This photo is of the recumbent bicycle at the Addison Athletic Club that I have been using every day for the last week since I was diagnosed with knee strain. So, since I can’t walk for the next three weeks, I have been using the recumbent bike instead. The only trick is that to get my steps/miles to show up on my Apple watch, I have to swing my arms — or at least my left arm where my Apple watch is. I do like the recumbent bicycle because it does support my back unlike the stationary bicycle. But my attention has been diverted from listening to nature as I walk to watching TV as I ride the recumbent bike — not a very good tradeoff, but at least it is temporary. The one positive note is that I do get to visit with people at the gym whereas walking is often a solitary pursuit. I am grateful that the Addison Athletic Club does have recumbent bicycles I can use. Let’s learn more about them.
According to Wikipedia, a recumbent bicycle is a bicycle that places the rider in a laid-back reclining position. Most recumbent riders choose this type of design for ergonomic reasons: the rider's weight is distributed comfortably over a larger area, supported by back and buttocks. On a traditional upright bicycle, the body weight rests entirely on a small portion of the sitting bones, the feet and the hands.
Most recumbent models also have an aerodynamic advantage; the reclined, legs-forward position of the rider's body presents a smaller frontal profile. A recumbent holds the world speed record for a bicycle. They were banned from racing under the Union Cycliste Internationale in 1934 and now race under the banner of the World Human Powered Vehicle Association and International Human Powered Vehicle Association.
Recumbents are available in a wide range of configurations including long to short wheelbase; large, small or a mix of wheel sizes; overseat, underseat or no-hands steering; and rear-wheel or front-wheel drive. A variant with three wheels is a recumbent tricycle.
Wheelbase
Long-wheelbase or LWB models have the pedals located between the front and rear wheels; short-wheelbase or SWB models have the pedals in front of the front wheel; compact long-wheelbase or CLWB models have the pedals either very close to the front wheel or above it. Within these categories are variations, intermediate types and even convertible designs — LWB to CLWB. There is no "standard" recumbent.
Wheel sizes
The rear wheel of a recumbent is usually behind the rider and may be any size, from around 16 inches or 410 mm to the 700c — or 27" on some older models, as on upright road bikes of that time — of an upright racing cycle. The front wheel is commonly smaller than the rear, although a number of recumbents feature dual 26-inch, 650c, 700c or even 29 x 4" oversize all-terrain tires. Given the higher rolling resistance of the smaller front wheel, loss of steering and control are somewhat more likely attempting sharp or quick changes of direction while crossing over patches of loose dirt, sand or pebbles. Larger diameter wheels generally have lower rolling resistance but a higher profile leading to higher air resistance. High-racer aficionados also claim that they are more stable, and although it is easier to balance a bicycle with a higher center of mass, the wide variety of recumbent designs makes such generalizations unreliable. Another advantage of both wheels being the same size is that the bike requires only one size of inner tube.
One common arrangement is a 26-inch rear wheel and a 20-inch front wheel. The small front wheel and large rear wheel combination is used to keep the pedals and front wheel clear of each other, avoiding the problem on a short wheelbase recumbent called "heel strike" where the rider's heels catch the wheel in tight turns. A pivoting-boom front-wheel drive configuration also overcomes heel strike since the pedals and front wheel turn together. PBFWD bikes may have dual 26-inch wheels or larger.
Steering
Steering for recumbent bikes can be generally categorized as:
- Over-seat or OSS or above seat steering
or ASS.
- Under-seat or USS.
- Center steering or pivot steering.
OSS/ASS is generally direct — the steerer acts on the front fork like a standard bicycle handlebar —but the bars themselves may extend well behind the front wheel, more like a tiller; alternatively, the bars might have long rearward extensions sometimes known as Superman or Kingcycle bars. Chopper-style bars are sometimes seen on LWB bikes.
USS is usually indirect; the bars link to the headset through a system of rods or cables and possibly a bellcrank, type of crank that changes motion through an angle. Most tadpole trikes are USS.
Center-steered or pivot-steered recumbents — such as Flevobikes and Pythons — may have no handlebars at all. If you are interested in the Flevo Racer in the photo, please read the article at https://www.recumbent.news/2009/06/16/flevo-racer-clone-testament-to-human-persistence/.
In addition, some trikes such as the Sidewinder have used rear-wheel steer, instead of the more common front-wheel steer. They can provide good maneuverability at low speeds but have been reported to be potentially unstable at speeds above 25 mph.
