Cycling UK Forum

rower40 wrote:The Windcheetah is so close to the ground that one gets FILTHY from road-spray unless the roads are BONE dry. It only gets ridden in the summer

I remember that feature well, getting very odd looks from people in a pub, not realising I was covered in mud

Without any extras you get a shower of muddy water from above, from the rear wheel, and two sprays from the front wheels

Anyway, as I commuted, and it sometimes rains, I got a rear box fairing (a fantastic addition) to stop the overhead shower, and then, eventually, got hold of carbon fibre front mudguards. Dry! (unless you go too fast through a deepish puddle, when your bum gets drenched from the front wheel bow waves).

rower40 wrote:or if there's snow.

Windcheetah + Snow & Ice = Fun, fun, fun!

Did Mike Burrows the designer of the W/C trike
really say in his version of the owners handbook
"If its raining ? Keep your mouth shut on corners ! "
?????????? True or false ...come on Mike own up !

Nye wrote:So my question is then, <b>what are the BAD points of a recumbent</b> that everyone seems to not mention?

Tend to be heavier for a given number of ££££ (but Challenge do sub 10kg for 2000Euro) so a bit slower on hills (there's also an estimated 10% max power loss due to the raised legs).
Banned by UCI (for being too fast), hence not appealing to anyone with a herd / flock / pelaton mentality
Lots of chain (~2.5x that on a DF bike. but look out for Mr Burrows next 'bent - see Bikefix website or http://www.bentrideronline.com/).
Can't significantly change your position to balance - it's mostly all done by steering - which means relearning - and being lower to the ground your roll rate is faster (but you have less far to fall...).
Need to use a rear view mirror - but by using one I am much more aware of traffic than on a DF without a mirror.
Definitely can't stand on the pedals to see over cars / thro' 4x4's
Pluses for me include vastly superior aerodynamics (my days of riding 'aero' on a DF are long past) and comfort (no weight on arms / wrists, no wedge up the bum), plus the ability to carry loads of stuff if needed.

Squeaker;
I've had a look at Mr Burrow's new 'bent from the link provided.Now i'm no 'bent rider(though confess if the funds were available I wouldn't mind giving one a go)but that looks very slick/light/fast,and extremely "clean" looking for any bike let alone a 'bent.I wonder how much,well I suppose if I have to ask.........

I purchased a Grasshopper last year, great bike, took a few rides to get use to it, still slow on hills, but I am slow on hills with my tourer. Lots of strange looks still, this takes a while to get use to.

I have recently left the Recumbent in the garage since the roads in Somerset are awash with mud and I do feel that balancing with only the steering on slippery roads is tricky, I guess this is through lack of confidence. The comfort is the overriding benefit and much better views as you are not looking down at the road. Well worth giving it a go

I can think of a couple of factors that haven't been mentioned yet.

The distraction of balancing

This is obviously not a problem with tricycles, but recumbent bicycles are much more difficult to ride in a straight line, especially at low speed. The surprising, counter-intuitive reason for this is their lower centre of gravity.

A bike is like an inverted pendulum, the taller it is the slower it swings, so you have more time to steer into the lean. If you ever have the opportunity to try a high ordinary, you'll be amazed at how stable they are (sideways, if not fore and aft!) and how slow you can ride without wobbling. When the safety bike was invented its relative instability was a matter of serious comment. Most people of course, found they could nevertheless ride them reasonalby well. But recumbents take this to another level, where many people can't.

Those who do have the excellent sense of balance and quick reactions to ride a recumbent bicycle, are nevertheless a bit more wobbly than on a "safety" and find that more of their attention is diverted to the task of remaining upright when a steep hill reduces their speed. Pedalling accordingly becomes less effective, further reducing speed and partly explaining why recumbent bicycles go more slowly uphill. Tricycles will be slower simply because of the weight of an extra wheel plus supporting framework.

Blood pressure

Higher legs has been mentioned. All the natural legwork of the human animal (apart from swimming, which was never one of our specialities) occurs with the legs below the heart. In this position gravity aids arterial flow of blood to the legs, with contraction of the leg muscles pumping it back. It's how our bodies have evolved to work. Exercising the legs in a higher postition obviously calls for more pumping pressure from the heart, an additional load that surely must reduce efficiency - quite apart from any possible consequences for anyone with circulatory problems.

Sitting on your assets

Also consider the recumbent seat. It's comfy, why? Because rather than concentrating your weight upon a couple of bony protuberances it is spread across the broad gluteus maximus muscles. These muscles are not only good for sittting on however, they also play an important part in the action of pedalling. If you're sitting in a chair, clench your buttocks and note how you rise slightly. It follows that some of the energy produced by contraction of the gluteous maximus goes into lifting the body of a recumbent rider and local stretching of the seat. Very little of this alternating bobbing and stretching work can be recovered at other points in the pedalling cycle, so logically it must reduce the amount of energy applied to the pedals compared to the conventional bicycle saddle, where the gluteous maximus is free to contract without external pressure.

It would be interesting to see if ergometer tests have found any difference. According to Bicycling Science: whilst early measurements showed a reduction in power when a rider switched from conventional to recumbent pedalling, "most modern research shows virtually no difference". The emphasis is mine. Maybe those studies where the pedalling conditions were more like riding uphill showed more of a difference? I don't have access to the original studies and can only guess.

Be that as it may, the indisputable aerodynamic advantage of a recumbent disappears when gravity instead becomes the main resistance to motion, and in hilly country recumbents seem to lose more on the ups than they gain on the downs. This strongly suggests that whatever may happen in the lab, out on the road a bit less power can in practice be delivered to the pedals in a recumbent as compared to an upright riding position.

CJ wrote:Exercising the legs in a higher postition obviously calls for more pumping pressure from the heart,

Why is this obvious ? In a closed system all the heart is doing is moving the blood around the pipes. As liquids are generally incompressible, a push at one point results in a shove somewhere else. Moving 1KG of liquid in a pressurised system would take the same amount of energy as moving that same 1KG of liquid in a vaccuum. Creating the pressure will take energy but in a closed circuit this is only done once, think central heating - it is always pressurised and you would need a fairly hefty pump to pressurise the system but you only need a small pump to circulate the water.

Also, if the legs are higher, the pressure differential between the toes and the head will be lower so the heart doesn't have to work so hard to overcome that difference so pumping blood to the head is easier and therefore requires less energy.

As you said, it would be interesting to see some scientific measuring of all this.

Okay, it's not really obvious. But neither is the analogy with a central heating system. The pipes in the human circulation are far from rigid and the system exchanges fluids at various points in the circuit, so it doesn't really behave like a closed system.

The fairly obvious proof of this is that lowering the head provides a cure for fainting.

CJ wrote:The distraction of balancing
This is obviously not a problem with tricycles, but recumbent bicycles are much more difficult to ride in a straight line, especially at low speed. The surprising, counter-intuitive reason for this is their lower centre of gravity.

Whilst I agree with the higher roll rate argument, I don't agree with 'much more difficult', except on loose surfaces, where the combined effects of lowere CofG and small wheels is challenging!
IMHO, they are more difficult to ride in a straight line at low speed, but the main problem for anyone with years of DF bike experience is that they need a different riding technique - at 58 years old it took me about 6 months regular riding to be able to just get on and ride without needing to do a 'pre-flight' check.
There also seem to be significant dynamic differences between different designs (probably for all sorts of reasons): for example, my Grasshopper is more low speed friendly than my Mistral, but when I hired a Baron for a few hours (with a 20cm lower seat position than either of my own 'bents, and a much longer wheelbase) I found that was a low speed delight - it was, of course, even more fun at high speeds

[quote="CJ"]I can think of a couple of factors that haven't been mentioned yet.

Oh Dear Uncle Chris is at it again trotting out the same biased lines .
Come Clean CJ and why not admit
"I just don't like recumbents because in my mind
they are not proper bikes and should be banned "
Having got that off your chest you can pedal off on your "upwrong"
into the sunset on your leather saddle
leaving others to enjoy the "Parker Knoll " riding in perfect comfort !
SO NO HARD FEELINGS THEN HO HO !

Recumbents, a balanced argument? Normally I wouldn't get involved in a forum but this is such a delicious discussion and it seems to me that there are a few common misunderstandings which really should be addressed. As I ride a recumbent practically exclusively I thought I might be able to help. There was a posting with three (excuses?) reasons that I found particulalry misleading.


1.) A distraction of balance? OK I'll admit that I won't win the slow bicycle race on my recumbent, but I can easily ride along at walking pace and can go no handed when moving at a reasonable pace in reasonable conditions. Yes it was tricky at first, but the benefits of relative instability are more then made up by the control you get, stopping and cornering like you've never experienced and then there's the safety factor, there's only a short little fall.

2.) Blood pressure. Thankfully the cardio vascular system is not closed, it's distensible! But it is under pressure, lack of pressure? lie down put your feet up, your liable to faint! Riding up hill? The average heart pumps out the 70 ml of blood per beat, at 160 bpm your pushing an average of 11 litres of blood a minute -that is pressure. So it is doubtful that gravity is going to help you get more oxygen to them. But even if gravity was to play a part in the system it's not going to do you any favours. The point at which the system fails is where the blood, exhausted of it's oxygen, has to get back to the heart. This is what makes your legs hot and heavy and this is the point which can force one to give up, unless (of course) you've burnt your carbs and hit the bonk. So ideally you'd want your heart and limbs at about the same level, much like swimming or what if, mmmmm .... you put the bottom bracket and the seat at about the same height, nah it'd never work!

