I moved my temporary workshop to the 3rd floor under the roof because working outside is impossible and the garage is cluttered with a Mk1 velocar, a Mk2 rolling chassis, a small boat under construction and a lot of other bicycles.
The new tail/trunk is 50% assembled now and luckily still small enough to get it downstairs without damage.
An hour ago the rain takes a break and so I quickly pulled the Mk2 chassis out of the garage and mounted the new tail onto it.
Alterations in comparison to the Mk1 version:
I want the inner sides of the wheel wells flaring outside.
This reduces the wasted space for the wells and gives more room for the kids shoulders.
Furthermore, the rear end of the tail is 20cm/8inches narrower than the maximum width.
This gives a benefit, when cornering through bottlenecks or chicanes.
I got lot of scratches at the old body, because of the wide rear end of the tail.
I assume to end up with an tail weight of 10kg or less with all still missing parts.
I learned, in Hannover exists a growing number of pedalcars.
The blue pickup to the right is a great example, build by a guy named Kaiser
At least three more similar vehicles are existing in the local area,
The green tricycle is a "Mambo", build by Hacker Space Bremen
Mostly our velocar was driven by three or four persons
Four guys from the next stand testing the velocar, it still holds together.
(I was a tiny bit in fear)
In the bacvkground you can see their exhibit, a motor trike build from a Fiat 126
And the offical record for the most persons in the velocar:
A family with four kids
A torpedo shaped time machine
The fire-breathing mech-dog LRRY
An official report from www.golem.de
After two days, an estimated number of 400 people have made a test drive in our little car and it's still in one piece.
I had to repair two minor defects, a weared out braking cable and a snapped chain, which was repaired within 10 minutes.
It was a great event and a lot of fun to meet and talk to so much people, both makers and visitors.
Surely I want to be a part of the next years event.
Friday a week ago we made it to Berlin to meet our friends Andreas and Steffi.
We spent three hours on the Autobahn with our old truck and the velocar safely tied onto the truck bed
Saturday we joined the "Velo Berlin" bicycle fair.
The Cargobike Fans Berlin have organized a race there, in which I wanted to participate.
Despite the rather cold and rainy weather it was great fun to meet all these crazy people.
A great variety of bikes were gathered:
Rickshaws, Long Johns, cargo trikes (one leaning trike), longtail bikes and another four wheeler.
The drivers had to start in two divisions. two wheelers and three/four wheelers.
All had to complete one lap with the empty bike, then loading their bikes with two water containers, two bundles of newspapers and three short plastic pipes.
Due to two low ramps, which were set as chicanes on the race track, all had the choice to pass them at low speed or to risk the loss of some of the cargo stuff, what happens several times.
This resulted in permantly braking and accelerating, what my velocar is not made for.
Every time I passed the ramps, the hard backrest hits my back and this left a painful bruise there.
But because of my deep cargo trunk, nothing worse happened and despite my rather low speed I was able to overtake some of the competitors, who had to pick up their lost cargo from the track
Finally I became second place (of eight, I guess) in the multi track division, behind the mentioned leaning trike, a Veleon.
I had not the slightest chance against that high tech thing.
As always, here are some photos from that weekend:
A short ride with bicycles and velocar around Lake Grunewald
Still in Berlin-Grunewald we made this
"Eight-cylinders-vs-four-legs"-photo
Andreas and my son in the Retroadster
Lake Grunewald
Daddy is not to see here, because he's behind the camera
I have found an old French book with plans and building instructions for many projects, from bicycle sidecars, velocars to small motorized sportscars.
Somewhere in the book I found a two seater velocar, wich is quite similar to my project:
The book was printed shortly after WW2, so the motivation for building such things may have been different than nowadays.
Then it was simply the lack of alternatives:
Almost no cars at the market, no gas to run them and just low tech materials available (mostly wood).
Nowadays it's more a fun thing for persons, who are not pleased with all these usual high volume products, and instead build themselves an unique piece of craftmanship, which cannot be found elsewhere.
