Agilo velomobile

[Marc]

The advantage of Agilo is that you can add a trailer hitch of any type to the rear axle, I have a quick release skewer version mounted to mine.

I'm about to get rid of my last quick release rear hub soon and will only use 10mm "through axles" at the rear hubs for the (way too many ) rear wheels of my trikes (the Milan got a rear hub motor anyway). They are not easy to find (Novatec offers some rear hubs with 10x135mm axles), but it makes a bit more sense to lock a trike with a rear wheel without quick release to a sign post or fence AND the rear is a lot more sturdy when going fast around tight corners (thats my main concern ). I also trust a trailer hitch mounted to a 10mm axle much more, than a trailer hitch secured by a M5 quick release lever.

I found DTH to be good in the rain. Continental Contact Urban is also good - and seems to have slightly better puncture protection.
(for when you wear out your current DTH tyre and need to order a replacement).

I shod the Milan with Contact Urban (40-406 at the front, 47-559 at the rear) and traction on wet roads at any speed* is phenomenal! Only the Marathon GT365 and Marathon Winter have slightly better wet grip, but are waaaaaaay slower (and much, much louder!).

Contact Speed, as well as being too narrow for the roads around here (28mm doesn't cope with potholes or bumps in the road), is terrible in the rain - particularly with temperatures below 7 Celsius. I won't buy any more of this tyre.

Contact Urban may be (fractionally) slower, but at least it stops when you need to!

Yes, the Contact Speed has terrible wet grip**, but I doubt its quicker than the Contact Urban.

*emergency braking at 80+km/h on wet roads is no problem with Contact Urban above freezing. Traction of the DTH is pretty good on wet roads, but you need to ride more carefully at lower temperatures (the GT365 and studded M Winter stick even to cold, wet roads at any speed no matter what, but are slow and LOUD)
**my Contact Speed 28-406 and 32-559 tire sets are outright terrible on wet roads. The 42-559 is not good, but the 32-622 tire set on the other hand is actually not that bad in rain.

 

[anotherkiwi]

@Marc I would need to change the swing arm and the Rohloff version to be able to use a through axle because they only exist in 142 mm for the Rohloff I will write here when I have trailer experience behind the vélomobile, behind the trike it also meant driving slowly and carefully.

I have had 2 major car crashes and both times Continental tires were mounted, that means I have a slight prejudice against the brand...

Bodo Sitko and I both measured the density of the different plywood we used and the result is:

480 kg/cubic meter okoumé
410 kg/cubic meter poplar

or a 14% difference

 

[Marc]

@Marc I would need to change the swing arm and the Rohloff version to be able to use a through axle because they only exist in 142 mm for the Rohloff I will write here when I have trailer experience behind the vélomobile, behind the trike it also meant driving slowly and carefully.

Shame. The beauty of hubs with 10x135mm "trough axles" is, that you can use them on any bike with 135mm rear drop-outs.

Actually, according to Rohloff the Speedhub "TS" version has a threaded axle with M10x1 nuts. Thats even better than 10mm "trough axles" (less fiddely mounting IMO). But its probably a pain/expensive to convert a Rohloff to a different axle.

I have had 2 major car crashes and both times Continental tires were mounted, that means I have a slight prejudice against the brand...

Well, I had four mayor crashes (and some scars to proof it) with Schwalbe tires. Hence I'm currently a bit more comfortable on Conti tires...
(big fan of GP5000 25-622, GrandPrix 28-559 and Contact Urban. Don't like the Contact Speed at all, though)

 

[Schrau-Bär]

Well, I had four mayor crashes

I hope those four mayors got off unhurt.

 

[anotherkiwi]

Actually, according to Rohloff the Speedhub "TS" version has a threaded axle with M10x1 nuts. Thats even better than 10mm "trough axles" (less fiddely mounting IMO). But its probably a pain/expensive to convert a Rohloff to a different axle.

I have lots of experience with nuts on hub motors and... nuts drive me nuts With a Rohloff the idea is to solidly attach the rear wheel to something and let them steal the rest of the vélomobile It is well insured

I am still thinking about the burley CoHo XC and that mounts to special QR nuts on the skewer. I could probably mount a Weber hitch to the Rohloff OEM dropout.

 

[anotherkiwi]

There has not been much Agilo news for a while because I noticed something wrong - bad tracking was eating my tyres...

So how did that happen? Everything was set up just fine with a <1 mm toe in under load. Well as I have been driving like an animal I think it is safe to assume that driving into the large pothole on the way to the garden was not a good idea - someone was coming the other way - usually I drive around the hole.

Result a bent axle, confirmed today after disassembly of the axle from the strut. Not a huge bend, between 0.5 and 0.75 mm but by the time you trace the line out to the tyre that is quite a big tracking error. Also two ball ends are a little sloppy compared to all the other ball ends so I will change those just to be on the safe side.

 

[anotherkiwi]

@JKL now you know who to contact if you need torture testing done Maybe I got too carried away with the idea that first builder had to find the limits of Agilo, Bodo Sitko has asked me to calm down, we are quite sure now that the structure is sound and up to taking a beating

I also broke the door in half recently testing my "elegant" mounting and dismounting technique, it doesn't work if there is too much slope on the street

I get to do things you wouldn't dream of doing with a >10000 € carbon fibre vélomobile

 

[JKL]

torture testing

Ich hatte erst Drehmoment Versuche gelesen.

