Last year I got a Cyclodyne with a full body through Ebay. I hoped to use it as a commuter vehicle, but there are a number of design issues that I think need to be resolved first. It is an amazing piece of engineering, but is pretty heavy, and there are a number of problems - mainly safety related that keep me from using it as a commuter vehicle. So for now I have been riding my homebuilt Toureasy with front fairing to work one or two days a week.

This particular machine was built in 1979, and was one of 14 produced before Cyclodynamics ceased production in the mid 80's.

From what I understand, the original owner lived near Boston and wanted to use it to commute in to work at the Boston Globe. He used it 10 or 15 times before giving up. It seems that he was arriving late for work because people (including police) kept stopping him to ask him questions!

The Cyclodyne sat in his garage for about 10 years until a friend of his - the owner of the Fat Dog Bicycle Shop in Mass agreed to trade him a nice mountain bike for it. The bike shop owner intended to use it in parades as an advertising gimmick. When Fat Dog was about to close its doors he decided to put it up for auction on Ebay, which is how it came to be in my posession.

I first learned of the Cyclodyne while in Grad School. I was looking through the patent index in the library for patents related to human powered vehicles (not part of my research;-)), when I came across the patent for the Cyclodyne. The inventor, Alan Carpenter, clearly put a large amount of thought into his machine, which is a front wheel drive, front wheel steered, tadpole style recumbent trike. It is fitted with a disk brake that is in line with the fwd mechanism which operates via a differential. According to the patent, it was intended to be a more practical descendent of the Vector fully faired racing trike. The body originally had blinkers, and a head and tail light. So perhaps you can imagine, after having read all this, and then coming upon what was obviously the only chance I was likely to get to obtain one, I just had to go for it! When I got it, the wiring was still attached to the chassis, but was no longer connected to the fairing, and the battery was gone, along with some of the lights. The original seat- a thin fiberglass shell with wooden battens built in was pretty badly damaged, so I replaced it with a seat I had made previously out of electrical conduit

Here is a picture of me with the new Cyclodyne shortly after we got it back to our place.

This is the Cyclodyne body resting in its cradle in the basement.

Here is the Cyclodyne Chassis with a coroplast tailbox.

Front view of the Cyclodyne

Rear view of the Cyclodyne

For additional information and pictures, check out Brian Wilson's Cyclodyne Page and Elwood Smith's Cyclodyne Page

In the Summer of 2000, (a half year prior to purchasing my Cyclodyne) I got the chance to try out Brian's (now Ron's) Cyclodyne.
Thanks Brian and Ron!

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last modified 10-27-01