Cycling UK Forum

I should have asked sooner I guess having just made a down payment on a new AZUB T-Tris 20. It will be my 5th trike.

you mean you will have 5, or you have had ( and moved on ) 4 or 3 ?

I am currently trike-less, it's the 5th I have owned:

2007 ICE T
2008 Catrike Speed
2010 ICE Sprint 26
2015 Catrike 700

Hi
Another one here,have Tricon 26 but will be up for sale as I have 3 trikes at the mo.nice fold and super smooth to ride

Hi also a sub triker,have a tricon 26 easy fold and a smooth ride. Will be up for sale as I have 3 trikes at the mo,enjoy your azub one of the best trikes out there.

A picture of my azub tricon 26

That Tricon 26 looks very nice. I decided I wanted the smaller rear wheel though.

My trike has been built and is now being shipped. AZUB have been a pleasure to deal with. I made the payments by bank transfer using the SEPA system. My bank charged £9 per transfer. The exchange rate was about 2c below the visa exchange rate.

The trike arrived today and ... it's yellow . I've lifted it out of the box but that's about it for now. I've been dealing with phantom punctures on the Nazca.

Pics of the set up and first ride.

nigelnightmare wrote:Pics of the set up and first ride.

Will do, just as soon as.

I went for a minimalist spec only adding rear mudguard, lowrider rack and bar bag mount. I need to swap out the Durabi crankset for one with short cranks. I might ask Mike Burrows to shorten the Durabi set. I have fitted the rear sub frame so far. I didn't pay the extra 300 euros for the folding hinge.

Sorry no photos yet. It's not been outside, it's still stuck in the living room. Some observations after putting together:

the kingpin wheel axle mounts are really neat and make sense
the steel handlebars which mount to a stem underneath the frame must weigh a lot
the rear subframe felt very light
the rear wheel with 11-34 cassette felt very heavy
the seat stay adjustment is fab
I'm not convinced about the trigger shifters - you can't see the optical indicator for a start
the IPS seat positioning is a mixed blessing. You have to set the upper mounting bolts at precisely the correct width or you risk the seat coming off and gouging the frame tube. Also it takes more time to set up the trike since the seat position should be set before adjusting the leg length.

I have replaced the oem rear wheel with one I made earlier (XT hub, Alex 101 rim, HG80 11-32 cassette). This is 230g lighter.

Next up is to replace the chainset for one with short cranks. Yet another reason I haven't completed the "sizing".

Short cranks installed with 28/42/53 chainrings. The OEM crankset had all alloy rings and chainguard which is quite impressive. Nonetheless the Ultegra crankset without chainguard and short cranks is 275g lighter. I need to check and adjust all the gear changes. I am tempted to install a bar end shifter for the front derailleur. I've often had trouble with with trigger shifters and triple cranksets on hybrid uprights.

Having got the gears I wanted as well as the seat positioned the way I wanted, I adjusted the boom length and noticed that the chain was too short. When you order an AZUB you provide your height and they set the trike up to match. But I had switched to short cranks and had the seat about 3/4 of the way along the seat rail towards the front. It was at this point that I looked up the Sora RD capacity, 43T assuming this is the R3000 RD. And I needed 46T capacity plus a couple of links to address the shortfall. Hence I added 4 more links.

I put the trike into the big-big combination and it was fine. My initial reaction was that I could remove one of the added links (two might have been pushing it.) Then I saw that the RD couldn't come any further forward because it was obstructed by the deep section chain stay. How odd. The RD angle was less than 45 degrees from the horizontal but couldn't come up any more.

The result is that I have chain wrap in 5 of the 9 gears when on the granny ring. So I should only use the granny in the bottom 4 gears. The 4th gear duplicates the bottom gear on the middle ring, so that works ok - no effect on the overall range.

I could install a 9-speed shadow RD with a 47T capacity but it might still be restricted by the chain stay. Also it would get even closer to the ground with the 20" wheel. I think I'll ride it for a bit before deciding.

I'm not happy with all the chain wrap leading to a slack chain when it's parked in the small-small combo, and with an RD operating capacity limited to only around 36T. It looks to me like the extra knuckle with the shadow design might mean that the RD would no longer knock on the chainstay and give me more capacity so guess I'll just have to try mounting a Deore M-592 I have in a box/

UpWrong wrote:I could install a 9-speed shadow RD with a 47T capacity but it might still be restricted by the chain stay. Also it would get even closer to the ground with the 20" wheel. I think I'll ride it for a bit before deciding.

It's actually very hard to catch a derailleur on the ground even with a 20" wheel, the tyre lifts the wheel before the derailleur hits anything.
I only did it twice in the 4 years I used a rear derailleur and both times where on very rough rocky offroad tracks.
The main downside is the lower the derailleur is the more likely it is to get jammed up with grass/twigs where going across a field, the tyre flattens the grass onto the chain which then pulls it into the jockey wheels.
I now use a chain tensioner with a Rohloff.

Luck ..........