Keep in mind that except for frames and seats, recumbents use components designed and manufactured for upright bikes. This includes wheels, brakes, drive train, and accessories. There is a certain amount of attention being paid to tires for recumbents.
The classic place to see this is the front derailleur; many recumbents have a short stub frame tube welded there, whose only purpose is to take the place of the seat post tube on a diamond-frame upright bike and provide a place to mount that derailleur.
Any or all of these items may well be available at or through your LBS (Local Bike Shop) and if we don't support them they may disappear. I mention sources such as Nashbar and REI as alternatives.
For more details on components and accessories see my bike gadgets page.
Don't go nuts ordering your first recumbent with custom-spec replacement components (drivetrain, wheels, brakes). For one thing, even after your best efforts, after you start riding you may still discover you've bought the wrong kind of 'bent. If you bought a stock bike, you can just sell it, in the newspaper, in RCN, or over the Internet. Custom bikes can be harder to sell: the other guy probably doesn't want the same stuff. When you decide you're happy with your bike, then you can upgrade drivetrain, wheels, brakes, and so forth, either as the stock parts wear out, or whenever you want.
Priorities for component selection for recumbent bikes:
Comfort is a fundamental reason to go recumbent; and the more you ride, the more important little comfort issues will become. Strength is particularly important for two reasons: (1) you're going to be more comfortable, so you're going to put more miles on your bike, and (2) when wedgie riders run over something, they can stand up on the pedals and "un-weight" the bike. 'Bent riders can't do that. Recumbents especially need somewhat beefier tires, rims, spokes, and hubs. (Trike wheels have to be even stronger because of the heavy side loads during turns.) You don't want anything on your bike to weigh more than it needs to, obviously, but think about component weights after comfort and strength issues.
Hydration is critically important when cycling, or during any sustained exercise, especially in hot weather. If you don't get enough water into you to replace the sweat coming out of you, you're going to be a sick puppy pretty fast. For cycling there are two basic choices. In the spirit of trying the cheap way first, get yourself two large bike bottles, and some way to carry them, in some combination of bottle cages and bag pockets, whatever is easiest to provide for on your bike. This is what works for me. I've found that I tend to stop often enough, briefly, that I don't even have to worry about handling the bottles while riding.
If it turns out you really do need to drink on the fly, then you should probably get a hydration bladder. This is a large heavy-gauge plastic bag, with a fill opening of some kind, and an attached sip tube and bite valve, the end of which clips to your jersey. The bite valve lets you draw water when you bite it, and seals up when you let go. I recommend the Platypus Big Zip 3 (about $25, REI and Local Bike Shops). It holds about three liters, and fits into most hydration bladder pockets in the various bike bags. Platypus bladders are made out of beverage-grade polyethylene, which doesn't impart a plastic taste to the water. The Big Zip series fill opening is a super heavy-duty zip-lock closure, that opens the whole end of the bag, which makes it easy to fill, clean, and dry out. You can even put in ice cubes if you want.
Mirrors are necessary for safe street riding on recumbents, because it's usually a lot harder to turn and look behind you than on an upright. Some recumbent types have provision for a handlebar mirror of some sort. Or there are a bunch of different kinds of helmet mirrors, which stick to the side of your helmet and hold a small mirror in front and to the side of your left eye. There are also several kinds of mirrors designed to attach to the side of eyeglasses, but I have reservations about those from a safety standpoint in case of a crash.
On an upright bike, even a road bike, when you need to run over an obstacle such as a rock or a branch, you can stand on the pedals, sort of jump and yank up on the bars, and "un-weight" the bike. You can't do that on a recumbent, or not nearly as well.
One thing that can help a lot with rocks/sticks/uneven pavement on recumbents is getting rid of the lightweight but skinny Primo Comet tires some ship with, in favor of a set of fat tires. (Lately it seems like more and more recumbents ship with fat tires.) We expect to see very skinny tires on road bikes because that's what UCI upright bike racers use, for low weight and aerodynamics. Recumbents handle better with fat tires.
