news

Look at the design page for info on the plywood velomobile construction.

Sunday 3 November 2013

for the homebuilders

Lately, I've received numerous requests if I have plans and parts lists of the bike. If you plan to build one from start, it's not a 3-guy-project, as the bike has a very simple basis: a sheet of plywood, bended, and glued to an aluminium tube. It could also be a wooden edge, but that would be seriously thick to get the same strength and therefore heavier. The rear wheel is placed in a separate triangular shaped box inserted from the rear, then the bottom is converted to a double bottom with an extra sheet to give the bike far mor torsional stifness lengthwise.The front wheels have been mounted in a construction that's common in velomobiles: Mac-Pherson. These are some things that are hard to see. About the rest, I'll make some pictures and put them on the blog soon. Intentionally, I don't give a shopping list: all parts are standard bike parts, so you should be able to get them locally. The body is made from 1.5mm plywood and glued with 355 (thin glue type) and 700 (thick glue type) types epoxy from polyservice.nl, reinforcements on all corners of the front wheel boxes with glass fibre sheets. I've only paid attention to the direction of the fibres for the load distribution, the obtained strength was "hoping to be enough".Shaping the body (front/nose section) this way will not give a true speed machine: see movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6y7Kg7GkWk that I've made from a speed test. Compare it with a side view from a glider air plane and you'll understand. On this blog, I've already posted numerous pictures that give lot of details. Especially for you here some additional pictures: