[Sven7]

Jim, I was thinking about your project when I came across these. For my stromvogn I had thought about moped front wheels/tires a bit but decided I'd prefer something larger diameter for cruising (and to get those luscious fenders). There are extremely light racing wheels available for sport bikes, although pricing would be an issue if you bought them at the outset.

The problem also remains as to lateral strength on motorcycle wheels, should one go that route (I intend to). One obvious option might be a large degree of positive caster, much like a chopper's extended front fork provides. This would lean the wheel into the turn, though the forces would vary depending on speed since the chassis does not also lean, as a cycle does.

The majority of weight on a reverse trike would want to be over the front wheels and we don't know how much understeer you'd get without "leaning" the suspension into turns. There are suspension calculators available (for free?) to figure that out in regards to Locost cars; they could probably be modified to test trikes.


As far as airflow...

The Edison 2 VLC has an interesting suspension system if anyone can figure out how it works. Otherwise, what about F1 car stuff? I think they essentially have very long carbon fiber control arms. Of course, most of the problem with using car tires is keeping them level while the opposite is true of motorcycle tires. Surely you could stuff a very flat double wishbone setup inside an airfoil and keep the struts inboard.

There are more primitive options as well, but I don't think we'd want to use them at 55mph.