Velomobile Reviews

I'd scribbled this up after riding a Go-One Evo, a Milan and a Quest at www.velomobiles.de (which I recommend very highly).  I thought it would be worth a re-post, but is a year old, so won't be able to answer too many detailed questions....
I should clarify that this was based on about 15 mins in each machine, so is simply impressionistic and by no means to be relied on. 

Go-One Evo

Really nice looking vehicle with some lovely touches. It looks very big, but was actually very tight for space inside & there is very little height where the pedals are. I didn’t have a functioning speedo whilst riding this machine, but it felt in the middle of the the three speed-wise. The fan in the nose was a really nice touch for keeping it cool & the large amount of clear cover made it feel very open. Really limited luggage space, but what there was was very well organised.

Quest

Comfortably the slowest of the three for me, but easily the most practical. I personally, really disliked it, but can see its appeal. As Elmar said, it’s the only velo you can do your weekly shopping in, then take out & race. I found it quite uncomfortable for my body shape & more difficult to get in and out of, but that’s almost certainly about me rather than the machine. It has very soft suspension at the front, which led to side-to-side rocking under power, which, when added to the 7cm gap on either side between my shoulders & the edge of the entrance hatch, left me feeling seasick & as if a lot of my power was going into rocking the machine side-to-side rather than moving forward. Loads of room inside for stuff & loads of roof/hatch options. The best all-round choice, by far. But not really for me.

(Edit: there is (and was) padding available to stop the shoulder rocking issue to some degree).

Milan

Insanely fast: I was not going flat out (I was unaccompanied & struggling to work out German traffic law/custom, let alone which side of the road to ride on), so backed off a lot, but comfortably held 52km/h on the flat & topped 64km/h on 100m of 1 (ish) % downhill. Quite claustrophobic inside (it feels tiny compared to the other two), but actually not a bad space inside. Having the hatch touch one’s head as it closes it quite scary, but there was quite a lot more space than in the Evo. “Panzer” steering (bit like USS, rather than tiller) made getting in and out a lot easier & felt more instinctive to control, not to mention made braking a lot easier. This also meant that it was the only machine with separate left/right brake controls, which would prob mean the tiller steering is (strictly speaking) illegal in the UK. For me, the easiest to enter/exit & most comfortable position inside. Will get very warm in summer inside.

Comfortably my favourite machine of the three. It struck me that the Quest/Milan difference is the same as the Fuego/Fujin: both are quite similar overall, but one is very practical, the other trades some practicality for speed. My preference, then, is probably no surprise!

Overall impressions were that they didn’t feel like bikes or trikes at all. Being inside something feels quite different. Turning circle wasn’t a problem at all, if you compare them to cars, rather than bikes or trikes. I felt quite comfortable cornering at speed, but that’s prob as much about the huge turning circle than stability! Tiller steering was quite uncomfortable (the tiller rotates rather than swings) & the brake wasn’t under one’s fingers, so I really didn’t like that. Riding on cambered roads was far worse than on a trike, but I imagine you’d get used to that quite quickly. Riding at 52km/h on a cambered road took some real concentration, though.

Challenge Fujin SLII review

Before I start, a brief caveat: mine is over 4 years old, so there may be differences in spec now. The tiller is slightly newer, however, and was fitted for reasons that have nothing to do with this review…

I’m sure that your friendly, local Challenge dealer will be happy to advise you about current specs and older versions.

So, my SLII. Here’s the pic:

I think that this is one of the best looking recumbents out there. Challenge always design decent-looking bikes, however, this one goes a bit beyond. Most of us who ride recumbents have or have had something that looks a bit agricultural. This machine is quite happy sitting next to carbon road bikes, however, and really does attract attention.

Mine is specced with and 11-34t cassette and a 30-39-53t chainwheel. It has a 650c rear wheel and a 20”/406 ETRO front wheel. The rear wheel has 28 spokes. The front was rebuilt with 32 spokes in a cross 3 pattern due to me breaking quite a few of the original ones! It used to have Schwalbe Stelvio tyres on, but it now wears a 28mm Durano at the front and a 23mm Ultremo ZX at the back. I have noticed that Schwalbe have started making the Ultremo ZX in 406-23mm, but I have yet to get enough miles into this tyre combo to know whether the Ultremo is durable enough to trust on the front on Glasgow roads, but I will look to move in this direction if it is. The Ultremo/Durano tyre package is an improvement on the Stelvios, which I had no great love for. It’s not a night and day change, but the new tyres seem both more comfortable and faster.

