Arjan's Homebuilt Recumbent Bike

ccf Jo

Picture of me and bike

This is my home-build recumbent bike. The design falls in the class 'Classical short base recumbent bike configuration'. That means that it has rear-wheel drive, front wheel between the pedals and chair and that it has an ordinary steering mechanism.

Back Online

The homepage about my homebuilt recumbent bike has been sitting on my hard disc, being offline, for almost 2 years now.
It disappeared along with my student account, since I am now a working man.

I started a new homepage, totally devoted to being tall (as you can see by the domain name). But Kathy tracked me down and linked back from her list of bent folks to my tallpages.
And seeing she also revamped her homepage, I guess I am now forced to also be back with mine =).
Jo, my bike, is unfortunately not carrying me around each morning and evening, since the place I live now does not have a suitable storage. So until I move to a bigger apartment, it is resting in the garage of my parents.

Behold and read the story of my childhood dream come true: I present to you "ccf Jo".

I'm trying to extend this page, since it is visited more and more often. As it seems a lot of people on the internet are also interested in building and riding recumbent bikes.
The facts and stories are still below here. I started to make a separate section about its construction. When reconstruction is complete, all parts will be included in seperate pages.

	The construction of Jo - How, with the limited knowledge I had, I build a bike, which problems I ran into and which tricks I used to make it work
	Facts and figures list - Measures, performance and more data about Jo (See below still)
	Stories and funny things - Things that happened to me, and will probably happen to you too, when you start to ride a recumbent bike (See below still)

Program: Crash
If ( Force > Grip ) Then Situation := "Sliding"
If ( Situation = Sliding ) and ( you = on.RecumbentBike ) Then Situation.You := In.DeepTrouble

Made my first crash in 6 years.
The Dutch government has the habit of salting the roads when they expect ice rain or snow. I didn't know the salt also retains oil and grease when it doesn't rain or snow.... Now I do.
When making a not too sharp curve at 35 km/h my rear wheel lost grip and slid out. 5 m further I came to a halt against the curb stones. Considerable damage was done on the steering system and the under box, but after 2 days of repairs, it was back in good condition.

Facts List

Complete name	ccf - Jo
Constructed	December 1991
Overall length	2,48 m (8'2")
Wheels (rear - front)	28" - 20"
Weight	38,5 Kg (84.8 lb.)
Top-speed	52,1 Km/h (33 mile)
Gearing	Standard 3 speed Sturmey Archer
Chain	Standard 270 links, 3 times that of a normal bike
Brakes (rear - front)	Drum brake - Rim-brake (Wish I had more than this)
Motor	1 MP (manpower) works on anything that can be digested

Of course this is not where it ends. Since I was building my own bike, It just had to have everything I wanted. So it also features:

Built in stereo auto-reverse cassette player. 2 x 15 Watts
Anti-theft alarm. But I took it out just now, because it also sound when anybody walked by.
Electric lighting, automatically switching between dynamo and battery when the energy from the dynamo is too low
Foam upholstered seat, 7 cm foam for my back, 4 cm foam for under my other back. The foam is covered with sky-leather, and on the sky-leather there is a net of massage-balls to leave the much produced sweat out.
Water flask and holder which can also hold cans
Speedometer with memory for distance, overall distance, highest speed, time, etc.
White retro-reflectors in the wheels, they are obliged in the Netherlands, but I can advise them to every biker all over the world: Normally a bike is hard to see from the side, this solves the problem.

Journal

March 1991	I saw a homebuilt recumbent bike, started dreaming and designing
December 1991	Started undressing and sawing my old normal bike in pieces.
January 1992	After welding it, it took about a week full time work to paint and redress the bike, add all the electriccable work, make the steering system, guide the chain from front to the rear wheel, add the brake cables and make the leather seat.
February 1992	Finished designing and building the first computer that is the hearth of the electrical system. Everything can be controlled and switched on with small switches on the steer and a small keyboard next to my right hand. The computer monitors the battery status and does the actual power switching.
September 1993	I keep having problems with the conventional ball bearings of the pedal axle. Because also the chain does not run in an exact straight line, I decide to completely replace the nose of the bike. The nose is bent to the right a little and the front is replaced by one piece that uses the new type industrial ball bearings.
November 1993	When hitting a bump at 35 km/h, I blow 2 spokes out of my front wheel. The 20" 24 spoke wheel that came from a child's bike is replaced by a 20" 36 spoke wheel coming from a BMX bike.
March 1996	The old lead acid battery I built in did not have much capacity anymore. I replaced it by a wet, 12 V 7 Ah lead acid battery. 10 hours of electric lighting or 7 hours of loud music are now available.
August 1996	The old computer, which mainly consisted of electromagnetic switches, keeps suffering from vibrations and often starts to live its own life. I build a new computer which uses power switch FETs. The computer works the same, but is 1/3rd smaller and is, because of its more solid construction, more reliable.

A more detailed and technical description of my bike will follow (and more pictures). Here are some external links for those that want to know more about recumbent bikes:

Kathy Bilton's Page Entitled "Recumbents and Technomadics", this page has links to some pics and and a humorous log of the comments she received when she bought her first recumbent.
The International Human Powered Vehicles Association The "grandaddy of recumbent bike sites" this is a really interesting page, that goes into much more than bikes...

Give me feedback