Drive
Most recumbents have the cranks attached to a boom fixed to the frame, with a long drive chain for rear wheel drive. However, due to the proximity of the crank to the front wheel, front wheel-drive can be an option, and it allows for a much shorter chain. One style requires the chain to twist slightly to allow for steering.
Another style — pivoting-boom FWD or PBFWD — has the crankset connected to and moving with the front fork. In addition to the much shorter chain, the advantages to PBFWD are use of a larger front wheel for lower rolling resistance without heel strike — you can pedal while turning — and use of the upper body when sprinting or climbing. The main disadvantage to all FWD designs is "wheelspin" when climbing steep hills covered with loose gravel, wet grass, etc. This mainly affects off-road riders and can be ameliorated by shifting the weight forward, applying steady pressure to the pedals and using tires with more aggressive tread. Another disadvantage of PBFWD for some riders is a slightly longer "learning curve" due to adaptation to the pedal-steer effect; forces applied to the pedal can actually steer the bike. Beginner riders tend to swerve along a serpentine path until they adapt a balanced pedal motion. After adaptation, a PBFWD recumbent can be ridden in as straight a line as any other bike and can even be steered accurately with the feet only. Cruzbike is the only PBFWD recumbent currently in production and features a traditional steering axis similar to most standard and recumbent bikes. The bike in the photo is a 2009 Cruzbike Silvio with a moving or pivoting bottom bracket. Flevobike formerly produced a center-steered FWD bike similar to the Python Lowracer.
Yet another drive-train variation is on rowing cycles where the rider rows using arms and legs.
Fully suspended bikes
Modern recumbent bikes are increasingly being fitted with front and rear suspension systems for increased comfort and traction on rough surfaces. Coil, elastomer and air-sprung suspension systems have all been used on recumbent bikes, with oil or air-damping in the forks and rear shock absorbers. The maturation of fully suspended conventional mountain bikes has aided the development of these designs, which often use many of the same parts, suitably modified for recumbent use.
Fairings
Some riders fit their bikes with aerodynamic devices called fairings. These can reduce aerodynamic drag and help keep the rider warmer and drier in cold and wet weather. Fairings are also available for upright bikes but are much less common. Fully enclosed bikes and trikes are considered velomobiles.
Seats
The seats themselves are either of mesh stretched tightly over a frame or foam cushions over hard shells which might be molded or assembled from sheet materials. Hard-shell seats predominate in Europe, mesh seats in the U.S.
History – early recumbents
Recumbent designs of both prone and supine varieties can be traced back to the earliest days of the bicycle. Before the shape of the bicycle settled down following English inventor John Kemp Starley's safety bicycle, there was a good deal of experimentation with various arrangements, and this included designs which might be considered recumbent. Although these dated back to the 1860s the first recorded illustration of a recumbent considered as a separate class of bicycle is considered to be in the magazine Fliegende Blätter of September 10, 1893. This year also saw what is considered the first genuine recumbent, the Fautenil Vélociped. Patent applications for many recumbent designs exist in the late years of the 19th century, and there were discussions in the cycling press of the relative merits of different layouts. The Challand designs of 1897 and the American Brown of 1901 are both recognizable as forerunners of today's recumbents.
History – Mochet’s Vélo-Vélocar and Vélorizontal
A four-wheeled, two-seater, pedal-propelled car called the 'Vélocar' was built in the 1930s by French inventor and light car builder Charles Mochet. Vélocars sold well to French buyers who could not afford a motor car, possibly because of a poor economy during the Great Depression. The four-wheeled Vélocars were fast but didn't corner well at high speed. Mochet then experimented with a three-wheel design and finally a mold-breaking, two-wheel design based on the Vélocar technology.
The early models of Mochet's “La Bicyclette de l'Avenir” or “The Bicycle of the Future” — the Vélo-Vélocar or V-V as the factory referred to them — used a 40mm steel-tube, single-beam frame and 450 x 55 wheels with handlebars over the rider and steering torque transmitted by bevel gears. Various types of Mochet-designed derailleur gears were fitted, with a single gear for the track models. Gears were mid-mounted using primary and secondary chains. The backrest was adjustable on more sporting models.
To demonstrate the speed of his recumbent bicycle, Mochet had the design ratified by the UCI and UVF and enlisted cyclist Francis Faure — a Category 2 racer — to ride it in races. The bottom photo above is of Faure. He was highly successful, defeating many of Europe's top cyclists both on the track and in road races, and setting new world records at short distances. Another cyclist, Paul Morand, won the Paris-Limoges race in 1933 on one of Mochet's recumbents.
