Wondering about potential of plywood velomobile

You could just buy plans...

https://www.velomobilforum.de/forum/index.php?attachments/new-look-jpg.265867/

This is my Agilo, #1 on the road and now there are 3-4 of us.

https://www.sitko-velo.de/log-in/

I am still refining things but have peaked at 72.7 km/h downhill and it drives 30-35 km/h on the flat with a 66 year old motor. It also has European street legal electrical assistance up to 25 km/h thanks to a 44v Bafang BBS01B, 36v is not fast enough for my 90 RPM pedal cadence. With an unrestricted motor testing has yet to be done but I would estimate no problems with such a weak motor reaching between 45 and 60 km/h on flat roads thanks to the aerodynamics.

Mine is much too heavy because I made a couple of mistakes and used gaboon ply instead of poplar. But it is very strong which is a good thing for a daily driver.
 
Dauntless said:
The composite would make the sacraficial ply on the outside. If you put it on the inside for structural support you need a balanced ply on the outside. The stronger it is the more self destructive an unbalanced ply can be. The inside is still surface.

More important is the strategic placement of the stiffening. When they do aftermarket stiffening of a street car some use cable. Not even stiff, probably not near as strong as the frame, but working in exact the direction they want the stiffening. What people think is the driveshaft space inside the car is called the chassis tunnel, no driveshaft inside but greatly strengthening the chassis lengthwise. Put a roll like that in a sheet of paper and look how it doesn't flex when you lift the end. Even with tissue paper, I sat here and tested that before i posted it. longer floppy. Adding weight with a laminate doesn't have that effect, they make leaf springs from composite and they flex.
Click to expand...
Okay so let me prefis this by saying I have no spelling skills due to dyslexia so play nice. Anyway I admit I am a complete newbe at all of this trike building but after searching high and low for information on it, and coming up short to say the least I finally decided to follow the bamboo build I saw on you tube. Sort of, As I dont have bamboo or balsa at an affordable price I thought I would try multipal Iner locked layers of PVC pipes and old Bike parts to fabricate a recumbent tadpole design I think they call it but the main trouble I have found is the fact that I need it to be a hand rowing model. ( Not hand Pedaling Hand Rowing please don't ask ) So my Grandson and I have been buying and cutting up Bikes for the past week or so, and after designing and re designing I think We are going to go with a old pedal car bent axle, design I found on Pintrest. We can use the pedal stems as our rotory input points and then by bringing the armatures forward to the bent axle we can transition to our linnier motion from our land ores as it were. this will all be housed under and behind the drivers seat. We re used the back half of a mountain bike for the drive hub as well as the wheel mound and frame, with 2 frunt bike forks at the frunt mounted under the body fenders / frame to provide a steerable front end, via a set of foot pedals that run from the axle bolts through the fender so we can push one or the other to steer in that given direction the oposit side is tide to it via tie rods. It is our hope that the several layers of PVC will give us strength while also allowing for some give in the ride to smooth things out a bit. A feature that I designed into our build when we get to the body build up is a set of head lights that will be housed in cases mounted on the tops of each of the afore mentioned frunt forks so that as the wheels turn these lights will follow the motion and direction of the wheels much like the I beleave it was the Tucker that came out ( well tried to ) with this set up on their car a design before its time but not to be thanks to the then Big 3 American auto makers. We are using these build methods and materials as we don't have or know how to weld. and as for our body panels we are going to up cycle old grocery bags into light weight strong material that I do know and have worked well with. Nice thing about it is all it takes is bags, a cloths iron, and some parchment paper. no glue or resigns needed. and yes before someone asks yes we will spray6 paint to treat it for UV degredasion. Okay enough of my ramblings any help and or ideas to help us out will be welcomed thanx see you in the funny papers
 
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