Pedal powered quad bike

[Moz]

I've been thinking about rebuilding my quad bike with MTB fat tyre wheels so it performs better off road, but yesterday I was looking at pics from a friend who's been riding around Australia on a DIY solar power assisted trike. He's just switched to a fat tyre MTB with a trailer carrying the panels. So I started redesigning the quad in my head, from scratch, to have two suspended live axles, big wheels and a bigger but lighter bin on the back (current one is rotomolded plastic and is 12kg with the lid). Then I thought I'd better see whether the ideas worked at all, so I made a Lego "sketch".

(website)

I've used beams to get lateral stability rather than panhard rods, because for a bicycle-based design that makes more sense. You can see where I fitted a panhard on the front, though. Live axles rather than independent suspension because I have a rigid rear axle on my current quad that I will move across, and it's easier to make the parts in my workshop. handlebars come straight up off the front axles because it's mechanically simpler than a series of linkages to bars on the main frame (my current quad does this).

Total build time about an hour :) This is more me thinking out loud than a proper MOC at this stage. I just wanted to see whether the idea would work.

Edited March 25, 2016 by Moz

[z3_2drive]

Nice MOC, cool to see something out of the ordinary :)

[Riley-NZL]

And I thought I was crazy pulling a simple trailer..... :P

To be fair it was over some pretty rough terrain:

Riley-8013 by Riley Baker, on Flickr

Like the MOC, pity there aren't any thinner profile wheels (that I know of)

[Joefraser]

Love the MOC. Also appreciate the way your mind works "build it in lego before breaking out the welder"- brilliant!

Nice pictures Riley-NZL.