On July 7, 1933, at a Paris velodrome, Faure rode a modified Vélo-Velocar 27.996 miles in one hour, beating an almost 20-year-old hour record held by Oscar Egg and attracting a great deal of attention.
When the Union Cycliste Internationale met in February 1934, manufacturers of “upright” bicycles lobbied to have Faure's one-hour record declared invalid. On April 1, 1934, the UCI published a new definition of a racing bicycle that specified how high the bottom bracket could be above the ground, how far it could be in front of the seat and how close it could be to the front wheel. The new definition effectively banned recumbents from UCI events for a combination of tradition, safety and economic reasons.
Charles Mochet died a short time after the ban was enacted, still protesting against the UCI decision, and the firm continued to make recumbents under his widow and later Georges Mochet until at least 1941 for a limited number of customers. Their final versions were a single-chain design named the Vélorizontal, the final model using a “Cyclo” four-speed gear.
After the UCI decision, Faure continued to race, and consistently beat upright bicycles with the Velocar. In 1938, Faure and Mochet's son Georges began adding fairings to the Velocar in hopes of bettering the world record of one hour for a bicycle with aerodynamic components. On March 5, 1938, Faure rode a faired Velocar 50.537 kilometers in an hour and became the first cyclist to travel more than 50 kilometers in an hour without the aid of a pace vehicle.
The UCI ban on recumbent bicycles and other aerodynamic improvements virtually stopped development of recumbents for four decades and remains in force. Although recumbent designs continued to crop up over the years, they were mainly the work of lone enthusiasts and numbers remained insignificant until the 1970s. Georges Mochet died in 2008.
History - 1970s resurgence and the International Human Powered Vehicle Association
While developments had been made in this fallow period by Paul Rinkowski and others, the modern recumbent movement was given a boost in 1969 when the Ground Hugger by Robert Riley was featured in Popular Mechanics. There was also the work of Chester Kyle and particularly David Gordon Wilson of MIT, two Americans who opposed the UCI restrictions and continued to work on fairings and recumbents. In 1974 they also nucleated the International Human Power Speed Championship in Long Beach, California, from which the International Human Powered Vehicle Association grew. Kyle and his students had been experimenting with fairings for upright bicycles, also banned by the UCI. In 1975 the brothers John and Randy Schlitter started producing recumbents at their company, Rans, and became the first U.S. company to do so.
In 1978, the "Vélérique" is the very first commercialized recumbent bicycle, fully faired, by the Belgian Erik Abergen.
The Avatar 2000, a LWB bike very much like the current Easy Racers products, arrived in 1979. It was featured in the 1983 film Brainstorm — ridden by Christopher Walken — and in the popular cycling reference “Richard's Bicycle Book” by Richard Ballantine. From 1983 to 1991 Steven Roberts toured the U.S. in a modified Avatar, pulling a trailer with solar panels and a laptop, gaining press coverage and writing the book “Computing Across America.” A faired Avatar 2000 was the first two-wheeler to beat the European Vector three-wheeler in the streamliner races. For about ten years afterward, speed records were exchanged between Easy Racers with Freddy Markham in the cockpit and the Lightning Team. So, America's strength became the flying 200-meter sprint in the streamliner division. The oil crises of the 1970s sparked a resurgence in cycling coincident with the arrival of these "new" designs.
A parallel but somewhat separate scene grew up in Europe, with the first European human power championships being held in 1983. The European scene was more dominated by competition than was the U.S., with the result that European bikes are more likely to be low SWB machines, while LWB are much more popular in the U.S., although there have been some notable European LWB bikes such as the Peer Gynt.
History – in the 1980s
In 1984, Linear Recumbents of Iowa began producing bicycles. In 2002, Linear Manufacturing's assets were bought by Bicycle Man LLC and moved to New York. Since then owner Peter Stull has been working with senior engineering students at Alfred University, local engineers and machinists utilizing available technology including computer FEA testing to improve their recumbent bikes.
In the UK in the 1980s, the most publicized recumbent cycle in the UK was the delta configuration, sometime electrically powered Sinclair C5. Although sold as an "electric car," the C5 could be characterized as a recumbent tricycle with electrical assistance.
A study by Bussolari and Nadel in 1989 led them to pick a recumbent riding position for the Daedalus flight even though the English Channel crossing was accomplished in the Gossamer Albatross with an upright position. Drela in 1998 confirmed "that there was no significant difference in power output between recumbent and conventional bicycling."
History – in the 2000s
Three of the largest recumbent manufacturers in the U.S. went out of business after the 1990s, including BikeE in August 2002, ATP-Vision in early 2004 and Burley Design Cooperative in September 2006.
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