I got my Fujin having had a Nazca Fuego for some time and having tried a variety of machines out. I wanted something very much the recumbent version of a road bike: speed being the main priority, with very few concessions made. The Fujin is very much in this mold: no racks, no mudguards, no suspension, no light mount and narrow tyres. I was both excited and anxious when I first rode it, since I had got used to some of these concessions and even got to like some of them (the Fuego was the first bike I ever owned with a rack, with tyres wider than 23mm, or with suspension: the rack and suspension were great and I was getting used to the wider tyres). Furthermore, I was worried how twitchy and difficult to handle it was going to be.

I picked my Fujin up in Edinburgh and went for a ride with David who had got the bike for me (& who had stayed polite through my endless queries about different bikes and different specs on these bikes). Our initial ride was to Cramond, then back into town so I could get the train home. I was quite looking forward to bike paths, since I was anticipating really struggling to control the bike at first. I really need not have worried. It is more twitchy than the Fuego, but not in an unpredictable way. It took me about 400m to get used to the differences in handling, so not that difficult. I find the handling quite difficult to describe: normally manoeuvrability comes from instability and most quick-turning bikes that I’ve ridden will give you a few scares until you are used to them. The Fujin turns very quickly & I knew immediately that it needed treated with respect, however, I can’t remember it giving many scares at all. It tells you quite quickly if you’re doing something wrong & you seem to have loads of time to correct it. Not at all like a road bike in that regard. Within a month of owning it, I had it going at 50+mph through a fairly gravelly turn without blinking. That isn’t a bike that’s hard to handle!

Saying that, I would not recommend it as a first recumbent necessarily, but with basic competence on a ‘bent, you’d probably be fine.

The other issue that a beginner would have on this bike is dealing with the speed. It is unbelievably fast. I have never ridden anything that even compares. Given that I’m rarely at full fitness, that it is immensely complimentary of its rider is very much appreciated. I still don’t like steep downhills on it since the speed racks up far too quickly for comfort, but on the flat getting up to 30mph isn’t too difficult and holding it for a few minutes is OK at a push too. There’s no fear in traffic when you can manage those speeds.

Speed on the hills is also good. Mine is about 8kg, so a wee bit above the UCI weight limit (it might fail UCI rules for other reasons though), but light enough to make big hills a lot more possible. Mine is fitted with a triple chainring & I have never used the granny ring. To be fair, I did need it once when I was blowing badly on a hill and a ramp topped 20%, but when I tried to get it, I found that the indexing was out & I couldn’t get onto the granny ring. I was fine to carry on in 39-34 on a 650c wheel, but had to grind a fair bit. I am not a climber (I’m far too big and heavy) and I stay somewhere with lots of big hills & I have only once needed the granny ring. That should really say everything you need to know about this bike’s climbing ability.

So, then, the bike is fast, it climbs well and handles brilliantly. Is there anything not to like? For me, no, but there are some wee niggles. For others these niggles would be deal breakers, but that’s probably taste.

Luggage capacity is useless. I use Radical Designs 2*7l bags & plan my days around not carrying much. I insist that all my bikes work as commuters & the Fujin only just qualifies on this count. Saying that, quite why you’d buy this bike to carry luggage on is a different question. &, if you really wanted to for some odd reason, you could always get a Novosport tailbox & get improved aerodynamics and c.40l luggage space.

The rear brake is pointless; I’d take mine off if it wasn’t a legal requirement. I really wouldn’t want a good back brake though (with the weight distribution, you’d lock the back wheel far too easily & I wouldn’t like to try power sliding this bike), it’s just that I object to carrying round a pointless brake. Even if I wouldn’t notice the difference if it were taken off. (The brake weighs nearly nothing). So there’s a rear brake that weighs almost nothing and doesn’t really work, but you wouldn’t want it to. Not really a huge problem….

Fragility. This is my summer bike & it rarely even take it out in the rain. This is partly because I’m scared that it’ll melt or dissolve and partly because I like to keep it shiny. To be fair, it is to be treated as you would treat a mid to high end road bike. It isn’t something you’d want to handle rough stuff on, but it will handle Glasgow roads fairly well & I’ve seen flatter mountain bike tracks than some of the local roads I commute on. I think it’s a lot more robust than I fear it might be, but really don’t want to find out.

