The IDlers

and the rear idlers have the rear chain to cross once to reverse the drive and the keep the chain in line with the chain rings
The middle idlers to keep chain tension and to have the chain going straight on to the chain rings.

This the front idlers to get the chain under the front of the trike

Here is port side of the jACK sHAFT where the chains come together as one.


The whole trike messily stitched together can ya see the reinforcement changes.

oh parts, all the parts

Well here i am working on the trike about a month ago.

I am setting up the rear derailleur to try to get it ready test ride. Unfortunately we found it to be a bit unstable so we could not take on a ride that night for we had to stabilize it.
We did and you well see in the next post i make today.











The Front seat.












The rear seat.

also we have just put the chain on to find out where to put the idlers.











Rear cassette












The Jack Shaft for transferring the drive the two peddlers on the port side to the starboard side where all the gears are.

I'm blue, da ba dee da

All dressed up, and nowhere to go. Nowhere, that is, except Fiberglass City! It's like Paradise City, but stickier.


Swirly scene transition! *doodle de doo doodle de doo doodle de doo*
Oh look, Alton came to help us wrap the joints! Such a kind soul.
What? A betrayal! Nooo
And lo, the fiberglass had been completed. And it was good. And blue.
Purty!

Cuttin' the glass fibers

"Careful not to cut the wrong one, Jim!"
"What, why? *snip*"
"No! You fool! When cut in the wrong order fiberglass ex-" *KABOOM*

So we decided that plain ol' fiberglass strips just isn't enough overkill for our project. Thus came the idea for interlocking joint-specific shapes. Here we are, painstakingly measuring out specific numbers of each shape from the templates we've designed.

Mmm, glass fiber. I'll be itching this stuff out of my work clothes for weeks to come!

Hey, that's quite the sheet we ended up with! Now it's time to cut, hooray! Oh, that's only half of them? :(

The neatly arranged piles are our finished product, the unruly bunch in the corner are our scraps. The papers discarded vaguely into said bunch are the templates, once we had no more need for them.

Time to wrap some joints!

a staged design

here all most of designs i drew up before ending on a final bike design.
this trike would been a lot harder to build and a lot heavier. not mention the fact two of the three rider are out side the wheel base, which, would cause the trike to be unstable at high speeds. thanks Colin for pointing that out.




this is the same bike but with circus tent set up in the middle. in which a puppet show could take place.







another trike it is a lighter design using suspension for the storage racks.
still rider out side of the wheel base.







in this one i was trying to get the two rear rider back in to the wheel base








yup same old











here i am trying out the delta design of a trike
instead of the tadpole








and now four wheels?









ok..... i have given up on three riders









the fist design. months before all the others









and the final one. designed with the chosen material in mind bamboo.

Now it is almost a completed in the physical plain

FFFFFFFFFFFFF

..iberglass.

What?

So, we've (probably unnecessarily) covered all of the poles on the frame with fiberglass. Not many of the other bamboo bike builders out there are doing this but hey, it needs to ferry us across the country, right?

Isaac hard at work, unwrapping his present; is it.. it is!! It's Fiberglass, YAAY

So not only did we wrap it all with FG, we then wrapped over top of it with upside-down electrical tape to squeeze out any pesky air bubbles. It seems to have produced a reasonably pleasing aesthetic.

Shiny.. Anyway, now instead of ridiculously strong poles tacked together with crappy hot glue, we have ridiculously strong poles tacked together with crappy hot glue. Yes sir, we sure do know how to prioritize, I tell you what.

It's all starting to come together.. moo hoo ha haa

Pretty much finished the tacking togetherness. Aligning the back wheel has been a wee bit of a chore, but we muddled through.

Do you like the cantilevered support rod for the pedal housing? We know we do.

It's gaining width! now we could attach the two front wheels if we wanted to.. we just don't want to right this moment... (yeah we don't actually have the front wheels yet, they're still being shipped)

Ahh, Isaac, when will you turn from your foolish ways of sniffing fiberglass resin for a cheap high? Err, expensive high.. those bottles were $60.

Fiberglass test mark 001.00 completed!

...You might want to sit down.

So, here we are, inching ever-so-slightly closer toward an object vaguely resembling a bike. We're almost ready to do the fiberglass!

Hot glue gun is our friend. Tacking this thing together with bubble gum just would not do.

Thanks go to local apartment-dweller Rob for showing up with a bunch of zip ties for us, conveniently about fifteen minutes before we needed them. A little too convenient, if you ask me.