BODY LEAN STEERING-the evolution
In
1984 Brike Int. Ltd. was building a low seated, foot-powered three
wheeled design that used a patented "body lean steering" method. Our design
used a two piece frame. You sat on the front
section that includes the seat,
the front wheel and the crank assembly.
The
rear section housed the rear wheels and the handlebars. The front part of the
frame articulated (tilted and turned) on two pivot points between the two
frame pieces. As you leaned
your body towards the apex of the corner, the front wheel, the seat, and the
cranks tilted and turned with you. Two very important aspects of a high
performance three wheeled cycle are the ability to lean your body to
counteract centrifugal force during a turn, and the ability to pedal
throughout the turn.
Over the
years, many people who had varying types of injuries came to us because
they couldn't ride conventional bicycles. They were overjoyed to find our
three wheeled design made it possible for them to rediscover the sport of
cycling. Some people came to us who had very limited use of their legs
and ultimately, some people that had no use of them at all. It was then we
noticed that our design had several inherent design aspects that lend
themselves perfectly to a handcycle. The first aspect was you simply leaned
your body to steer the bike.
Then, when attempting to demo our bike to a
person that was partially paralyzed, we quickly realized that by simply moving
the foot crank assembly from ahead of our front wheel to above the wheel
allowed our bike to be hand powered. With this development, the very first
low seated high performance 'handcycle' was born.
There were a couple of other designs on the
market which either bolted to a wheelchair or had a high seat height similar
to a wheelchair with bicycle type front fork for steering. Our design was
completely different than what was currently on the market and had
significantly higher performance. Not to mention, it was the most fun
handcycle to ride.
Because FREEDOM RYDER was the first high performance handcycle out there, word soon spread and handcyclists everywhere were setting all kinds of distance, speed and time records on Freedom Ryder handcycles. (see World Records) As time passed and the market grew, more and more companies started coming out with their version of a handcycle. Because our bike was a patented design, the other handcycle manufacturers predominantly used the bicycle front fork 'headset' steering design. This design had some inherent design limitations. When turning the front fork it would twist up your legs and the tire would contact the riders leg. Also, when trying to turn a corner and pedal at the same time the cranks would become out of alignment with your body and this made pedaling and cornering at the same time quite difficult.
However, the success and higher performance of our handcycles caused the other manufacturers to employ as many design aspects of a FREEDOM RYDER as they could. That's why so many of the handcycles on the market today resemble a FREEDOM RYDER. On all handcycles, the low center of gravity, the rider’s body position, the means of supporting the rider’s legs, the cambered rear wheels, the side by side crank position and the adjustment and triangulation of the crank assembly were all Freedom Ryder "design firsts". The one thing they didn't copy, because of our patents, was the "body lean steering design."
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