I used to have to ride over about a one-inch driveway lip at an angle, when I was taking my Vision R40 downtown on the bus racks every day. It used to scare me to death on the Comets, but the Tioga Comp Pool front I switched to just sort of flowed over it. Trust me, if you try fat tires on a recumbent, especially SWB, you'll never go back.
The Tioga Comp Pool in particular cannot be beat for a 20-inch SWB front tire, in my opinion; it's essentially a fat slick, with a semi-elliptical profile. They're not made any more, but certain big recumbent dealers seem to have stocks of them. Unless you actually ride in heavy rain a lot, I'd recommend a slick or semi-slick tread design (semi-slick examples: IRC "Metro," Ritchey "Tom Slick Comp").
You can probably find suitable 26-inch and 700c tires at Local Bike Shops. 20-inch and 16-inch tires for recumbents are a little harder; such tires you find locally may not be sufficiently high-pressure. If you have local recumbent dealers, try there first. Failing that, see my recumbent dealers pages for online/mail-order sources.
Beware: in each case there is more than one actual size of tire you'll find identified as 20-inch or 16-inch. There should be a second dimension in millimeters to match also, sometimes identified as the ISO size. Your Local Bike Shop people can help if you're not sure which size goes with your wheels. I believe the most important sizes for recumbents are 26-inch/559mm, 20-inch/451mm, 20-inch/406mm, and 16-inch/305mm.
This tire size chart from BikeTiresDirect.com is the best online reference I've seen yet.
Recumbents always need some means of keeping your feet from sliding off the pedals onto the ground. The conventional solution is clipless pedals and stiff cycling shoes with matching cleats fitted.
The scenario to be avoided is where a foot drops away from a pedal and contacts the ground at speed. The grim result is sometimes referred to as a leg suck and can result in serious injury. I think any recumbent rider needs to try to stay alert enough so that if whatever foot retention system is being used fails momentarily, you catch it and recover before the major injury scenario can occur.
Power Grips are a possible alternative to clipless pedals and cycling shoes, featured in RCN #47: a stiff adjustable diagonal strap which can be attached to many common types of pedals. You insert your foot in the strap in a rotated position, then when you turn your foot to riding position, the strap tightens around your shoe. Power Grips are reportedly favored by upright trials riders, who also need to be able to unclip quickly. The Power Grip strap kit is most commonly available separately, through bike dealers, or they can be ordered with pedals.
I make no guarantees here with respect to use of Power Grips on recumbents. I've had some feedback indicating that some bike-shop people consider them unsafe on recumbents. I would not recommend using them with smooth pedals and/or smooth-soled shoes on a recumbent.
Power Grips work for me on my trike; your experience may be different. I use them mostly because I need a slight toes-out foot position, that I wasn't able to get with clipless/cleat technology.
If you want to try Power Grips with a medium or high-BB recumbent, I recommend the following:
Recumbents usually ship from the factory with cheap toothy aluminum-cage ATB pedals, to allow for test riding, and based on the assumption that each customer is going to want to pick their preferred foot-retention system. You can probably attach the Power Grips strap kit to the pedals that came with your bike; that's what I did with my WizWheelz TerraTrike, and could have done with my earlier Vision R40. Similar cheap toothy aluminum-cage pedals should be available from the Local Bike Shop.
There's a fancier ATB pedal style with several replaceable pointed steel pins per side, that costs more. The cheaper aluminum-cage ones actually have more teeth; I'd go with those.
Many people find that on recumbents with an upright seating position and low pedals, such as Easy Racers or Sun/EZ, where the bottom bracket (BB) is like a foot below the seat base, all they need is a set of toothy ATB pedals, and maybe some old-style toe clips. If you're in this category, you might also want to consider an oversize toothy pedal, something like the Nashbar Jaws ATB.
If you ride at night, get some lights, perhaps just a simple one-piece battery headlight plus a small light-weight LED taillight. There are rail trails in the mountains now where lights are required for the tunnels.
Solid-state LEDs (Light-Emitting Diode) are several times more energy-efficient than any type of bulb. Red LED taillights have been the norm for years; I'm not sure you can still buy a bike taillight with a bulb. White LEDs bright enough for headlights are more recent, and are still taking over from the various kinds of bulb headlights.
