Front wheel drive recumbent bike

[bwittig]

From Make magazine, not an original design, but a home-brew front wheel drive recumbent bike. Bonus points for better handling on snow and ice.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/04/front-drive-front-steer-recumbent-bike.html

Comments

[johnridley]

Minus 100 for pretty much no traction going up hills on ice.
Minus 1000 for the fact that it would probably get you killed if you needed to maneuver quickly. Your leg would get caught on the drivetrain and throw you into traffic.

Also, if you're talking snow and ice, forget it. You wear any kind of pants with that, they'll tangle in the drivetrain in minutes.

In addition, if riding on any kind of sketchy surface such as ice or sand/gravel, the seat positioning is not good; when you inevitably lose traction, you'll be on your ass (if you're lucky) before you can possibly get a foot down. On ice, even most hard-core bent riders pull down the diamond frame upright.

[bwittig]

Yeah, it looked to me like the seat was too high up as well--less stable.

I also noticed that he did not dismount in view of the camera.