Re: A french product design student is looking for an internship

From: John Larkin (jjSNIPlarkin_at_highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX)
Date: 03/12/05 

Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 12:32:24 -0800

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 11:36:55 -0800, Tim Wescott
<tim@wescottnospamdesign.com> wrote:

>John Larkin wrote:
>>
>> This looks unstable:
>>
>> http://www.isd-valenciennes.com/upload/file34.jpg
>>
>> Has anybody actually built one?
>>
>I've seen similar things with two rear wheels.
>
>If you look carefully you'll see that the front axle is pivoted at it's
>center, so the thing will ride like a motorcycle until you hit the tilt
>limit on that pivot -- at that point I imagine that all hell will break
>loose unless you have a _very_ skilled rider who can compensate for the
>change in the effective pivot point while keeping the thing going.

Yeah, I noticed the same thing; ghastly. There's nothing like a sudden
nonlinearity to make motorcycling interesting. My first wife had a
Kawasaki 500 (the featherweight 3-cylinder 2-cycle) that would do 0-60
in 4 seconds at the top of second gear: whoop/shift/whooooop, 60 mph.
At about 80 mph, the suspension went unstable and tended to toss
riders into ditches, and every once in a while the middle cylinder
would seize up, so you kept your hand on the clutch lever at all
times. I had to tear it down and hone it out twice before she totalled
it and lost her spleen. Good riddance [1].

John

[1] ambiguity intentional.

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