Für Folterversuche am Agilo bin ich nicht zuständig

 

[anotherkiwi]

Plywood is wonderful, if you break something you can just glue it back together again in the majority of cases. If it is really broken you cut the piece out and splice in some new ply. Remember the whole 4 sheets cost less than 200€ (Ok before the"special operation" a.k.a. war...) and that was the expensive okoumé ply option, poplar costs about 38€ a sheet today.

Strength wise I have no doubts anymore - that is quite reassuring when you are >50 km/h on a very fast hill. Of course I have surface dents but a little bit of filler and some paint fixes those. I can't see the scratches on the outside from the drivers seat!

And now I know how a front suspension strut is assembled! I think I will put the new axle in with a little less Loctite... Enough but no excess... That will make future servicing of the brakes a little easier and from experience they will need to be serviced more often here because of the hills.

I think the testing period is now closed and once I get the strut back together and in I will move on to calmer driving to destinations which are a little further from home.

 

[Schneck]

Ist ja schon beim Bau sehr hilfreich, drei mal gekürzt- geht mit dem Messer ganz einfach und dann mit einer kleinen Leiste verlängert schon passt es.Bin derzeit wohl bei Baufehler 30 aber der Plan ist so gut bisher bekam ich das alles hin. Du machst mir immer wieder Mut mit deinen Post`s.
Leider bin ich noch nicht mal bei der Hälfte so das noch viel Zeit vergehen wird bis ich zum Fahren kommen werde.
Aber jetzt mache ich das in Vollzeit.So drei Tage nachdenken wie,dann ausführen und wieder Mist gebaut , nachdenken ausbessern und wird wieder.Denke daran mal eigenes hier rein zu stellen gibt auch schon einige Fotos aber die muss ich erst noch Bodo senden.
schöne Grüße an alle Norbert

 

[anotherkiwi]

So the lesson is drive carefully with your wood vélomobile, pretend that it is made of carbon fibre. If you ever do have an incident rest assured, Agilo is very strong, that strength has been tested by a crazy kiwi... In fact the wood parts are much stronger than the steel!

 

[anotherkiwi]

Back together and tested.

I had forgotten how light and precise the steering was! I really am losing the plot, I should have realised immediately that something was wrong when the steering became heavy

33º C is a little too warm for an extended drive so that will wait until later in the week.

 

[Sossenbinder]

This morning, during the coffee break, I told a colleague, who has also test driven my Strada, about the Agilo, link to the forum, website, etc....
today, at lunch I got a chat message about the Agilo plans:

ordered

I just can't wait to see the plans! How long can it take to get them grrrrr

 

[Sossenbinder]

Ich hätte Fragen zur Teilebeschaffung.
Wo bekomme ich denn die ganzen typischen VM-Teile? Also Tiller, Federbeine, Laufräder mit Bremsen, etc?
Mir fällt da nur Ginkgo ein, aber die habe ich unter "fein und teuer" einsortiert. Gibt es auch Budgetteile für ein BudgetVM?

Fragt sich Flo

 

[Schneck]

velomobil.nl
Leiba.de
alligt.n
und auch natürlich gibts auch was bei ginko
Auf dem Plan gibt es eine Materialliste was alles zu besorgen ist und bei Spezialteilen auch wo
mir fehlen auch noch Teile ,aber Vorteil ist Du musst nicht alles auf einmal zahlen.
So 4k Euronen solltest du aber ca schon rechnen -und jetzt kommt´s- für ein NEUES Velomobil.
Nachteil dauert einige Zeit bis man es hat.Meine Tägliche Bastelei übersteigt selten eine Stunde
denn es muss immer auch durchhärten und dabei lasse ich dem Ganzen lieber ruhe
Grüße Norbert

 

[anotherkiwi]

Edit: Error the price does include the Rohloff. My spreadsheet is at 3900€ shipping included but:

- I have Ginkgo high-end brake drums
- That price does not include the Rohloff which I got as a gift. (but includes an Alfine 8 Inter)
- I have an expensive air shock in the rear
- there are cheaper tyres
- poplar plywood is cheaper than okoumé
- if you have a DIY pedelec you can share the battery, it is not in my price either
- of course shipping on most things you need to buy is cheaper in Germany

If you live somewhere flatter then an Alfine 11 is enough and you could use 70 mm brakes then it is possible to build for under 3000€

It is much easier if you have the suspension parts while you are building because you can test mount before closing the top.

If you are building you should look at Ginkgo idlers which are aluminium, they are better than plastic ones (this is one of my next upgrades). I use a cage which holds the chain tubes and a 5.5 mm spacer. I have been told that the Bafang supplied chainring pushes the chainline too far to the left. You can correct that by using a spider and a normal 110 or 130 BCD chainring. You could also make your own bottom bracket holder - from wood or from aluminium there are examples on the forum.

You can ask for the springs you need at velomobiel.nl, I am about 80 kg so I asked for hard springs.

If you have questions or crazy ideas you can PM me for tips. If you want to modify something structural on the plan please write to Bodo first.

 

[Felix]

...you could use 70 mm brakes...

You shouldn't, 90mm makes a big difference for almost no extra cost.

 

[Disch]

Error the price does include the Rohloff. My spreadsheet is at 3900€ shipping included but:

Is this including or excluding the pedelec?

 

[Sossenbinder]

So 4k Euronen solltest du aber ca schon rechnen -und jetzt kommt´s- für ein NEUES Velomobil.

Ich bin mit meinem DFxl sehr zufrieden.
Mein Gedanke war, ein günstiges "Mitwachsendes" VM für meine Kinder zu bauen

 

[beate]

Aber ließen sich da ggf noch Kosten durch eine Hinterradschwinge aus Holz sparen?