Don Minch's Velomobile Journal

Hurray for income tax refunds. I have more parts on the way. The tires, tubes, and rim strips came. The first pic shows one, a Tioga Powerblock (BMX racing tire) mounted on one of my rims and inflated. These are gonna be nice. Decent grip under sideload, low rolling friction, especially with the recommended 65 PSI. I should cruise nicely with them.
The second pic was just me playing around at colorizing a B&W picture of the Indy 500 Bugatti. This is the car I'm basing the final design of my velomobile around. I needed to see what it might look like in red - the color I plan to paint my velomobile.

Extremely tight financial times have stalled my velomobile project for a while (water heater quit, AC/furnace needed much work, van needed work, wife needed hospital trip for infected cut). As I make the slow climb back out of debt and overdraft status, I've been surfing the web and looking at some diverse designs for home-built velomobiles. I found one on this sight below:

https://alternativetransport.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/blitz-benz-velomobile/comment-page-1/

I knew I wouldn't be the only one to style a pedal-powered car after an antique racer. This offers quite a few interesting ideas which, for me still being at a somewhat early stage in design, might be able to take advantage of. I shall see. Meanwhile, here's a pic.

Nearly forgot to mention one of the more important parts of my velomobile build: the rear end. This is simple a tricycle conversion kit. As I will not be needing the long mounting brackets in front, they will be cut off. I plan to use high-grade bolts through the holes in top to mount it to some spans of steel that I will be welding to the frame.

This is a steel rack end I picked up at Menards. It's light enough to lift with one hand but sturdy enough for industrial shelving. But it is just a starting point at present, and will undergo some serious alterations. I'll need to narrow it toward the front and weld on a front sub-frame to mount the springs. And I may put in stronger cross-members and gussets as needed. In the end it should still be pretty light, and it's fairly strong and rigid now as is. I think this will make a very workable frame.

If I'm going to be dealing with greatly increased side-loads, I'm going to need super-strong wheels. Or, at least the strongest I can afford. So, the rims are red 20" BMX Hoffman Generators with double-walls and welded seams. The spokes are nice, strong Primo forged spokes. The hubs are trike axle hubs with 5/8" ID. So two will go on the 5/8" rear axle and two will go on the 5/8" spindles. All laced together, the combination makes for some seriously strong wheels on a budget. (The Hoffman rims were on sale at the time and there was free shipping on the spokes.) At some point I may make a spare wheel, maybe two, because with four wheels it is just that easy to swap out a flat or damaged wheel and slap on a spare.

Oh, and of course the hubs got some red paint to match the spokes. And it turns out I had to also paint the rims because they were more of a maroon than a red. Maybe puce. I dunno. They were just not red enough, so I fixed it.

From this very specific assortment of parts (and more to come) a certifiably eclectic velomobile will be born. Or, rather, dragged kicking and screaming into tangible existence.