Inexpensive one-piece battery headlights, whether LED or bulb design, generally are just intended to throw enough light to make sure the cars see you coming, not for you to actually see much, and to keep you from getting a ticket from Mister Cop for riding without lights.
Cateye has some nice LED taillights:
| Model | LEDs | Batteries | Runtime (flashing) | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LD170 | 3 | 2 AAA | 200 hr | Compact model, vertical format; possible choice for seat-frame or thrust brace mounting where lateral space is limited, if the mount angle works |
| LD500 | 3 | 2 AAA | 100 hr | Works as a CPSC reflector even with dead batteries; seat post or clip mount, elliptical profile |
| LD600 | 5 | 2 AAA | 60 hr | Wide format; might work on top of a Coroplast™ tailbox fairing |
| LD1000 | 10 | 2 AA | 100 hr | Opticube beam focusing; probably has longer range, might be preferred for touring, with cars overtaking at highway speeds |
LED taillights usually let you select between steady and several different spiffy flashing modes. The flashing modes help car drivers notice you and also extend the runtime per battery set.
The simple and inexpensive Pyramid LED taillight imported by J&B is another nice option you'll find at your Local Bike Shop, with 5 LEDs and two AAA batteries included. It has only steady and simple flash modes, but has both belt clip and seat-post mount. The mount has a screw adjustment similar to an automotive hose clamp that should adapt to a good range of tube diameters, and the angle adjustment geometry is adaptable. Even the non-slip rubber liner piece is made so it's attached to the mount, a very nice touch.
Riding with CPSC plastic reflectors alone is risky, although they are certainly a good backup. The same goes for reflective fabric on panniers or a "rack trunk" bag, or reflective tape. Read John Schubert's page Why Reflectors Don't Work, and get an LED taillight.
If you'd like to go minimalist, there are some really tiny lights with a single small LED and a camera battery, that usually weigh less than an ounce, and attach to a handlebar, fork blade, or derailleur tube with an elastic loop. They often come as a set of two, one with white LED for the front, one with red for the back. A set of those is the least I'd consider.
Do you want a real headlight? There are high-intensity bike headlight systems that cost more. They almost always have a battery pack separate from the light unit, usually rechargable, often designed to fit into a standard bottle cage. Lightweight NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) and lithium-ion batteries are fairly common now; there have also been systems based on NiCad (Nickel Cadmium) and lead-acid battery types. Lithium-ion seems to have the best power-to-weight ratio, and highest prices, followed closely by NiMH.
The CygoLite high-intensity LED systems are the best bright headlights I know about. The HiFlux 200 has an advanced single-LED light unit, a lightweight bottle-cage NiMH rechargeable battery, and a high-power runtime of 6 hours. If you're more interested in power-to-money ratio, the HiFlux 100 uses the same headlight unit, costs about half as much, uses four conventional alkaline C cells, and has a 25-hour high-power runtime. This is such a radical design that they warn you to either switch to "low" or turn it off when you stop, or the light unit will overheat. New for 2006 from CygoLite is the DualCross 300 with two LED/reflector modules similar to the HiFlux in a single unit, multiple output modes, and rechargeable battery.
Buyer beware: light patterns of high-intensity bike headlights are not all created equal. I've seen demos of lights with fancy prices that had light patterns so fractured that you'd have to wonder if you'd be safer with no light.
I wish manufacturers could agree on how to claim light output. Even in one catalog you may see candlepower, lumens, and watts, and the last has to be some sort of ad hoc bulb-equivalent output concept, because real watts refer to power consumption. Manufacturer tech guys tend to whine that it's too hard to quantify light output because different reflector designs concentrate the light differently. I don't care. If I'm facing west, I just want a number, probably in lumens, that tells how much light the thing emits in a general westerly direction. I'm going to evaluate the light pattern qualitatively anyway. On the other hand, as a rider one needs to recognize their point: lumens output numbers will not translate directly to apparent brightness you perceive as you're peering down the bike trail or street, because of differences in reflector design.