I think that’s about it….

This bike does what it is designed to do incredibly well. It is quite a specialist tool, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Unless you want a generalist bike, of course. The final thing that should be considered is the thing that swung it for me: it is just so much fun to ride.  Folk who know me will know that I'm not the most demonstrative person.  I made a large whooping noise first time I accelerated this bike out of a corner.

Yep, it is that much fun to ride...

Random thoughts over a few days of commuting

Fast Bike, Slow Bike

I’ve always assumed the answer to this question: the slow bike gets you fit & you use the fitness on the fast one. Coming into work this morning, I started to doubt whether this was actually a sensible approach; or indeed, if there was any truth at all in it. Let me explain.

I spent a chunk of a few weeks earlier this year commuting to work by bike/trike. I always struggle for motivation during the cooler, wetter months (which are about 9/12 up here!), so was making the effort during February to get some base mileage in. Knowing the effect of Glasgow road-salt on chains and transmissions, I was taking the trike, which is running Sora components, which are less expensive to replace.

On a good day, the commute was quite good fun; moving reasonably quickly and not having to suffer the bus. Less good days, however, meant that I really struggled to keep up with the motivation. Other than not having mud-guards on the front wheels (which makes cornering in the wet quite unpleasant (but is better if you fancy arriving home like an extra from 60’s Paris-Roubaix photos)), there was the pain of lugging 20+kg of bike and luggage up c.150m of ascent in heavy traffic. Being cold and wet and struggling for power & having to overcome gravity was a situation that I’d always assumed to be helpful, in that, if I had the power to get the trike uphills in the rain, then the summer bike should fly come, well, summer. This theory seems relatively sound from a fitness perspective, however, a new piece of information came to light this morning that has changed the way I looked at things.

First commute on the summer bike this morning. About 8kg of rather lovely bike, with a 15mph tailwind and a predominately downhill route was the position this morning & I flew. I am hideously undercooked after a winter of more off than on cycling, but I was turning a 53-15 gear above 90rpm on the slight (1-2%) uphill about a mile from home (OK, I had come off a similar downhill, so this won’t be reliable for power calculations, but is reasonably indicative (oh, there’s also a 650c wheel on the back rather than a 700c, which makes quite a difference in resultant speed)). The decent downhills were less fun since drivers insisted on making me slow down, but the difference struck me as I parked up somewhat breathlessly with a big grin & made me re-consider my previous position about winter commuting.

The difference was that I had really enjoyed the commute and had gone really deep just for fun. & it didn’t really hurt when I went into the red. I was quite unaware of my legs hurting and my breathlessness. I was completely focused on my surroundings and this huge feeling of happiness. I haven’t had that simple joy of moving a machine quickly for a long time & now just want it again and again and again. This is completely different from my late winter commutes when I really had to force myself not to take the bus. The bottom line is that I really don’t enjoy cold, wet, miserable rides uphill on a heavy machine anymore. I used to be a bit more zen about it, but I guess that I’m getting old or lazy or nesh about it now. I was asked if I was turning into a fair-weather cyclist this morning (a breed for whom I have always had great contempt) & realised that I was (so, apologies to any fair-weather cyclists I may have offended!). Don’t get me wrong, I was cold this morning (& had to wear sandals at c.8°C, but that’s a different story), but I didn’t really care: I could always get warm by cycling harder; or harder still!

So the questions… How much of my current attitude is based in the knowledge that I have a velomobile in the post and will, hopefully, spend next winter’s commutes safely cocooned from the rain? & how much of today’s speed is from those winter commutes? & how much fun will I have the next time I get to pedal home uphill into the wind after burning all my glycogen concentrating at work all day? How will I feel on the big climb on day 3 of commuting (I need to get the bus after this to transport things, so this is just a 3 day commuting week), normally, that makes me hurt, so to be successful, the light bike idea means that I need to not-hate day 3-4 climb on way home with tired muscles and tired mind.

I’m looking forward now to my next commute and really not caring about these questions at all….

Further thoughts

Day 3 is where it counts.

Having written the above piece 48 hours ago, the theory is coming to be tested. I have a 8 mile commute that’s quite rolling, other than the huge climb on the way home/downhill on the way in. Home into a headwind and up that hill were not un-fun on the past two evenings &, although I was quite quick coming in today, I can feel that my legs aren’t putting out the same power & there’s a slight achy burn when I start to push hard.

