With my shoulder falling apart (surgery upcoming!), and back pain problematic as well, I’ve been looking at recumbents, and especially tadpole trikes, but unfortunately, they are super expensive. However, last week this fairly beat TerraTrike Rover i8 popped up on Craigslist and I picked it up yesterday (crappy pic from ad):
Still expensive, but way, way cheaper than buying new. It’s well worn, but seems mechanically sound. Stuff that’s being done:
- Seat cleaning - Complete!
- New pedals
- New grips
- New locking brake levers (the ones on there are probably fine, but I’m irrationally offended that they don’t match, and replacements are cheap)
- New brake cables
- Water bottle cage (default place is kind of crappy, I should see if people have found better mount points)
- Maybe new shifter (the one on there is missing its grip, which doesn’t seem to be available for sale separately. I ordered a new one but my bank blocked the charge, though ebay isn’t complaining about not getting paid)
- New seat stay pins (currently attached with a rusty nut on a bent rusty screw)
- New caliper bracket bolts (current ones look like they’ve been in the ocean)
- New stupid looking safety flag (these all look so bad, I sort of like these Traumvelo flags, but $60 seems really steep. Bike Flags USA look decent as well, and are more reasonable but they don’t have online ordering and I hate calling people)
- Removing crappy peeling reflective tape (unfortunately if you peel it, most of the back side of the reflective material stays on)
- New lights
- New mirror
- Alignment (pretty sure there’s a bit of toe-in)
- Chain de-grease and lube
- Various other oiling
- Maybe cleaning up that boom rust, as it looks pretty ugly.
In any event, none of that is especially difficult, so hopefully I don’t screw it up. If this turns out to be a fun ride, I might look to upgrade to something like the Catrike 559, though that is so damn expensive (when I was in Houston one came up on CL for only $1500, and I probably should have jumped on that).