First impressions
The arrival
After a few weeks, more exactly 26 days (which felt like an eternity), the trike finally arrived.
 The box it came in |
 Some assembly required |
The trike was fairly easy to assemble. You just had to install the wheels, attach the rear derailer, attach the pedals and finally assemble and attach the seat. The chain was already threaded.
I could only find two defects in the trike as shipped. One was
that the brake cable to the right wheel was routed between the
stering linkage arms (see image to the right). This meant that
the cable would get jammed between the steering link arms when
turning to the right thus severely limiting the turn
radius. This was easily fixed by rerouting the cable to over
the steering link arms (by temporarily detaching the top
steering link arm).
The other defect was that the biggest front chainring was slightly bent inwards at one point. This made it want to pick up the chain even if the gear selector was set on the middle chain. This was also easily fixed with a crowbar.
Finally I had to tigthen all the bolts and adjust the gears.
The ride
I am a complete novice when it comes to recumbents so I have nothing to compare with, so take the following with a generous helping of salt.The ride feels good to me. The bike is evenly balanced and I can't notice any imbalances in the steering. There is no suspension so every bump in the read can be felt. The turning radius is a lot bigger than I expected, but reading on the net that seems to be a common issue among tadpoles.
The chain made a clunking sound but after raising the front derailer acouple of millimeters that stopped. The disc brakes also needed some adjusting. Now the only mis-sound (aside from my own panting) is some creaking from the seat. I assume this will be fixed by tigthening the straps.