[python] New Python - 20" or 26"?
- From: "Jaime Cristovao" <jaime.alexandre@xxxxxxx>
- To: <python@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 17:57:27 +0200
Hello all
I am new here, and first of all, I must appologise, my english is not as good
as it should be. I am from Portugal, and just met the recumbent world a few
months ago. There are just a few (dozens?) of recumbents in Portugal, mostly
for rent, I suppose. As far as I know there are also a few homebuilders around
the country, but the vast majority of the people (99,99999%) just ride standard
diamond frame bykes, mostly BTT.
At the very beginning I found myself searching for kyaks and canoes, as I live
10 Kmts far from the sea. I found the IHPVA site as beeing very helpful, and
ended up building a strange kind of a boat, a pacific proa I didn't sail yet
(just paddled). Meanwhile I found very strange (for me) bike (and trike)
pictures, like the ones I saw in Copenhagen a few years ago - and later in
Amsterdam. Wiered at the beginning, the recumbent concept is by itself very
attractive; I found very good ideas side by side with the worst ones, and ended
up building a tadpole trike after months of reseach on every site I found about
the subject. I decided to build instead of buying because most of them are very
expensive (a regular AL DF bike is about 300€ up), and Portugal isn't really in
the center of Europe. Well, I uploaded some pictures to my very incipient blog
(covadaonca.blogspot.com - It's only portuguese, but I intend to "upgrade" to a
bilingual version). It is not a professional artwork as I did not even know how
to use the welder before, but it is the best I could get these days. Well, the
most important thing: it is a very fun ride. Very stable as it have one full
meter between front wheels and less than 10 cms of ground clearance... and
weights about 22 K (115 with the rider - me). Need to improve braking, top
speed so far is about 45 to 50 Kmts (maybe 40 to 45)... the first version had a
26" rear wheel, I hd to change to a 20" because it was too short to my legs. I
finnished it the weekend before easter and so far have some hundreds of
kilometers on it.
As I want something more practical to day-by-day use, I decided to build a
bike. As I want something different, I decided it would be a recumbent one.
After some research, I found Python on fleettrikes, and despite the fact it
seems a "little" difficult to ride at the first attempts, I decided to build
one. After all, I want something different.
One thing I did not decided yet: what is the best, 20" or 26" front wheel? I
think I will need a "small" turning radius - about 5 mts... I prefer the 26"
one, as it will probably be faster and more stable and comfortable, but I don't
want to end up with something absolutely unpractical I will never use. So, in
your opinion, what will be my best option?
Thank you all
Jaime Alexandre
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