So the hypothesis needs tested. If the light bike’s better, I need to have done more in the same time and/or enjoyed even when suffering.

Well, I’ve done 3 and 4 days of commuting in a week on the trike several times this year. I should be fitter and stronger just now than when I last undertook such a thing. My legs are telling me that I have done an awful lot more than I have done in one of those 4 day commuting weeks. Whilst impression or feelings are not really to be relied upon when testing work done, there has been an alarming and concurrent drop off in top end power available that has run in proportion to the sense of work done. This drop-off is clearly quite a lot larger than trike commuting caused if my ability to get up 6 flights of stairs to my office is anything to go by (I had decided that I was going to take the lift for a change this morning, given the state my legs were in, but then saw the big “Do not use” signs & got quite grumpy).

So, it appears that I go/have gone a lot deeper than I have done in comparable situations on the trike, but have I enjoyed it? Yes, but no, but… Let me explain…

I always hate working hard to get back to a standard that I used to have: I find it frustrating & unsatisfying; so I’ve been very grumpy whilst riding this week since I just don’t have the power. Saying that, I’ve actually had quite a lot of fun whilst I haven’t been being grumpy. What I haven’t had, most importantly is a situation where pain and frustration outweigh the fun, which was something all too frequent on the trike. Tonight, however, is a different proposition: the wind is still blowing the wrong way, so I have a headwind going uphill whilst tired….

& the next day

But it was fun. I’m heavy-legged, but happy. I’ve had to get the bus today to transport some things & am feeling remarkably good…

Lessons learned then:

• That the trike is functional and useful; great fun to ride on the flat, but painfully slow on hills. It’ll be fine to use when I’m stronger/fitter, but just now, prob best left in its cupboard for a few weeks (which is probably for the best since, for a variety of reasons, it has no pedals & there’ll be none available for a week or two);
• That I find getting back to cycling far easier on lighter/quicker machines;
• That I work harder on a lighter bike. That is to say that I appear to get more benefit from riding something with less drag and rolling resistance. So, whilst I could go at the same speed and use less energy, I tend to use use more energy than I would on the trike in the same circumstances.
• All of the above means that the quicker machine gets me fit faster, gets me to work faster and gives me a lot more enjoyment in the process.
• That all of the above would be irrelevant is I could avoid long gaps in cycling: fingers crossed for something approaching summer this year then and that the VM means that winter cycling is less painful….

Are fat tyres bad?

Rigid bikes are great: they go faster and are lighter; both of which are traits I really like in bikes (well, in HPVs in general, but that doesn’t quite work as well). If anyone has had the recent misfortune to commute on Glasgow roads, you’ll probably know what’s coming, but I was struck today with how much crappy roads are slowing me down.

After 7-8 miles of crater dodging & loosening all the bolts and screws on my Fujin, I turn onto Baird/Kyle Street (it changes from one to the other somewhere, but I’m never sure where). Approaching from the Royston end, you have a ramp down, followed by a very, very slight downhill. What makes this bit different and worthy of comment, however, is that it has been recently resurfaced. There are similar sections of road in profile, but I am so much quicker on this bit. This morning, I was holding a 53-11 gear at 90(ish) rpm without too much difficulty. In concrete terms, that’s over 10% faster than a similar bit that’s a bit lumpier. I also don’t object to not being shaken constantly, but the speed is more the issue.

I am actually shocked by the difference. >10% faster for the same power input is fairly appreciable. I know that this is a one-off sample & there are other factors at play too, but let’s run with that number for now. I recently swapped the Vittoria Open Corsa CX tyres on my road bike out for 28mm Schwalbe Marathon Supremes. This took quite a lot of commitment & a good deal of prodding (& the realisation that I was going to have to cycle downhill on grass and didn’t want to die on road tyres that skidded at the sight of damp greenery). After nightmares about how slow I was going to be, I was pleasantly surprised at how little difference they made. I now realise that this was probably in no small part down to running fatter tyres at lower pressure with the resultant drop in bouncing on bumpy roads.

I have, however, noticed that Schwalbe now make the Ultremo ZX in 23-406, so I can get a full-on road tyre for the front wheel of my Fujin. Does the above put me off?
Not a chance.

Narrow, high pressure tyres are so much faster, even when they are objectively slower and puncture more frequently. Right?

