Tilting trike

 

 

 

This tilting trike was inspired by a Spanish builder, Carlos Calleja. He set up a Ducati motorbike with tilting rear wheels, and claims cornering speeds were up by 30%. Major brands like Volvo and BMW have tilting designs in the works. The Dutch Sascha Knoop invented the Driewiebel, a parallelogram tadpole trike.

 

 

The front part of the Separable Low Racer was working well, so a tilting rear part was thought up with the two wheel axles mounted on parallel mono arms, interconnected by a cross beam. The core of the tilting mechanism is the rotating bridge, connected to the mono arms by tie rods and rod ends. As recumbents need suspension by definition, this was isolated by a coil over shock element. Initial test rides revealed that a locking mechanism was necessary. This would make starting much easier with no need to unclip for stops. After a fair bit of head scratching, Eric Wannee pointed out the disk brake solution. It appeared to work very well, as long as the wheelchair parking brake wasn't locked at speed: this meant a sudden dive in the scenery. Somewhere in my future there's a faired tilting trike, possibly monocoque, but cost is an impediment for the time being.

 

 

The wheels too are a spinoff of the Separable Low Racer: aircraft Nomex sandwich epoxied in standard 406/18mm rims. Double angular contact bearings in the hubs were flawless over the past ten years.

 

 

I hope this will inspire other builders to venture off the beaten path.

 

 

 

 

drawn by Jon Schmid

 

Click here for the tilting trike in action ( 688 KB )( Windows Mediaplayer )
Click here for the tilting trike in action ( 929 KB )( Quicktime )