No Name LWB Recumbent Report

OK as Bill and Keila stated, the recumbent I test rode yesterday is not really one of their new models. It has some new and old parts. Some they are keeping, some they are changing. I don't want to give away any secrets so I will just call this the NN (No Name) LWB.

I rode HellBent down to Greenlees today (it is only 0.5 miles there from my office). I asked Doc if he had any of the NN recumbents built up yet. As it turned out he did. They brought down the NN LWB recumbent.This was my first ride on the NN LWB. The frame is either a Burley Jett Creek or Koosah. I can't tell. It came with Kenda Kwest tires, trigger shifters, and 27 speed Shamano Deore dérailleur and a Burley seat. Doc moved my EggBeaters to the NN LWB and I was off for one of my greenway rides.

I took the identical ride I rode the day before on my V Rex to see how it compared. Several things I noticed right away. I thought the NN had a much more stable ride. It did not feel as twitchy as my V Rex. I liked having a lower Bottom Bracket. It was very easy starting and stopping. I can see why riders who experience numbness in their feet prefer this set up.

As I was riding, I thought I was going faster, but since there was not a bicycle computer on it I could not tell. I wish I had strapped on my GPS to the handle bar to find out. I will next time.

The monotube frame did a great job of damping bumps yet I did not bounce up and down as I rode. I felt there was less tiller effect with this bent than my V - Rex. That surprised me since the front stem was longer. Steering and balancing were NONE ISSUES! This bent handled like a lady.

I was concerned since this was a LWB, I would experience front tire float. That never occurred. First time I went up a hill I leaned forward to shift weight to the front wheel. I found I didn't need to and laid back on all future hills. The bent did just fine.

I really liked the ride, feel and handling of this bent. However there were some things I would like to see changed. (BTW most ARE going to be changed in the Razors Edge version.)

First thing I noticed was that I am not a trigger shifter guy. I had trouble getting used to them but did after about 1/2 hour. I still prefer handlebar twist shifters though my bar end shifters on the trike worked just fine for me also. I would have preferred twist shifters on this bent. (Doc tells me they are an option.) The trigger shifters needed adjusting (or I needed more time getting used to them) because when I was on the three largest back wheel gears, I could not adjust the middle chain ring to keep it from rubbing on the chain guide. Doc said there was a fine tune adjustment in the trigger shifters to eliminate the scrapping, but I was not able to locate it while riding. I will chaulk this up to my inexperience.

Second thing I didn't care for was the Burley seat. (Razors Edge is completely changing seat design. Good!) I found the current seat hit the back part of my legs. Mike came in the store when I got back and he had the same comment. I also didn't like the gap at my tail bone. The Burley seat is two independent pieces. You have the mess backrest (which was fine) and then a padded seat. The seat could be adjusted independently of the backrest. I guess that is a nice feature, but I didn't care for the current set up. I much preferred my RANS seat. However, adjusting the Burley seat was a dream. There are two skewers you open that hold the seat firmly in place. My old style Rans seat will slide on me. I put a hose clamp on my seat rail to prevent backward slippage. I am told the new Rans seat attachment works much better.

And just to nit pick, the front rim had a ridge where it was pinned together. Thus every time I used the front brake I would hear a tap... tap... tap... as the rubber brake hit the rough spot. Doc said they would be using different rims.

But I really enjoyed this ride. All of my complaints are either being redesigned, (seat), or can have a different option (indexed twist grip shifters instead of trigger shifters and different rims). I think this NN LWB bent is a delight to ride and the stable, slightly dampened ride would make it a pleasure to ride for years to come.

I can't wait until the new design gets here!!! But I won't write anything about it until I have Bill & Keila's permission.


Pictures are: NN LWB, Doc, and Burley seat.

 

Rode the LWB today for about an hour and a half on the World’s Fair Park, Neyland, and 3rd Creek greenways. I also left the Greenway at what used to be the Riverside Tavern and rode up the hill to Hall of Fame Dr. to see how the bike handled a fairly steep hill. This is the first time I’ve ridden one of the Burley designs.

It really is important to dial the fit in, the more adjustments that are available the more time it will take but the results are worth it. Also, no matter how much you tweak the fit before you ride, you’re going to need to fine tune things after you’ve ridden a little.

The point of all this is that I was able to adjust the seat base so it didn’t hit the back of my legs. It will be very interesting to ride the new REB seat once it’s ready and compare the two designs. I was also able to adjust the handle bars so they were comfortable.

This bike is very easy to handle and has a comfortable ride. There is a somewhat noticeable amount of flex in the frame. This led to a little bit of bobbing as I rode along but that smoothed out after about 15 minutes of riding. Guess I wasn’t pedaling very smooth when I first started. The flex was more noticeable in bumpy conditions. On the one hand the bouncing could be a little distracting, however the flex resulted in a smoother ride over bumps than a more rigid frame provides. It would probably help if I tightened the flip-it style stem a little more so the handlebar didn’t move quite so freely (this is another one of those adjustment things that you iron out by trial and error, not a design issue).

As Jon mentioned, without a speedometer I don’t know how fast I was going, but then the very nature of a greenway limits your speed compared to the open road. I can tell you this bike had plenty of pep, handled very well at low and higher speeds even on the tight switchbacks where the greenway crosses Neyland Dr. by the UT rowing building (for locals who know this section of trail; for non-locals, this is a series of sharp 90 degree turns and 180 degree switchbacks with walls/fences on both sides).

The trigger shifters worked well. However also like Jon, I have a personal preference for the ability to trim the front derailleur and dump the rear cassette that Grip Shift (friction front shifter) or BarCons have over trigger shifters. But that’s my thing, other people really like trigger shifters.

All in all this is a very comfortable bike that is a lot of fun. While someone new to recumbents would find this bike very easy to ride, it is not really a beginner’s bike. An experienced rider will like this bike as well.

 

How come you don't think would make a good beginner bent????

 

Jon,

I did not say it would not make a good beginner 'bent. I said it was much more than a beginner 'bent. Usually people outgrow a "beginner" 'bent in about 6 months to a year, once they've climbed the initial learning curve. Then they are ready to move up to a higher performance machine.

The point I was trying to make is that I felt this bike would serve both purposes, easy enough to ride to please a beginner but with enough performance to please an experienced rider. In other words, a beginner can ride this bike but they won't outgrow it in a year or so. On the flip side, an experienced rider would also find this bike appealing.

 

I couldn't agree with you more!!

 

Ride Report – No name SWB

This past Monday I headed down to Greenlees to see if the No name SWB recumbent was available to ride. IT WAS!!! I already rode the LWB recumbent they had and had a very favorable impression of it. Since my normal ride is a V Rex (another SWB recumbent made by Rans) I wanted to see how this one compared.

Now let’s get something straight from the start. These are basically Burley bikes. The LWB was a Koosah Burley frame and seat. The rest was exactly like Burley’s bent or very similar to it. This SWB was a Django frame, Burley seat and the rest of the components were Burley or similar. Now these bikes are different from the new ones coming out by Razor Edge in the near future. But for now, this is what they are selling while gearing up manufacturing for their own designed recumbent. However for this article I will simply refer to them as LWB and SWB bents so we all stay on the same page.

Previously I had taken my V-Rex down and compared it to this SWB bent. Size, geometry and weight were very similar. In my non-engineering mind there must be a “sweet spot” for design that all good designers will use as being the best compromise of many divergent forces, while keeping manufacturing costs in mind. So the final products will usually looks similar. In this case they do.

That being said, I was lucky to find out Doc had put eggbeaters on the SWB which is what I use. So I could take it right out of the shop with no pedal modification. My ride took me across Broadway and directly up a huge hill on Glenwood and up to Scott avenue. I thought this would be a good test of gearing and climbing ability of this SWB bent. I put on the smallest front chainring and the third biggest back gear and went right up the hill with no problems. I felt like I climbed better than my V-Rex, but that could just be the adrenaline of riding a new bent. (You know how that is!) Took this bent on one of my normal Knoxville Greenway rides which starts by Neyland Stadium and ends at the Old BiLo store on Forrest Avenue next to Kingston Pike. I turned around and went back to Greenlees the way I came. Total time is about 1 hour 15 minutes. There is a lot of gear shifting, lots of windy pathway to follow which gives a very good test of a recumbent's manners in different situations.

Here are my impressions. First I liked it. It did have a different ride from my V-Rex but that was not necessarily bad. Things I liked were the overall handling ability of the bike. As in the LWB bent I tried, I felt more stable on the SWB than my V-Rex. The V-Rex can get twitchy if you hold onto the handlebars tightly, or make sharp turns. I felt more comfortable leaning into turns and making sharper turns than the V-Rex. I didn’t experience any of the feared “tiller” effect you can get with some bents. The bent was responsive to quick accelerations and turns. All good signs. Quality of manufacturing and components were all good. (But I am not expert on that. They just looked and felt good.)

But I have my dislikes also. Again, most of these will be gone with the newly design RE bents. My first comment is not really a dislike rather than a different feel. When I started riding up the hill at the beginning of the ride, with each hard pump, I could feel a slight tug in the handlebars. That surprised me. I didn’t remember feeling that on my V-Rex and when I got it back and went up the same hill, indeed it was not there. This is not a problem as it does not affect steering or have to be counteracted in any way. It was just different.

I still have a minor beef with the Burley seat. After riding on it for over an hour, then getting back on my Rans seat, Rans beat the Burley seat hands down. The Burley is INFINITELY BETTER than any DF seat, but once you get spoiled by a Rans seat, you’re spoiled. The Burley seat isn’t uncomfortable, not it is NOT AS COMFORTABLE as the Rans seat. I had the same comment about the LWB. Razers End assured me one of their innovative design features is a new more comfortable seat. All I can say is GOOD!!!!

In my LWB article I commented about my dislike of trigger shifters. This SWB has the same trigger shifters, BUT THEY WORKED FLAWLESSLY!! That tells me the other shifters just needed some adjusting. All my complaints about trigger shifters were erased with this bike. However, I still have a personal preference with twist shifters, but I could easily live with these trigger shifters.

Brakes would stop you quickly. I had some but not nearly as noticeable as the LWB tapping sound from the front rim when the brake pads hit the weld on the rim. But it was hardly noticeable. No big deal.

I do have one concern about this SWB and that is the chain management. If you look at the pictures, you will notice there is just one idler on this bent. It has two grooves with the chain crisscrossing the idler. By using one idler instead of two as the V-Rex, you save manufacturing costs and it does do the job. However I encountered two problems with this design. To get this to work, the chain goes from a vertical angle to a horizontal angle then back to vertical angle. When you do this, the chain crosses somewhere in the middle of the idler and rear cogs. Because the chain is so long, there is a lot of flex in it. So when you hit bumps in the road the chain bangs into itself at this middle crossover.

It took me a while to figure out where all the noise was coming from. My V-Rex doesn’t have this problem because they use two different idlers which keeps the chain at a vertical angle with each other and they left plenty of room between the two so chain noise is nonexistent. The only way I could see getting rid of the chain noise (and I do think it is annoying) is to go to a two idlers design. Even putting more space between the chains on the idler won’t cure the problem.

The other problem I had was on hitting a big bump, the chain returning from the front chainring to the dérailleur which followed the outside groove of the idler jumped its groove and landing on the inside groove. Instantly I had nonstop chain noise. I sounded like an egg beater! I quickly stopped the SWB. It took me a while to figure that one out, but when I did, I simply pulled the chain from the inside groove to the outside groove and fixed that situation (though the chain noise still showed itself on any good size bumps or dips.) A fix would have a guard over the top of the idlers to keep the chain in. My Rans did not have such a guard, but I replaced my back idler with a TerraCycle idler and they have such a guard. Have NEVER had a problem with a chain jumping out of the idler wheel with that set up. In defense, my WizWheelz trike had side by side chain idlers and in one back gear setting I would get chain rub. It is just inherit to this design.

I know it seems like I have gone on and on about the intermittent chain noise, but that is the only negative I could find about this recumbent. I have my eye on this SWB as a second bent which I will keep at home and leave my V-Rex at work. That way I can ride a bent whenever I please!!!

Anyone interested in buying a SWB recumbent, should definitely take a look at these. You won’t be able to touch a comparably quality recumbent for the price they are selling them at right now. But I have been told this excellent price is only for a small supply of recumbent they have on hand. The price goes away once they start making their own design recumbent. So this is a small window of opportunity to get a great recumbent and a low price. I would put this Short Wheel Base recumbent on your “short” list! :rolf2: