By Julian Edgar
This is Part 1 in the third series we’ve done on building alternative, pedal-powered road vehicles. So why do we keep covering these vehicles? Here are the reasons:
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Vehicles of this type are amongst the most innovative that you’ll find on public roads. The construction and suspension designs are cutting edge for ultra light-weight, good-handling and extraordinarily comfortable vehicles. I choose to use human power to propel them, but exactly the same underlying philosophies apply even if the power-plant is electric, diesel or petrol.
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A human-powered vehicle (HPV) is able to be used on public roads without the legal difficulties that apply for every other innovative vehicle design. You might have a concept for a car powered by a steam turbine, or one that uses a petrol engine but has the wheels arranged in a diamond-shaped wheelbase pattern. But no matter how good it is, getting it legally registered on the road is likely to prove both expensive and difficult.
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This type of vehicle can be easily home constructed. You don’t need large facilities; you don’t need expensive gear like metal shears or metal benders. In fact, if you get someone else to do the welding, a vehicle like this can be constructed with just hand tools. If you buy an oxy-acetylene welding set-up, you can do everything yourself.
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Finally, I find the design and construction of such a vehicle a fascinating exercise, fearsomely complex and challenging. No-one, no matter how experienced in engineering, finds designing a vehicle of this type easy. As just one example, a rear suspension assembly (one that might need to support a dynamic maximum of 150kg) may have a required mass – including spring, damper, arm and pivot points - of less than 2kg. To put this another way, it has to be able to support a load 75 times its own weight. Think about that for a few seconds…
Read the article here:
http://autospeed.com/cms/A_111091/article.html
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