Cruzbike version of ilean.

An old cartoon showing a relaxed recumbent riding position.  If low stress riding is one of the aims of recumbent cycling, then that aim has been met by Maria Parker on the Cruzbike version of an ilean trike!

Hi

Late last year, after much emailing, quite a bit of argy and lots of bargy, I built and then sent some new bike parts to Jim Parker of Cruzbike.  These parts made up an adapter set to convert front wheel drive Cruzbikes to an ilean type trike, and included the rear wheel shafts detailed in a previous post.

My first version of an ilean is shown here on a 200k ride in November 2013, possibly the first long distance ride on one of these machines.

In late December last year I saw some videos Jim had taken of the trike and they mirror my feelings about the vehicles with the wheelset, they add stability to a bike!

So, anyway, as you may now know, Cruzbike have now installed and tested the ilean trike kit and are calling their version the Ttrike as per this blog post.

There has been a bit of discussion of the Cruzbike trikes on a few bulletin boards, here are a few links to some examples.

Bentrideronline.  Lots of it!

From a German list, Translation courtesy Google translate.

From the US, I aim to join this forum as they have some techy stuff on it.



Cruzbike forum, Now includes comments from Jim Parker on performance of the trike at a Human Powered Racing America meeting, as well as a link to the results spreadsheet for the meeting

From Brazil , a bit more perspective in this report, which seems to be from a general bike site, not a recumbent bike site.  The photo of the fully laden cruzbike clone is a wonderful thing. Someone on the forum did something very sensible, writing a summary of the trike performances at the HPRA meeting mentioned above in kph.

Facebook posting of video

French Discussion, Translation Courtesy Google Translate

Last night I wrote to Vi Vuong, the starter of the whole ilean thing and his comments were:

"Hi Steve,

Thanks for the link. It is a pleasant surprise that Cruze Bike is embracing our work. Hopefully the module will be offered as an inexpensive option, for any FWD bike.   It should encourage more recumbent adoption.

I have been riding bikes on the street a lot.  Monitoring and dodging cars is no fun...  Probably will get back on the trails with the trikes soon.

Cheers, Vi"

He is a gentleman and a scholar!

Regards

Steve Nurse