Lights and other Accessories

Mounting accessories can be a real challenge on a recumbent trike, as there are no obvious tubes at the front end, just the cross member and bottom bracket. Neither really good as mounting points for off the shelf bike lights. But at least I can build my own bike lights. Other accessories are a bit harder - a horn and speedo are a bit on the tricky side to put together. On the TriSled the speedo is clamped to the cross member, using a zip tie instead of the screw to hold it together. And I mounted the horn under the seat while I had it on the trike.

I've seen pictures of trikes that have masts on the seat back where the lights are mounted. This presumably reduces the shadow effect from having the light shining along the line your eye sees, and also the pothole problem from low lights where every bump or dip looks like a black hole. The disadvantage is that the trike is now a couple of feet higher than it was, so going through doorways becomes tricky. The tandem is already wider than a standard doorway by a fair margin, so it has to go through doors sideways. But if I make it too high, that's not an option either. So the mast will need to fold down, which I think is more complex than I want right now. Running cables to a removable mast, an extra bit to lose or break, plus losing the ability to duck under barriers make this an idea to experiment with later.

So I'll go with mounting everything on the front boom or bottom bracket. I want to mount an AirZound or similar as well and at least two lights. I will probably run a car horn because I'll normally have 12V available, and that horn will also need to go under the boom. All the cables mean I will have a go at running them inside the boom rather than strapped to it, just to tidy things up a bit. So a 10mm by 50mm hole at each end, and paint the inside of it. This means that adjusting the boom will not necessarily be trivial, as the cables might have to be played with.

The also affects the tubing size I want to use - if I put handlebar size tube (22mm) in most places hopefully I'll be able to attach any future accessories to that.