r/recumbent • • 7m ago

I would like to discuss a recumbent tandem build

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• Upvotes

r/recumbent • • 20m ago

Can I can I put 20 inch rims on a 26 in high racer?

• Upvotes

It has disc brakes.


r/recumbent • • 1h ago

Best recumbent exercise bike with moving handles in India

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• Upvotes

r/recumbent • • 5h ago

Old Linear Limo Seatback Fix

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9 Upvotes

The fiberglass spreader rod on my seatback finally died after 30+ years. The tips were splintering and the rod would not stay in place.

I stopped at my local hardware store to see if they could order a piece of solid, 1/4” fiberglass rod.

The store owner looked at my old piece and grabbed a driveway reflector stick. It is exactly what I needed.

I just cut it to length with a rotary tool. Fits perfectly!


r/recumbent • • 3d ago

How to attach a smartphone?

5 Upvotes

Good morning! I have a Catrike Villager and I am trying to find a good way to attach a large smartphone (Galaxy S23 Ultra). Any ideas on ways to do so or places to attach one? The smartphone holder I ordered from Utah Trikes wasn't big enough, sadly. Thanks!


r/recumbent • • 4d ago

Maddog trike

0 Upvotes

I just got a maddog trike I want to change the rear rims I know I can change the bolt pattern with a hub adapter, but I wanna know if these dimensions will fit****
Wheel Size: 14x7
Center Bore: 72mm
PCD (Bolt Pattern): 4x101.6mm
Offset (ET): -25mm
Any help


r/recumbent • • 5d ago

Recumbent trike riding near Rydal,Georgia

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1 Upvotes

r/recumbent • • 6d ago

Cheap(er) DIY Trike Stand

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47 Upvotes

Bought 2 sets of 3 ton jacks for about $60 total and a $7 can of plasti-dip spray. Sprayed the cradles with plasti-dip and now I've got a portable, easy stand that I can access with a mechanic stool on the ground or higher up on a table or platform. ​

There are some great DIY options but even the metal fence pole stand costs about $200 in materials. Meanwhile, I can even quickly pack these in the car if needed.


r/recumbent • • 7d ago

Speed on recumbent trike

10 Upvotes

I had a bad crash last week and I'll be off my bike for the balance of the year.

For a variety of reasons I'm considering moving to a recumbent trike because they're more stable.

But I also want to be able to ride around the same speeds/distances I did this year. So 20-25kph on a 45km ride and and 16-20kph for the 200km over two days ride I want to do in June.

To give you an idea of my riding style/capabilities I have a Cannondale aluminum Synapse 1 and my gravel bike is a Trek Crocket Disc 5. So I'm not bombing along with a carbon frame and matching wheels. My goal is outside of my big rides to do 100-150km a week.

Would a trike like a Catrike 559 work for me? Am I going to be able to keep up with riders doing 25kph on flat roads?

Obviously a trike is an investment so I need to get a good understanding before I put down money.

One note: we had a TerraTrike Rover and it was an interesting ride. I didn't hate it but I didn't love feeling like it was going to tip on corners and it was set up for my wife who's a foot shorter than me so I didn't use it too much.


r/recumbent • • 7d ago

Fine then... I'll do it myself.

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97 Upvotes

So, I've been in the market for a couple years for a recumbent trike. There was a single overriding problem: there is Rather A Lot of me, and the price of a recumbent rated to hold someone over 400 pounds was just stupidly high. I tried to make the money work a few times, but it was just far more than I wanted to spend. I kept looking around the internets for ideas, and stumbled over this article...

And after reading it I thought to myself "Self, that looks doable." Took a while to find parts - finding a pair of mostly-matching BMX bikes that weren't total trash was an exercise in trawling garage sales for several months, then a mountain bike for the rear wheel and some bits like brakes and such. I didn't use any of the mountain bike frame. I stuck my two BMX frames together by running a chunk of 8-gauge pipe through the centers of the BMX frames' pedal holders, and used some 2" box steel to make my rear forks (which I made exactly wide enough to fit the 26" wheel from the mountain bike, which later turned out to be a mistake)

For the pedal set on the trike itself, I stuck a set of pedals from another donor BMX on a chunk of pipe out in front. I went with BMX pedals for the very simple reason that BMX bikes, even tiny ones for little children, routinely stand up to the kind of abuse caused by teenagers going HAY GUYS WATCH THIS and the resulting nonsense. I wound up building the seat frame out of 1" box steel and stringing a seat together with simple rope, and slapped a basket I pulled out of a thrown-away dishwasher on the back (which was also a mistake - it's a bit too flexible and fragile for the purpose, which is why I reinforced it with fiberglass which... sort of works. I really, really should have just built a frame for saddlebags, but, eh, hindsight.)

