I’ve returned.
Plans mentioned in this thread have changed completely, so I’ll try to update everybody interested.
Firstly, I haven’t built the velomobile. Got busy once my car blew up. I finished the trike frame, to use for testing. It’s stability is leagues better than the original trike, but it has some problems with turning radius due to limited side-to-side clearance. The current steering design (which I’ve tried to copy off of other velomobile as), is unstable and squirrely, thanks to slop in the U-joint. I’ve tried to remove the slop with no results. The ground clearance hasn’t actually caused any issues yet, amazingly. Trike is very fast, but the steering is too sketchy above 25 km/h. I plan to try a H-bar like a Go-kart or F1 car, and if that doesn’t work I’ll try tank steering.
In more current news, I’m aeromodding a road bike! I love the Diamondback Andean and I want a rear rack, so I’m going to achieve both with some fibreglass and foam. I’ve built a set of steel airfoil bars with bullhorns and tri-bars. After that, I cut and zip-tied a bunch of cardboard onto the frame. The fairing seems to work well: I could cruise at 30-35 km/h with little effort. I maxed out at 53 km/h, as I’m much less capable lately. I’m waiting for stronger crosswinds, but so far it’s handled fine in 20 km/h winds. Overall turbulence noise was reduced. I should do a more sophisticated test, but don’t have any hills near me. I’ve ordered fiberglass, and will work on this when I can.
Beyond that, I’ll be building an Akira-inspired Lowracer recumbent bike. My road bike is really fun blasting through town streets, but a recumbent is far better for my highway commute. This will hopefully be a steel frame/fiberglass fairing build, with some limitations to make it more practical for commuting.
Once I’m done these two builds, I figure I’ll have honed all the skills needed to build the velomobile. At that point, I’ll finish the build. But that’s just a plan. See how it really goes.
Here’s some pics:
P.S. Mods, could you change the title to “Jacob’s Aero Bicycle Thread”? I figure this will leave the original topic.