| Home > Misc topics > Recumbents > Outfitting a 'bent |
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 the items discussed on this page may well be available at or through your LBS, 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.
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. There are handlebar mirrors that can attach to any bar with wraparound Velcro, at a right angle for upright road bars, USS, wraparound ASS bars, and trikes, or straight for MTB and straight ASS bars. Or there are a bunch of different kinds of helmet mirrors, which attach, typically with adhesive, to the side of your helmet and hold a small mirror in front and to the side of your left eye. Efficient Velo Tools makes an interesting large helmet mirror, designed to attach solidly to the helmet with zip ties, with a stacked-links adjustment that's said to stay put and not wear out.
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 minimum 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 semi-humble opinion; it's essentially a fat slick, with a semi-elliptical profile, and besides great handling they are also known for low rolling resistance. At one time in the 90's I was told they were out of production, but they seem to be widely available again. Unless you actually ride in heavy rain, 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 as 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 700c/622, 26-inch/559, 20-inch/451, 20-inch/406, 16-inch/349, and 16-inch/305.
Tire Finder from BikeTiresDirect.com is a good online reference. See also Sheldon Brown's Tire Sizing page.
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 cleats to match the pedals installed.
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 every 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: 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; 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 often 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 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 a foot or so 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 unlit tunnels. If you never intend to ride at night, but might get home at dusk sometimes, consider an LED taillight anyway; they weigh almost nothing, and they're hard for drivers to miss.
Solid-state LEDs 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 maybe getting a ticket from Mister Cop for riding without lights.
Cateye has some nice LED taillights:
| 2009 model | LEDs | Batteries | Runtime (flashing) |
Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LD130 | 3 | 2 AAA | 150 hr | Compact models, horizontal format. They seem the same except for number of LEDs and runtime. I'd go with the brighter LD150. |
| LD150 | 5 | 90 hr | ||
| LD500 | 3 | 100 hr | Works as a CPSC reflector even with dead batteries; seat post or clip mount, elliptical profile. | |
| LD610 | 5 | 60 hr | Wide format; might work well on top of a Coroplast™ tailbox fairing. | |
| LD1100 | 10 | 2 AA | 100 hr | Opticube beam focusing, side visibility; probably has longer range, might be preferred for touring, with cars overtaking at highway speeds. |
If you'd like a really bright LED taillight, you might want to try Planet Bike's Superflash. Don't point it at your eyes the first time you test it; they claim it even shows up well in daylight. If it's discontinued, the Cateye LD1100 would be a good substitute.
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 (sometimes less than US$10) 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 now has four flash modes. I think it might be a good choice, bought cheap in quantity, to include in community programs to get bike helmets to kids.
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 very least I'd consider an acceptable risk.
Do you want a real headlight? There are high-intensity LED bike headlight systems that cost more. They usually have a rechargable battery pack separate from the light unit, sometimes designed to fit into a standard bottle cage. Lightweight NiMH and lithium-ion batteries are fairly common now; there have also been systems with NiCad and lead-acid battery types, and regular alkaline C cells from the supermarket. Lithium-ion has the best power-to-weight ratio, and highest prices, followed closely by NiMH.
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, you'd have to wonder if you'd be safer with no light.
Bike headlights are not like car headlights. Even if you pay the big bucks for a fancy LED headlight 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. Get off and 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.
<RANT>
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.
</RANT>
Since I wrote that rant a few years ago, they are actually getting better about giving output in lumens; in fact it's almost become like an arms race. One exception is Cateye with output cited in candlepower, which lets you compare their own models against each other, but not easily against other manufacturers, unless you know that 1 candlepower equals 12.57 lumens.
Mounting lights on recumbent bikes 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; but if you can mount your headlight farther below your line of sight, you can see helpful little shadows behind things on the road that stick up. If you have under-seat steering, you could look for a tiny right-angle accessory mount to put on your front derailleur stub tube, that won't interfere with the cranks. Profile Design had one the last time I looked. If you have a long wheelbase recumbent or a polycarbonate fairing, you may have to do some shade-tree engineering.
Bacchetta has a headlight mount for recumbents they call the One Armed Bandit, which attaches to the front-derailleur stub tube of the frame (SWB and tadpole trikes) and extends the mounting location for the headlight forward, to a few inches in front of the bottom bracket. Text on the site says "no more foot flash," which I guess refers to annoying shadows cast by your feet as you pedal, when the light is mounted farther back. From the picture it looks to be made mostly of metal, so as not to wobble. Sounds like a good idea.
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. It's also easy to brake and downshift simultaneously. I'm talking about braking hard and downshifting rapidly. I impressed some upright roadies in the full Spandex and cleat shoes regalia with that one, once.
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. See my manufacturers page for info on the 2006 Burley reorganization.
On the other hand, there are lots of people who strongly prefer high-end SRAM indexed twist-grip shifters over everything else. If the usual convention in right-driving countries is followed, with the front brake lever and front shifter on the left, and rear brake and shifter on the right, certainly a rider can do all the things I describe above, such as braking fairly hard with the front brake and simultaneously downshifting the cassette. Riders in left-driving countries have the option of swapping their brake cables.
In fact RapidFire shifters may have gone out of style, in recumbents anyway. If you want some, you may have to have it done as an upgrade. 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.
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 in sheets, constructed similar to corrugated cardboard, most commonly seen in Republican campaign signs. It can be cut and folded with just a straightedge and a utility knife, 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. If you're a klutz, maybe you'd want to buy some nail polish remover along with the superglue.
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 air flow.
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, which presumably produce most of the churn effect.
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 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 around the large-diameter frame tubes. 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.
Longbikes has a sturdy-looking computer mount that's designed to attach with screws to braze-ons for a water-bottle cage. Looks like a good option for tadpole trikes and other recumbents, if your frame has the braze-ons in a suitable place, and you don't need that spot more for a water bottle. Hase Spezialräder in Germany has a computer mount that attaches with a metal band to large-diameter frame tubing, as found on monotube recumbent frames.
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 Trike Trainer is a new wrinkle. It has 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. There used to be a separate fork stand for use with a two-wheel bike; for a tadpole trike you just order the Trike Trainer 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 conventional 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 to change resistance. Conventional rollers, the kind you have to balance on, produce increased resistance by means of a deliberately small roller diameter, which increases the natural rolling resistance of your tires.
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.
site feedback