Bike headlights are not like car headlights. Even if you spring for a light system that's bright by bike headlight standards, you can't go charging from daylight into an unlighted rail-trail tunnel and just keep going. Slow down and stop or walk the bike, while you can still see stuff, and wait for your eyes to adapt. If you don't you'll crash for sure, and the EMTs will think you're an idiot.
Mounting lights on recumbents is always interesting. Bike headlights are designed to mount on handlebars, and the little LED taillights generally provide for seat-post mounting or a clip for the back of a jersey or bag, or both. Rack trunk bags often have a loop for a clip-on taillight. Seat-post taillight mounts may work on a recumbent's seat frame or thrust brace, or the angle may be too much or the brace diameter too small. With above-seat steering, handlebar headlight mounting will probably work. If you have under-seat steering, look for an accessory mount to put on your front derailleur stub tube, that won't interfere with the cranks. If you have a long wheelbase recumbent or a polycarbonate fairing, you may have to do some shade-tree engineering.
Shimano RapidFire shifters are so good they are darn near addictive. I call them "trigger shifters" for how they work. I had them on the Vision R40 SWB I had before I got my trike, and I definitely miss 'em. I guess you can't have everything.
What you get is a brake-body sort of gadget for each side of your bars, with brake lever, each of which also mounts two small levers or triggers, for indexed upshift and downshift. One lever is positioned handy to your thumb and the other to your forefinger. One you push or pull to release the indexed shift driven by spring tension; the other you have to push against the spring. The ones on my R40 even had little indicator dials for what gear you were in.
They need a bike mechanic who knows his or her stuff, but once they are properly tuned they are so slick it almost seems like they must be illegal or fattening or something. When you crest a hill and start down, you can accelerate hard and progressively upshift like going through the gears in a sportscar. With practice it's also pretty easy to brake and downshift simultaneously. I'm talking about braking hard and downshifting rapidly.
RapidFire trigger shifters were standard equipment on certain high-end Burley recumbent models, and Burley made very high-class recumbents in other respects as well. They can probably be custom retrofitted on almost any recumbent with ASS (above seat steering). You might have to change the rest of the drivetrain too, I'm not sure. See my manufacturers page for info on the Burley reorganization.
An unfortunate 1934 Union Cycliste Internationale ruling banned recumbents and aerodynamic fairings from formalized UCI bicycle racing. Since we're going to be riding recumbents, this means there's nothing to stop us from using fairings, and some recumbent riders do. Polycarbonate front fairings are available from a couple of manufacturers. They work especially well on LWB bikes with ASS like Easy Racers and Rans, but they can be put on other types too.
Some people also build Coroplast™ tailboxes. Coroplast is a light strong polyethylene plastic material constructed similar to corrugated cardboard, most commonly seen in Republican campaign signs. It can be cut and folded with simple tools, and stitched together with cable ties, in a wedge shape behind your seat, attached to a foundation consisting of a normal rear rack. The idea is to sort of slide the air back together behind you neatly, avoiding energy-wasting turbulence. They're generally made to also provide cargo space.
The NYC Metro Area Recumbent Society has a bonding Coroplast page, which discusses special 3M VHB foam tapes used by sign shops (#4905 clear, #4929 black, #4950 white). Also described is a trickier technique involving "flashing" the polyethylene with a torch first to change the surface energy, then using cyanoacrylate adhesive (CA, "superglue"). They also mention that freshly manufactured Coroplast for signage is already corona-treated so it can be bonded, and describe a water-droplet test to check if the corona treatment of the surface has worn off, which it does in 6-12 months.
Cyanoacrylate adhesives can bond human skin on contact: please be careful. They can generally be released by paramedics using acetone solvent, or with common nail polish remover that contains acetone.
The fundamental problem with Coroplast™ relative to adhesives and paints is that polyethylene plastic by its nature is very inert chemically and has a low electrostatic surface energy, meaning nothing much wants to stick to it or otherwise interact with it. This very property makes it hold up well out in the environment, which is great for signage and many other applications, including your tailbox once you get it built. Many people prefer to use cable-tie stitching for tailbox construction, rather than attempting to force adhesives to work on polyethylene.
