the cost of this recumbent trike is much less! I enjoy mine very much and it will do about anything I want it to do! And I did not have to pay $3500 and wait several months either! I have a recumbent trike with 80-90% of the quality of a top drawer model for 10% of the cost. Besides, the finish on the Trailmate is first rate, and it is perfectly sturdy for my 235 lbs. So it is not “junk” by any stretch of the imagination. First off the Trailmate “Fun cycle” is a perfectly named vehicle! It is absolutely wonderful as it comes out of the box and I heartily recommend one to anyone who likes the idea of a simple yet effective recreational type recumbent trike. I decided to go slowly on the modifications and see how much I could do without any drastic action. OR the added expense! This photo is the Trailmate Fun Cycle in stock configuration. I added wheels and a seat of my own to the frame that I bought. The cranks come with it, but not the pedals. The result was quite effective. Trailmate has a seat available for about $60. I went to a local Tent and Awning dealer and had one made for me for about $30. Please note that Trailmate makes two other sizes of this trike that are equally enjoyable. However they are more designed for smaller people. They also make a quadracycle that looks interesting! In fact the Fun Cycle is not comfortable for people who have legs with much more than 40 or 41 inch X seam. The seat does NOT adjust! I have shorter legs and it feels slightly cramped in the stock configuration. I also made another slight change to the Fun Cycle that is worth considering. Evidently my arms are shorter than average too!
The stock control position is not particularly convenient for me. I added some bar end extensions to give me a better grip on the situation, which improved the feel of the trike to me. You can see the various bar modifications in the photos. Some worked well, others were not as satisfactory. But the Trailmate Fun Cycle does feature some interesting points that make it a very charming and useable machine in its stock state! It features two flag holders on the rear axel that fit standard bike flags.
It also has an interesting feature in that there is a “carrying handle” built into the Bottom Bracket so that you can conveniently pick the front of the trike up and push it like a cart or pull it like a wagon. This makes “ground handling” much easier than with even a conventional bike! If you get to a hill that requires you to get off and walk, you can simply pick up the front handle and walk along.
With most recumbent trikes you would be forced to stoop over and push! You can also easily use the Trailmate like a shopping cart. Dropping extra bags into the seat and pushing or pulling it along. Additionally, the design is clever in another way. To park the Fun Cycle, all you need to do is stand it up vertically. The trike will rest on the back of the seat and the rear wheels. Taking up a space 40 inches wide and 30 deep.
It stands only 60 inches tall this way. If you need to, the rear wheels remove by means of a pair of pins. This makes it slightly smaller overall, but does not allow standing it up. By the way, I usually keep my Fun Cycle in my full size Van. It rolls right in the side doors (I have a “door and a half” GMC panel van) and easily has room. This is a COMPACT little trike. Make no mistake, who ever designed this machine did a very well thought out job! It is also quite attractive! One word of warning that I MUST put in here is that while the trike is quite a good value, there is a tendency to weave or “wobble” at higher speeds and/or under heavy pedaling.
ALL trikes tend to “hunt” some under pedaling but it is generally no problem. With the Trailmate it CAN get bad enough to toss the unwary rider into the bushes! As my son in law Chad proved! He had to resort to the “Flintstone” style brake, which is easily done with this trike! Modifications that I have performed have helped in this, but it is by no means SOLVED!
It has been suggested that I add stabilizers in the form of a pair of screen door closers to mine, and I will probably do so. But the change in the trail has helped (I raised the front frame on the wheel) and I also have tied bungee shock cords on the frame to help control this. And tightened up the pivot points.
In truth, It has worked quite well though I did experience the high speed weave on a downhill run in snow that became a slide under pedaling. So there is that to think about. This is not a high speed downhill runner! On the other hand, under most circumstances, speeds of more than 15 mph are not a real difficulty! Since my riding style is usually (sadly!) slower than this, no worries! I will have some more thoughts about solving the problem at a later point! The seat is very comfortable and the seating position is quite low to the ground. This makes it quite stable under most circumstances and the unique steering is great fun. To turn you simply lean your body in the direction you wish to go. It feels strange at first, but is actually quite easy to master in only a few moments! Riding with hands off the controls is easily learned within a few rides! I have had total strangers who have never ridden a trike in their lives take off and within a matter of 50-60 feet are carving turns with great grace and aplomb!
This is a characteristic of most trikes to be sure, but the Fun cycle seems to be a bit more enjoyable to the people who have tried it. Something about the idea of leaning into the turn is fascinating to some people. The closest I can come to describing it would be “recumbent Skiing” or maybe bicycle Luge.
The problem is prying the new rider out of the seat. One man actually offered to trade his Honda Civic Sedan for my Fun cycle, but I patiently kept applying the hammer lock until he relented!
