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Steve's Velomobile Project
February 19 Update
Now have about 500 km on the orange velomobile. Rode most of January in spite of it raining for 29 days out of 31. Stayed dry with the canopy cover on. Might have only ridden half as much without the velomobile. After some initial mechanical glitches it has been working well. Learned a bit more about what needs to be done to make it a practical vechile. Overall quite pleased with the progress so far. Encouraged by the last couple of parts made. Have been tracking the time involved and so far its only slightly more than what I estimated.
A couple of areas that still need improvement are the signal lights and ventilation. The price and availablity of sixty degree LEDs has improved lately. We will now be using 8 of these LEDs per signal light. The signal lights will be made tobe flush with the shape of the shell and have a reflector around each LED. The reflector idea is borrowed from an LED light I spotted at the lumberyard. There now is a vent opening built into the front of the hull but we still have to make a duct to direct the air flow. At present when it is really wet the front wheel throws up spray in front of the front bulkhead which is caught in the airflow into the velomobile. This only seems to happen when travelling at over 30 kph. The planned duct will isolate the spray from the front wheel from the air flowing into the velomobile and have a baffle to control the amount of airflow.
Have decided to modify the nose of the velomobile slightly to get a bit more aerodynamic shape. This change should be finished next week along with streamlining bump behind the rider.
Have made the beam and hull for the next velomobile. They came out well with a bit of a weight saving over the previous ones. Presently working on building a jig to help with bonding the beam to the velomobile hull.