Fairings may let you go as much as ten percent faster, with the same bike and rider, and front fairings can also help extend your riding season by cutting wind chill. On the other hand, when it's hot, you'll probably need that wind.
Conventional spoked bike wheels, while structurally elegant and beautiful in my opinion, contribute a certain amount of drag by churning the air like an eggbeater, especially the front wheel. Several kinds of aero wheels are available. Disk wheel covers which cover the spokes completely are seen on HPV world record streamliners, but are probably not safe for street use, because their lateral sail area plus a sudden crosswind can put you in front of a truck. There are also solid construction aero wheels with just five or so rigid spokes. HED Cycling Products makes conventionally spoked aero wheels with a fairing that covers only the outer ends of the spokes.
Bike computers, also called cyclocomputers, are little handlebar widgets, looking a lot like a digital watch minus the strap, which connect to a magnetic sensor that counts wheel revolutions, and can therefore tell you your speed, average speed, distance traveled, how long you've been at it, and so forth.
Mounting a computer on a recumbent can get interesting, because the standard sensor assembly invariably has just enough wire to make it from the fork to the bars (via the brake cable) on a typical roadie diamond-frame upright bike. Cateye and other makers offer a sensor kit identified as being for rear-wheel sensor mounting, with a longer wire; those will often solve the problem.
My WizWheelz TerraTrike 3.3 has a Planet Bike Protegé 9 bike computer installed. This type has a larger four-line LCD display that presents more information without the need for mode changes. I mounted the sensor on the left brake body, using 3M double-stick picture-hanging foam tape and a small piece of stiff plastic. Originally I had the sensor wire wrapped around the brake cable to the left handlebar, with a mini cable tie at each end to stabilize things. The computer itself was on a Profile Design stub accessory mount just below the shifter. I don't think this method would work on the right side of the trike due to the longer brake cable and how it's routed.
Eventually I found the handlebar position to be too far down at my side and too far from my normal line of sight while riding. Now I have the computer and accessory mount on the front derailleur stub tube. The Planet Bike Standard bracket kit with 32-inch wire is long enough, just, to route from the left brake body along the frame to the front of the trike, using four large cable ties. Planet Bike also offers Rear Wheel (51-inch) and Tandem/Recumbent (63-inch) bracket kits, plus one with 32-inch wire that fits on larger 31mm handlebars.
Several kinds of trainers are available; they let you work out on your bike indoors, without actually going anywhere, in the winter, for instance. Conventional rollers have three rollers, mounted low to the floor in a frame as long as your bike (with the front-wheel roller driven by a belt from one of the rear-wheel rollers) and you must balance your bike on top of them as you train. Roadies have been using those for a long time. Axle-mount trainers clamp to the ends of your rear hub, supporting your rear wheel a couple inches off the floor, and a small roller connected to a resistance unit bears against the tread of your rear tire. One drawback of those is they tend to stress your rear hub and frame dropouts.
SportCrafters mini-rollers are a new wrinkle. They have two larger-diameter rollers for just your rear wheel, in a small frame on the floor, attached by a simple belt drive to a fan resistance unit. If you order them for a two-wheel bike, they come with a separate fork stand that you clamp your forks to; for a tadpole trike you can just order the mini-rollers and let the front wheels sit on the floor. (Don't bother with wheel blocks for the front wheels of your trike; leaving them loose on the floor lets the drive wheel self-align on the rollers.)
To use an axle-mount trainer or the SportCrafters mini-rollers with a mountain bike, you'll need to swap your knobby tire for a slick or semi-slick rear tire, for the winter.
Types of resistance units available on trainers include air (a squirrel-cage fan) which are cheap but noisy, and magnetic and hydraulic, which are quieter but cost more. Some kinds allow you to adjust the resistance from a handlebar remote control; others depend on gear selection on your bike. Conventional rollers, the kind you have to balance on, increase resistance by means of a deliberately small roller diameter, which increases the natural rolling resistance of your tires.
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