Another friend borrowed mine and used it for a weekend with his children. It returned with fresh scrapes and scuffed tires! All he would say is that it was “fun”! By the way, if you want to transport it, it will fit in a standard car trunk, in a small pickup truck, or on a car top carrier. It weighs about 40 lbs complete. I have not attempted to put it on a car carrier rack, but I imagine that it would probably hang by the rear axel easily enough! In stock form The Fun cycle is not really adequate for more than casual recreational riding. Even though I did manage a few rides of 2 or 3 miles at a time. For more serious cycling, some modifications need to take place. To begin with, the single speed gearing, at a 42 or 43 inch gear, is somewhat low for an average adult, the coaster brake is inadequate for more than a modest speed (this is not a real problem honestly due to the low gearing!) So step ONE in the process of changing the Trailmate to a higher performance tricycle involves changing the gearing to make it more equitable for a stronger rider. Happily this is very simple. The front sprocket must be changed to a slightly larger one and/or the rear (drive) sprocket must be changed to a slightly smaller one. The only major modification to the frame itself at this point involves removing the chain guard and chain guard mounts, which are cut off with a hack saw to avoid rubbing on the larger drive chain wheel.
The practical limit is about a 42 tooth due to clearance problems with the chain stays. But by going to a 42 tooth and switching to a 16 tooth drive you can get a gear of about 52 inches which is more workable for riding around town or bike trails as long as it is on flat ground. Hills make life more difficult of course, but for most purposes, the single speed works pretty well if you are not terribly worried about speed. This minor modification will cost about $20 or less and involves obtaining a larger chain wheel and sprocket for the drive. (mine was salvaged from a wrecked BMX bike!) Personally I switched the whole crank assembly because the stock cranks are a bit short for an adult, and I prefer longer crank arms in any case. You CAN (as I did) obtain a conversion kit for the Bottom Bracket to adapt to a 3 piece crank, and move the chain wheel out a bit from the chain stays, but this will throw the chain line off a bit. So fair warning! But it did work! I discovered that the style of this trike is “casual”. I rode some quite long distances (over 10 miles at a time) on the single speed version before making the major frame modifications. For me, a 42 x 18 gear worked quite well. It was fast enough generally and allowed me to ride hands off for extended periods of time! This is a very interesting point! I rode several miles with my hands in my sweatshirt pockets! Turns included! I want to say this in defense of the humble single speed coaster brake version. They are simple and easy to use. If you are not in any terrible hurry, or do not want to mess around with cutting and welding the frame, this SINGLE modification of swapping out the gear ratio costs almost nothing, and will give you a nice recumbent trike that will be useable by nearly anyone over the age of 8 or 9 and will give years of absolutely fool proof service! I have ridden mine a great deal with the single speed and I enjoyed it immensely! Too little attention is paid to the simplicity and utility of the humble single speed. Yes, an additional brake would be helpful, but still! The trike in single speed mode is a tremendous value! But I was still unsatisfied with the “performance” of this little trike. I wanted better hill climbing ability (lower gears) and a better cruising speed (higher gears) and between tinkering and figuring, I found that my only option was to replace the front wheel mounts (it certainly isn’t a FORK!) with a wider version. Widening the dropouts with a jack was ineffective. So something needed to be done. Happily I had something available in the form of a child size 20 inch (wheel size), 5 speed bicycle that had come into my hands for repair. The rear wheel was “disimproved” by Mum running over it with the family Mini van and could not be salvaged.
Since the cost of repairs would exceed the cost of a new bike, Junior received a new bike, and I was offered the old one. (Spare parts, YAY!) Similar bicycles can be obtained cheaply at Goodwill, various dumpsters, yard sales or Wal-Mart. Note the difference in the two photos of the single speed and multi speed versions shown here. The procedure was this. After removing the front (drive) wheel and fender, I carefully marked the trike frame directly behind the dropouts. Then cautiously cut the frame off using a hacksaw.
A tip here is to go slowly and carefully. Make the cuts even and straight. Measure the width of the tubes against the dropouts on the 20 inch bicycle frame to see that the fit will work. Note. You can modify the replacement frame at this point if you wish, or do it before you start cutting the Trailmate. I cut the replacement just ahead of the seat tube and the downtube about 6 inches ahead of the Bottom Bracket. I wanted to keep that convenient handle! Allright, you have a couple of choices here. Personally I chose to replace the forward section of the Trailmate frame with the entire rear triangle of the multi speed bike.
You may wish to do something different. My reasoning was this. I wanted to use the V brakes on the child size bike. And I wished to use multi gears so that a possible 10 or 15 gears (I had a 5 speed hub) were available. So the Seat tube was necessary. It was simply LESS WORK to use the whole thing. Why re-engineer something anyway! Or as Fred DeLong often said, “If it works, don’t ….uh….MESS with it.”
