Off Road on a Recumbent

I've been asked about my Off road recumbent experience.

Part 1

I got interested in 'bents in the 90s after a neck injury caused me to stop riding and racing upright road bikes.

My first 'bent was an EasyRacer clone, but made with MTB components.
It had a 26" rear wheel and a 20" front wheel with a 2" wide tire, which was hard to find. Also had a fairing. It was heavy but fast on roads.

I was surprised to find that it rode quite well on the local trails. I took the fairing off, but ended up beating the heck out of it going over logs and rocks, and broke some brazes and welds.

At a bike show, I saw Doppler with their ultralight glued-and-riveted aluminum LWB, with an elastomer suspension.

I got one custom made, and rode it on trails a lot. The elastomer suspension was a bust, and the chain line was a real problem. I met frame builder Jim Best, who redid it for me with a big rear shock and an AMP suspension front fork.

This bike worked for me for a few years. I raced it at the local 24hr MTB races, and even rode trails in Algonquin Park on our Wedding Day on it, but there were some issues.



The rear suspension was overdriven, I broke the steerer more than once, and the chain line was still problematic when the suspension was very active, and it left me stranded a couple of times.
Jim thought he could do better from scratch.

 

In 2010 Jim Best built me this CNC aluminum full suspension bike, with 2x 26" wheels. The bigger front wheel worked very well.


I rode and raced this one for years. I only hit the podium once on a full MTB race, but was often on the podium on long adventure races often with mixed MTB sections from gravel road to forest trail to horrible mud bogs and swamps, including a couple of overall firsts.

The original seat and steerer broke and I upgraded to a Rockshox SID fork and TerraCycle Glideflex stem with carbon steerer. I got a carbon seat with integrated fender/rack made by John Morciglio of Thundervolt Engineering. The bike is now quite light for a full suspension LWB, in the 34lb range.





We also took it to places like Moab Utah for trips. We rode the famous and somewhat dangerous Porcupine Rim trail amongst many others. Riding gets more technical at the 3:30 mark of the video.



This bike was retired when I got a carbon version made, but I revived it with a new drive train, 650C rear wheel and wider DH tires as a rock-beater for our place up North where the trails are lumpy and rocky.

 

Cool bike. I look forward to riding some forest service/double track this fall

 

On standard bike it doesn't look that obvious, but here... Deraileur is VERY exposed there

 

Your off-roading adventures have always been fun to read about Richard and now that John M. lives just down the road from me I might need to commission a bike.

 

Do you know how the Best's main frame is built? It looks very strong. You mentioned it's CNC'ed, but not out of a single solid piece, I'm sure. It's hollow correct? Nice to see you are still riding it some, even with the Kodiak at your disposal. Have you ever considered indirect steering so steering angle can be steeper? With no large rake options on suspension forks, the amount of trail and flop has to be quite severe. I realize with front suspension it's best to start out with a decent amount of trail because you lose it when the suspension compresses, but this is pretty severe. Since all of your bikes are total one-offs, it's hard to find out - you'd have to have a bike built just to test the theory.

Do you still have the Oracle SWB?

 

The BestBikeWorks main beam is a big hollow rectangular tube, which Jim machined the walls out of to lighten it. The frame needed heat treating, and that held the project up by many months.

Frankly, I’m not 100% on steering angle. The BBW has a fair bit of flop, but it works well and is actually more agile at extreme low speeds and hairpin turns than the Kodiak.
The Kodiak has better manners at speed, but significant tiller which requires more upright seating. I think the sweet spot might be direct steering with an angle between the two, or indirect steering with head angle like the Kodiak.

One thing about riding off road is that you need a wide open cockpit space to be able to dismount or bail in a crash. The last thing you need is an indirect steering support right in front of the family jewels.

I am going to do part 3 on the Oracle and part 4 on the Kodiak, but am off to do the 2-day Canadian XC ski marathon. 120km of ungroomed trail in 2 days with all my winter camping gear for the overnight, so will be off line for a couple of days.

 

Here’s another Moab video riding the BBW, the famous Slickrock trail.

This was before I had a stabilized camera I’m afraid.

 

Ok, that makes a lot of sense - I was a bit puzzled how the relieved look on the sides was accomplished.

I think a steering angle in the high 60's (typical of modern mountain bikes) with indirect steering to keep tiller distance to a minimum would be best. (Floppy steering is still quite manageable if tiller distance is small) You could position the pivot pretty far away from the seat if the intention was to have mostly-straight arms.

I see a full suspension Ti-Glide with indirect steering in your future....

 

Well, I have to admit, that this is even more hardcore than my "Bad idea"...
But that scenery... IDK, I am more into mountains and creeks. Desert landscapes are empty and boring

 

You can have those in regular (trees, grass, living things) landscape as well...
You know, like this...
https://www.google.com/search?q=čes...UERuUKHXKrB1QQ_AUoAnoECAEQBA&biw=1920&bih=886

 

Part 3- SWB
I had been hearing about people touring the world on a Streetmachine GTE, and wondered about SWB for better maneuverability and lighter weight.
I saw a nice Oracle Omega and spoke with the builders. I was able to get one to modify.

Any heelstrike was a disaster, so I put in a 26" Rockshox fork with a 20" wheel and wide tire.




I learned almost immediately that the direct USS was useless for my needs. I would hammer my knuckles on trees, and the turning radius was awful.

Now I found that the dinky little front wheel would slam to a halt on even moderate logs or rocks. I tried a big front wheel, but had heelstrike unless I used a huge fork, which gave too much head angle and horrible steering.


Next up was OSS steering, a big improvement. I needed to get rid of the huge front fork and head angle though.


View attachment 12338

Next I got a new head tube welded in at a better angle, and shortened the cranks.


I finally had something decent. It was still a pain over big rocks, and the high stepover made things more tricky than the low position on the LWB. It was only about 30-31 LBS with carbon seat and steerer, so quite good.



This bike was fine for more moderate riding, but I would dread anything more difficult on it, and would never race it.

It was a good rail trail bike or gravel grinder, and I use it as my road bike now with a rigid carbon fork. With the seat angle lowered it's faster than the LWBs.

It's been living on the trainer for the last couple of years.

 

Oddly enough, the bike is starting to resemble the Metabike Mystique now a bit.



Maybe a suspended Mystique might be half decent on trails.