The main boom and cross members are made from 1¼" x .049" box steel.  The chainstays are made from 1" x .049" box steel.  It uses a threadless BB, bolt and bushing kingpins and 20mm disc hubs on 16" Alex 36h AL rims.  The rear is an Alex 451 AL rim laced into a 7 speed hub for now, but my friend is still considering using a 16" rear as well.  It has a fixed boom to remove the need to play with chain length when adjusting for different height riders.  The seat has two tabs on the bottom and a quick release skewer goes through them and holes (every ¾") near the top edge of the backbone.

22 July 2006

     A fair amount of progress was made fairly fast.  The trike has a 7075 .090" AL seat with a single SS rear seat support.  It has Radius mechanical discs on the front with Avid brake levers, and Diacompe bar end shifters and Maxxis Hookworms.  It also has steel 152mm cranks with a 48/38/28 chainring set, some SRAM PC 951 chain and about 8" of seat adjustment as well as multiple positions to set the seat back angle.

     In the top picture the trike has the seat all the way forward for his daughter's set-up, and has a 28h 16" AL rear wheel with a Bontrager 8 speed hub laced into it.  With the Altus derailleur, in certain gear combinations, the derailleur cage hits the ground.  Not good, and we sort of anticipated that this might be an issue.  With that in mind, we were ready with the 451 set-up in the bottom picture.  Everything works fine now, but he has 7 gears in the rear instead of 8.  In the 2nd picture, the seat is set all the way to the rear for his wife's seating set-up. A simple solution for the derailleur length issue is to locate a good, short cage road derailleur for the 16" rear wheel, and we should be good to go.  With the 16" rear wheel, it changes the steering geometry a little, lowers the top speed, lowers the seat and frame, and raises the BB a little.  All acceptable changes though as the riders will not be speed freaks like us :)

     All that remains now is to do a little clean-up on the beads, sort out the rear derailleur issue if wanted and take a wire wheel to it for a little paint prep.  He plans to put some closed cell camping mat foam on the seat, but he wants to do something with the seat's design first, although he's not sure what.

20 Sept 2006

     The trike has been painted a metallic blue and assembled and will use three 16" wheels instead of the 451 rear.  The only real thing left to do is to install some closed cell, high density foam (like a camping mat) on the seat.  It looks a little small in these pictures but it supports riders from about 5' up to 5'8".