Re: Disc brake maintenance tips

On 6/21/2024 8:22 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 6/21/2024 5:55 PM, Roger Merriman wrote:

A path-confined tricyclist wrote:

>
Actually, aerodynamic drag is a significant factor on a Catrike. I do
my best to keep my water bottles and bags out of the wind stream, I do
not wear any loose clothes that flap in the wind, but I simply cannot
ride with my arms tucked in as the original Catrike setup.

>
I’d assume you’d still offer less to the wind than on a two wheeler?
Assumptions are as ever sometimes just plain wrong!

 I'd be slightly curious to see drag data. A recumbent tricyclist may have less frontal area, as precisely measured in square inches from a front view photo. OTOH, such a bike+rider seems aerodynamically far "dirtier" than a normal road bike. Two wide-spaced wheels with rims and spokes churning the air, lots of transverse frame components with non-aero cross sections, and especially two legs and feet cranking and churning away in the very front of the bike. ISTM aero flow would be completely turbulent from the first bit all the way back.
 We could ask the trike guy for coasting and weight data. But that would require a hill and his cooperation. Neither are available in his case.
 I've briefly ridden part of one ride with a guy who rides a recumbent trike with motor assist. I suppose I could have tried drafting him to see if I could assess the size of his wake; but he was far too slow to ride with for long.
 

On the other hand, I learned how to ride a two wheeler before I was in
grade school, with no instruction. I think it's totally ridiculous
that some fools would actually pay some dufus to teach them how to
ride...
>

Kinda depends on what your doing...

 Indeed! Nobody has ever claimed that riding back and forth on a dead flat, empty paved rail-trail requires any knowledge or skill. That's all the trike guy does.
 When I mention riding to actually get somewhere practical, he snarls something like "I never want to do that, and neither should anyone else." Riding in the real world is one of the thousands of things he doesn't like.
 

That's a complex question with a lot of necessarily either unknown or arbitrary variables. Some addressed here:
https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/5883/isa-recumbent-trike-faster-than-a-non-recumbent-bicycle
and also:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705812016670
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167610520300441
I see your point and I agree to the extent that recumbents can have more frontal area but a studied approach should get a two wheel recumbent below any upright bicycle's frontal area. Three wheel maybe but I don't know.
--
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971