3.) ...because, you'd be sitting on your assets(?). If you have thousands of miles in your legs riding a safety and then switch to a recumbent you will lose power, at least that's been my experience - I couldn't believe how much slower I went ( the guy in the shop told me the bike was fast! ) and also there is the pain in the gluts ( they said it was comfortable! ). It was as if I'd never ridden a bike before, except that I did and had lot's of lung to push the pedals, which only makes the pain worse. It would be an easy mistake to think that the pain was caused by me sitting on the gluts. But the fact is that I was using the same muscles in a slightly differant fashion. And far from putting pressure on your assets, the recumbent position releases them to work. And as someone pointed out, they open up your lungs, enabling you to breathe better. The key to breathing on a bike, under pressure, is to force the air out from the diaphragm, breathing in is a sympathetic response and happens automatically. The more you breathe out, the more comes in. I'm sure that after a hard ride you'll have experienced coughing fits as the new alveoli you've just made struggle with the cold air your breathing. Being hunched over the bars is a less efficient position to breathe, but we are incredibly adaptable beings and TBH all those fit bike racers will move much more oxygen then me ( not to mention more air ). But I do wonder what they could do on a low slung recumbent!

I have been riding the same old country lanes in essex near London for over 12 years, well before I started riding, or even considered riding, a recumbent. Until one day about 7 years ago when a little bump in the road caused a little disk in my back to shift slightly causing me unbearable pain! After a week in bed and 2 visits to an osteopath I went to my favorite bike shop and lo and behold found a slightly second hand recumbent bike, ( the owner was too scared to ride it ) but it was a bike that I could ride, and I haven't looked back. My Sunday ride is about 3 hours long, always has been, this gives me enough time to warm up, cool down, open up the 'tubes' a bit and see some scenery - and it is a bit hilly. The interesting thing to the members of this forum might be this, that since doing this ride on a recumbent I've had to add just under 15 k (from just over 70 to under 85k) to keep it at 3 hours -on a good day I can just sneak in under 3 on a V-good one.

Why more people don't ride them? Well, they really are new, as long as we made bikes out of (primarily) iron, the double triangle was the most efficient way to make them strong. Only now do we have the technology to make light strong bikes that are 'flat'. And they really are differant, and there are a confusing array of differances to choose from -but I think the main reason is that, as everyone here can agree, cycling is so good why change it? I guess I was just lucky that a little bump in the rode inspired me to look for an alternative way to continue to pursue my little pleasures!


And I do apologise if this reads as a rant, but it is a very interesting discussion and I do believe that we are at a fascinating point in cycling history, possibly of the like not seen since the safety replaced the ordinary!

BTW I ride a Challenge Hurricane, 17 kilos when it's clean! easily the heaviest bike I've owned but also my favourite. The new ones are less then 10 - and Christmas just around the corner...

An interesting discussion. Myself, I've been a long-time fan of recumbents, finally bought one (a Grasshopper) and ... now I'm going to sell it.

I really, really wanted to like it, but in the end there were just too many compromises in living with it.

On the plus side it's wondrously comfortable. (In fact, all the recumbents I've ridden, short, long and compact-long wheelbase, from the latest HP Velotechniks back to one of the 1930s Velocars that got recumbents kicked out of mainstream competition - were deeply luxurious.) It carries heavy loads like they're not even there, stops on a sixpence and nothing, but nothing, beats the feeling of riding one down a hill, especially if the road has a few bends in it.

In traffic you definitely get noticed more, and given more room, than an upright.

But for me there were a couple of disadvantages. Much of my riding is in towns (I haven't got a car so use bike or train to get everywhere) and, while traffic riding felt no more dangerous, it did feel more of a hassle. Everything takes longer: looking out at junctions, accelerating, preparing to move off ... it felt subjectively as though I were driving a car again. After a couple of months I came to the conclusion that this wasn't my inexperience with recumbents, but was characteristic of the head-back, feet-up design.

The other problem is their unwieldiness. The Grasshopper is no longer than a normal bike, but feels about twice the size - not when you're riding it, but when you're getting it in and out of your house. Walking it is also difficult (I hadn't noticed before how much I walked a bike in day-to-day life). And I don't even want to think about flying anywhere with it.

I would absolutely not write off recumbents. On longer, more open journeys they're superb, once your legs are used to them, and if that's the kind of riding you do they're definitely worth considering. But for the kind of utility cycling I do a lot of, I'll stick to an upright for the moment.

Interestingly, in the free online sample copy of Velovision there's a review of a couple of front-wheel-drive recumbents with raked-back steering, one of which separates a la Moulton. A more upright folding version of that could tempt me....

[quote="Fallowman"]An interesting discussion. Myself, I've been a long-time fan of recumbents, finally bought one (a Grasshopper) and ... now I'm going to sell it.

If you have decided to sell ?
How old is the grasshopper ? How many miles ?
and finally how much ? Please let me know .........Thanks

Fallowman wrote:The other problem is their unwieldiness. The Grasshopper is no longer than a normal bike, but feels about twice the size - not when you're riding it, but when you're getting it in and out of your house. Walking it is also difficult (I hadn't noticed before how much I walked a bike in day-to-day life).

USS or OSS? One of the reasons that I prefer OSS is that it's 'much' easier to manoeuver the bike.

OSS. I was thinking about USS but same to the conclusion that it would be virtually impossible to manoeuvre when off the bike (although very comfortable when on it).