ICE Vortex at POP

On Saturday, I attended the wonderful Pedal on Parliament demo in Edinburgh.  Fantastic weather, over 3,000 cyclists and a fair smattering of folk on recumbents, so a decent day all in.
David at Laid Back Bikes had kindly offered to let me ride the Vortex on the day in order to save me taking my bike on overcrowded trains (& knowing that I had serious trike envy having seen the photos on his facebook page).
Details of the Vortex can be found here.  I'd been hugely excited by the marketing before the initial launch of the Vortex; especially the reference to the 11.5kg Monster trike.  When the initial model came out it was disappointingly heavy and fairly pricey IIRC.
Those two points seem resolved now (although, the Vortex+ is eye-wateringly costly), with the base model weighing less than 15kg and c£2,800.  This is by no means cheap, but seems par for the course, if not fairly good value for the specs offered.
So I got to spend a few hours with the Vortex, albeit most of it stationary and a chunk more at c.5mph.  I did get to stretch my legs on a decent climb and do a bit of urban riding & a lump of the slow section was on the cobbles of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, so I think I got a decent feel for the machine.

Initial impressions then, the trike is certainly has a very striking design & (whisper it) the white paint job really suits it.  This is the first ICE tike that I think actually looks good.  That seat is also visually well-designed.  The whole thing looks like it goes fast, which is a fairly difficult job with a trike.  The trike is a little less resilient than some other & care is needed not straining the bars entering the cockpit, but that's not terribly difficult to manage....

The position when seated is pretty comfortable.  Some of this is going to be quite subjective, but there was nothing obviously wrong.  For comparison, the bars are a wee bit further away than on the Greenspeed X5, which is my normal ride.  The seat rises and the front, so you're pretty securely held in position.  I'm not really used to this & it took time for me to get a comfortable position, but I can't see that it's anything but not being used to the seat.

After quite a lot of waiting around in the Meadows, we started off fairly slowly.  It was at this point that I realised that we were about to ride the cobbles of the Royal Mile with me on a trike without suspension and with 3 high pressure tyres.  With some trepidation, we swung right onto the cobbles, but I needn't have worried.  Something (I presume it was the padding on the seat) soaked up the vibration fairly well.  I was far more comfortable with the Vortex than I would have been on my X5 (with its big old deck chair seat and Kojak tyres).  To be fair, I wouldn't have wanted to go much faster, but it wasn't bad at all.  That's some achievement!

Making my way back to Marchmont from Holyrood, I got to open the taps a little.  First up the climb out of the park to the Commonwealth pool.  This isn't the biggest climb in history, but big enough when you're not in the best shape and being followed by someone who can climb.  The Vortex had given me the impression that it wanted to go faster & responded well to being kicked on.  Very easy to climb in for a 14.5kg machine.  I would have guessed it was lighter from the way it responded, but this may have been low rolling resistance from the racing tyres.  Steering is quite twitchy/light, which I found quite difficult under power going up hills, but, again, I would think that this is a case of getting used to it.  As we started to descend & take the roundabouts, the Vortex really came into its own.  The seat makes it very easy to get forward and lean in fast corners, despite its very laid back angle.  It cornered very, very well and just went where it was pointed without complaint.  It was very confidence-inspiring in corners.  It wasn't my machine, so I didn't push it, but I wouldn't have worried about very fast cornering, where I would on other machines.   Coming back through the traffic, my riding partner who was on a disc-braked Fuego was quite surprised (& perhaps alarmed) at how quickly the Vortex stopped.  Another plus mark to the Vortex, but a black mark for my group riding skills (sorry, Rob!).  Two things are worth noting that I didn't like: the low bottom bracket height is odd & led to lots of heel strike (I have large feet, so worse in my case) & would take some getting used to; and the 50t outer chainring.  OK the overall range is sensible at 22.5"-122.7", but I can't help thinking that another 3-4 teeth would be worth it on downhills on a machine this quick...

In summary then, the Vortex is a stunning piece of kit.  Adaptable (it takes a rack & with some Marathon Supremes would make a superb commuter/tourer, or in standard spec a fast commuter/sheer fun bike), practical and really "dialled-in" with its handling.  If I were in the market for another trike, the Vortex would be at the top of my shortlist.  Unfortunately, I'm not, so will have to make do with this ride until I sell the X5 & can persuade my other half that I really, really need a replacement trike...