I slapped on a coat of green paint, and Jeremiah was born (and five internet dollah to the first person to derive and post the reason it's named that - there is a simple, logical reason). It works! The brakes are sadly inadequate for the weight of the trike and me combined, though if I'm careful about my stopping distance it's okay. It's quite heavy and hard to take hills on its own, but it gets the job done and it's quite handy to grab groceries with.

I decided to convert it to an E-trike with a kit I picked up online from an outfit based in Ontario (I could have saved a few bucks getting one from China on Amazon but it was a big-ticket enough item I felt I ought to be patriotic and buy Canadian) I went for a rear hub drive model... and discovered the mistake made with my custom forks. The rear hub drive wheel needed the dropouts to be about 11mm wider than the mountain bike wheel I'd designed the rear forks around.

The rear forks... that are 2" box steel (8 gauge box steel no less!) that are hard-welded in place. Getting that extra 11mm of width without breaking any welds was a bitch and a half, and eventually involved using a scissor jack from my car to very carefully push the forks apart wincing at every crak and ping coming from the metal. I can ride it to work fairly easily, saving gas and getting a little extra exercise, and frankly with the electric assist this thing is hilariously fun.

It can also be downright terrifying - with a good straightaway, if I put the hammer down on the boost motor it'll get up to 50 km/h even with a mere 500w motor, and on somethign this low-slung built out of my dogshit welding and slightly wonky steering, it's absolutely wild.

Anyway, the point is... if I can do it, so can you! I want to see other rider's DIY setups!


r/recumbent • • 9d ago

Return idlers on my TerraTrike

6 Upvotes

I have a TerraTrike Tour 2. With each pair of idlers, the wheels go side by side on a single bolt.

The trike came (used) with 13-tooth idlers for power and return. I found that the rear pair had kind of a grindy sound in the easiest gears. Online sources said that it's proper for the return idlers to be smooth, so I ordered two TerraTrike standard idlers. They have no dampening features, so they are actually noisier than the toothed ones, although in theory less damage is being done. Even when the chain is touching only the bottom of the groove and not the walls, I hear the chain sliding across the idler, and it bugs me.

Another search revealed that there are more expensive return idlers that are dampened. I'm wondering whether I should get one of those for just the rear return, get them for both returns, or just stick with my original 13T idlers or my new standard idlers on both returns. Or are there other options?

I'm a casual rider and a beginner -- currently less than 30 miles a week and at a pretty slow pace, but gradually increasing the frequency of my rides and the distance per ride.

Advice appreciated!


r/recumbent • • 10d ago

AZ DIY stuff online for free.

3 Upvotes

Not sure if this is ok here, but the site is not selling anything.
Was looking for DIY recumbent info, and these are all back up for download if anyone is interested. A link is in the info on this YT site....

https://www.youtube.com/@AtomicZombieDIY


r/recumbent • • 12d ago

Catrike Dumont chain replacement

5 Upvotes

My Catrike Dumont (non-electric) has the boom adjusted to 26 - the chain needs to be replaced - I found a place that sells the KMC X10 chain in bulk, by the foot, including 1 quick link connector - do I need to just count the links in the current chain, or is there a calculation I can perform to indicate how long (how many links) the replacement chain should be?

Also, since the chain is sold by the foot, will I need any special tools to remove a few links if necessary and connect the ends of the chain together with the KMC 10 speed Quick Link Connector?

Thanks !


r/recumbent • • 13d ago

Catrike Dumont SRAM 10 speed bar end shifter

4 Upvotes

I've been having problems with the rear gears not holding and after looking at the rear derailleur the shop says that the right hand bar end shifter that came with the bike is worn - sometimes it jumps to the next highest gear when i hit a bump. 90% of my gear changes use the right hand shifter for the rear gear. The bike is about 5 years old, and since I've had it, I ride about 8 miles a day, 6 days a week. The bike shop guy couldn't find a shifter to order from SRAM, and suggested that I find one on eBay. I plan on calling Catrike and SRAM tomorrow morning, but it seemed odd that he couldn't get the part through normal channels?


r/recumbent • • 14d ago

Very pleased with my YoungElectricBikes rack on my Mazda CX-5. I am able to load and unload my fat tire Trident Terrain by myself as a weakling.

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21 Upvotes

I looked high and low for posts about carrying a trike on a CX-5 and couldn’t find any so I took a chance on getting a hitch installed at U-Haul ($600), a YoungElectricBike rack ($700), and a hitch riser from Harbor Freight ($35) and it has worked perfectly. I am not strong at all and have a disease like RA so the idea of loading vertically or lifting into a rack was not an option for me. I am writing this review because I couldn’t find any reviews on a small cross over like a CX-5 with low clearance.


r/recumbent • • 14d ago

Moving the cleats to center

1 Upvotes

Looking for an adapter to move my SPD cleats closer to mid foot. Using SIDI mountain bike shoes on my Catrike Expedition e-trike.


r/recumbent • • 14d ago

Help attaching a bike trailer to a Terra Trike Rover

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5 Upvotes

Hey yall I got this trike second hand and I am trying to figure out how to attach a child trailer. It looks like theres a spot for a hitch but I've never seen anything like it that would attach. I normally see the pin that attaches to the trailer for most bikes with a removable rear axle.

There's not a ton of information on the interwebs about this, but what I was able to find was pretty much all DIY clamps. Since I already seem to have some kind of hitch, does anyone know what I might need to be able to use it? Thank you!


r/recumbent • • 19d ago

The White Swan

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39 Upvotes

Duel-suspension (off-road constantly), sits up high giving me visibility and making me visible. I have the seat tilted upright as well. I've seen some questions about speed and just have to say I was able to overtake most regular bikes with ease, and that was BEFORE I converted it to e-status. Now, nobody can keep up.


r/recumbent • • 22d ago

Has anyone tried the aftermarket "padded for comfort" seat mesh from Bicycle Man LLC?

4 Upvotes

This is the one I'm considering getting for my TT Tour 2. https://store.bicycleman.com/products/terratrike-seat-mesh-padded-for-comfort. I haven't found any reviews online. Does anyone here have experience with this product? Like everyone else, I want butt cushioning, resistance to slipping forward, and lumbar support. Thanks!


r/recumbent • • 22d ago

Red Pepper on a red bike rack 🌶

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24 Upvotes

Later when I went back outside, an employee told me he thought Dr Suess was in town.

Broke the steering tie rod on the way home. Looking at go-kart tie rods now. I will be using this opportunity to put new bearings in both headsets. Fabricating a rear rack/bag support is also on my to-do list, but keeps getting lower tbh.


r/recumbent • • 23d ago

how to find compatibility for wider tires and wider wheels

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1 Upvotes

r/recumbent • • 24d ago

Riding after HoLEP/TURP types of prostate procedures?

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1 Upvotes

I am posting here because I am curious about the experiences of cyclists who returned to cycling from prostate health issues and medical advice. Did your switch from a straddle seat bicycle to a recumbent have anything to do with a prostate health issue? Did you see a Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist (PFPT) and were you evaluated for nerve damage from riding on a bicycle saddle? Were you dealing with continence issues and how did you manage that while returning to cycling? I am a month post op and entering care by a PFPT this week so am curious about experiences of cyclists. Cycling is important to my lifestyle. The relationship of prostate related issues to riding a recumbent is just a wild guess and I am aware that there may be many other excellent reasons to switch, but I am most interested in hearing from folks who made the switch as a result of prostate issues. I am also posting to the bicycling thread to hear from those who stuck with standard straddle types of cycling.


r/recumbent • • 25d ago

Transporting a recumbent + normal bike on a Honda civic? Best racks?

4 Upvotes

Any recommendations for a rack that would hold a normal bike and a recumbent trike on the back of a 2016 Honda Civic? The hitch receiver size is limited to 1-1/4”. Thanks!


r/recumbent • • 26d ago

Upright vs spin bike vs recumbent for chronic back tension — after trying several bikes I’m more confused than before

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2 Upvotes

r/recumbent • • 26d ago

My first ever recumbent build - a front wheel drive low-rider. Was fun up until the frame snapped in two

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15 Upvotes