The goal: Have a comfortable method of going to and fro from school without needing to pay for insurance and gas. my main goal is comfort, not speed.
(not that I can have much speed anyways since I'm limited to a 500w motor unless I want to pass it through inspection, which I don't)
The start: it actually started as a plan to make a king of electric skateboard with tracks rather then wheels (I live in Canada and we can get quite a bit of snow) but through a lot of design changes and inspiration with my dad's obsession with velomobiles (looking at them, we can't afford them unfortunately
) it changed to a covered trike, and having looked at other covered e-tricycles, I felt like I could do better, and build it closer to a car.
after having drawn up a design, I first decided to make it out of wood (no pictures, sorry) but I quickly found it to be much to big for my liking.
so my next one was to use conduit (I was an electrician apprentice before pursuing engineering) so I can get conduit quite cheep. and I built this using pop-rivets:
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The Idea of the curved nose was to make a place to put the front wheels so I could support them from the top, not having access to bike wheels with the strong hubs needed for a side mount.
but I wasn't happy, it felt like I would run into to many issues, and the frame was to flimsy, but since I had some old bikes laying around I decided to try and build something using them (btw, at this point I'm so far away from my original design it's not even remotely similar anymore, so I'm just bodging things together that feel right):
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and after I welded everything together I got this:
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and I found this sat quite comfortably, so I went ahead and started to weld a body around it to give it a place to mount fiberglass panels:
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but you know what? I'm still not happy, but I had a physical model I could build a design off of. so I went back to the drawing board, and I've started to weld it up, and this will be my final prototype, it's much to heavy for my liking (and there are a load of other things), but for the most part, I'm very happy how it's turning out:
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(Yes, I recycled the front end from the last build, it's not a perfect steering system, but it works, and I don't have the budget/tools to do much better at the moment)
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and this is where I'm at right now, I'm currently working on the seat, which I hope to be done by the end of today, and tomorrow I plan to install the steering system (so I don't have to bike while steering them both independently
Thank you for reading this!
Have an awesome day ^.^
(not that I can have much speed anyways since I'm limited to a 500w motor unless I want to pass it through inspection, which I don't)
The start: it actually started as a plan to make a king of electric skateboard with tracks rather then wheels (I live in Canada and we can get quite a bit of snow) but through a lot of design changes and inspiration with my dad's obsession with velomobiles (looking at them, we can't afford them unfortunately
) it changed to a covered trike, and having looked at other covered e-tricycles, I felt like I could do better, and build it closer to a car.after having drawn up a design, I first decided to make it out of wood (no pictures, sorry) but I quickly found it to be much to big for my liking.
so my next one was to use conduit (I was an electrician apprentice before pursuing engineering) so I can get conduit quite cheep. and I built this using pop-rivets:
The Idea of the curved nose was to make a place to put the front wheels so I could support them from the top, not having access to bike wheels with the strong hubs needed for a side mount.
but I wasn't happy, it felt like I would run into to many issues, and the frame was to flimsy, but since I had some old bikes laying around I decided to try and build something using them (btw, at this point I'm so far away from my original design it's not even remotely similar anymore, so I'm just bodging things together that feel right
):
and after I welded everything together I got this:
and I found this sat quite comfortably, so I went ahead and started to weld a body around it to give it a place to mount fiberglass panels:
but you know what? I'm still not happy, but I had a physical model I could build a design off of. so I went back to the drawing board, and I've started to weld it up, and this will be my final prototype, it's much to heavy for my liking (and there are a load of other things), but for the most part, I'm very happy how it's turning out:
(Yes, I recycled the front end from the last build, it's not a perfect steering system, but it works, and I don't have the budget/tools to do much better at the moment)
and this is where I'm at right now, I'm currently working on the seat, which I hope to be done by the end of today, and tomorrow I plan to install the steering system (so I don't have to bike while steering them both independently
Thank you for reading this!
Have an awesome day ^.^
