Prototypes of my machines

Fast forward 4 years and I am making another attempt at this machine.

This time the prototype, built with Tom Traylor's latest figures for the steering geometry, was quite rideable. There is a learning curve. It took me 5 or 6 tries before I could take off from a standstill and get the other foot onto the pedal. After that and a couple of trips around the block, I felt about halfway comfortable riding it and was able to do a 'Uee' in the street.

Included are some pix of the front fork modification process.

This is my first attempt at a FWD 'bent. I bought a set of plans from Tom Traylor ( http://traylorfwd.home.mindspring.com/ ) in Feb. 2002. Tom uses a 24" wheel but, since I didn't have one handy, I used this nice 20" wheel that I had built several years ago. It has a 3-speed, coaster hub and I thought it would do well as an experiment.

For me, it turned out to be almost unrideable. I did make it to the end of the block and back but it was 'white knuckle' all the way and I had to pick the bike up, to turn it around, in order to ride it back as there was no way I was going to be able to negotiate a corner with it. This was, to say the least, discouraging and I was not sure whether it was purely my ineptitude, or the steering geometry, that was the problem.

Later, a couple of friends tried it and they both rode it just as if it was their own bike that they had been riding for ever. Another friend tried it, got about 3 doors down the street and fell off in the middle of the road.

After pondering this for a while, I realized that the 2 guys who rode it successfully were very accomplished mountain bike racers and Unicyle riders, whereas the lady who fell off and I are not capable of riding a Unicycle. At this point I decided to discontinue the project.