IF your preference is for something with a different design, say a 7 speed internal hub with a hub brake, it would be simplicity itself to cut the chainstays and bottom bracket out of a 20 inch frame and use that alone as a replacement, which would keep the very nice clean looks of the original. If you were to do this, the result would be nearly indistinguishable from the stock form! In fact, this idea has great merit! But It was not available to me at the time. The end result however, was not bad looking at all! At least in my own opinion. To complete the transformation, you will need an angle grinder with a relatively thin, flat grinding wheel so that you can slot the lower side of the tubes on the trike frame and carefully fit the dropouts of the replacement frame into the slots. I aligned the frames carefully and clamped them so that they would not slip and spot brazed both sides in place (welding would work too) double checked the alignment, then gave both sides a good fillet braze to keep them firmly in place. Then cleanup and a coat of paint and it is about finished. All you need to do is install the wheel and drivetrain components. AS you can see from the photo of the trike in it’s “completed” form, it is quite similar to the original, with the exception of the “tower” at the front, but everything is quite effective and it rides quite well.
Shifting is quick and easy, even with the dreadful Shimano Tourney derailleur on the drive wheel (this will change shortly!) I have nothing against the tourney, it is just a VERY low end model. But like most Shimano products, it does work! Right now the drive train consists of a 42/52 Biopace chainwheel setup and a steel wheel from Schwinn 5 speed. The alloy rim and wheel from the original frame being tacoed and thus unusable.
I am planning to install a 3 x 7 drive wheel at some point giving me an outrageous number of gears to choose from. The GOAL is not “how many bleeding gears can I have?” but range! With the SRAM 3 x 7 gear and a dual chain wheel my gear range will be about 18 inches to about 114. If I go with a triple, I will get a low of about 15 inches. The actual number of gears (supposedly 42 or 63 in my estimation) is rather misleading! I would be perfectly happy with as few as 3 if they were spaced the way I wanted them! You can see the end result ready for the road (DECEMBURRR 27, hence the baggy pants, sweatshirt and toque! Note the snow shovel and ice melt in the background!) Notes on stability. OK, this trike has a small issue with stability. As a general rule it is not a problem for me, because I rarely exceed the “VNE” (Velocity Never Exceed) of about 15 mph. At some points I feel the trike begin to “tip-toe” slightly and I can smooth my cadence or slow down slightly. But there are some things you can do to help the situation. Increase the trail. By mounting the wheel lower in the frame this is effectively done already to a certain extent. So no problem.
You can also mount smaller rear wheels. The 20 inch wheels are fine, but if you go to 16 inch or even 12 inch, rear wheels the stability should improve slightly! What I have done so far has helped. Tighten the pivot points. This helps too, and doesn’t seem to make steering more difficult. The pivots are bolts with nylon bearings, NOT ball bearings as in a standard bicycle headset.
I have also made loops of 3/8 inch shock cord and tied them between the places where the two portions of the frame pass the closest as a damper. This too has appeared to be effective.
For me this has been a workable solution, though there are other ideas that I may try! Such as adding two inexpensive screen door closers between the two portions of the frame, that would also offer hydraulic damping. Another option available is a bit more drastic. Increase the wheelbase rearward. This deserves some thought for two reasons. Partially, I THINK that the wheelbase is so short that it does make the instability issue a bit more difficult to deal with.
So moving the rear wheels back will make the whole works more stable. This will require more welding however, and I prefer the minimalist approach. But this will also make two other differences in this already excellent little trike. It will add space for cargo carrying things and it will help solve the one small difficulty that has been a slight ….well, “problem” is not the word…
But issue at least, The front wheel can spin relatively easily, particularly on uphill runs. The wheelbase is quite short and the rear wheels are in a position where most of the weight on the trike is concentrated at that point. This may also be one source for the instability issue as well! The front wheel is “Light”. Which may keep the instability in the forefront.
As you can see from the above photo, the vast majority of my considerable bulk rests just over the rear axel! Changing the weight distribution so that more weight is concentrated on the front wheel may well improve both traction AND stability! All in all, the modified Trailmate Fun cycle has proven to be a very good trike for general purpose riding. I run it on errands in the neighborhood and for recreation on the local bike paths.
That is not bad for what you receive. It is actually less expensive than purchasing a Trailmate single speed NEW from the local bike shop and I am far more satisfied with it than I was with the stock single speed.
I find that I am riding it more than I do my recumbent bike, which was a bit more expensive! The Fun cycle is JUST that! FUN! I like riding it, it is more comfortable now due to the longer distance between the seat and cranks, more stable, and very ride able! At a low bucks cost too! Note that if you DO make a mistake in the welding and such that frame pieces are available as replacements from Trailmate relatively inexpensively.
Rear wheels to fit a ½ inch axel are available from Trailmate OR from bike shops, and some industrial supply houses. (Northern Tool and Supply is one) for about $15 each for 16 inch wheels and $20 for 20 inch. So there you have it. Mark makes it sound very easy and fun. Keep watching the Homebuilder Of The Month page for new reports and pictures. Are you next?
|
