In 2006 a respected recumbent builder in the U.K. suggested the rake of my chopper-style suspension was too shallow, thus the steering would be heavy, especially at low speeds. The rake should be steeper, he said, and more like a sportbike. I own a Honda 500 Interceptor, and among the other bikes I owned was a severely raked-out chopper. I agree the chopper needed a firm hand during slow turns, but other times it was more fun than the Interceptor. The U.K. builder's recumbent steering was obviously a success, but I wanted to know how it fundamentally worked and could that combination work as well with other designs.
As such, I started doing some reading. I found a lot of information regarding rake, but just a little on trail. Making it worse, there was absolutely nothing explaining how to determine the best combination. The big manufacturers know because they spent a lot of time and money on their studies, but why would they publish it on the web for free?
That was the beginning of my technical research, a crude yet crucial set of experiments to obtain accurate information for the design of ProjectVF. It seemed clear that I needed to test various combinations of rake and trail and determine which setup worked the best. The result was a two-wheeled test mule with a simple method to adjust the rake and trail independent of each other. I could play with the geometry and compare the results and pick the one most likely to work. The research itself was cheap and easy but took longer than expected. The reward is having the data I need.
Click on the buttons to learn more about my research and the results.
