Restoring a crashed monocoque velomobile. A relaxing evening video by Dan Kildea

The things you have to do if you cannot just swap your crumpled nose/bumper for a new one!

This is why we prefer to provide WAWs to our commuting customers instead of monocoque velomobiles. But it certainly produces a mesmerizing video. Hat off to Mr. Kildea.

Should you ask: yes, in professional shop hours it would be more expensive than a new one.

Waw384 off to France

 

Private sale: eWAW WAW4: WAW219 700 km! (Sold)

Nearly New WAW4!
700 real kms.

This eWAW was bought as a long distance commuter but was rarely used. This is why:

Every morning, a heartbreaking choice. Too often, the Alfa C4 won.

Full on-board electrics with optional daylight running lights
Rohloff 14sp gearing
Fietser.be e-assist (Bafang)
Battery:not included.
New battery: custom. e.g.
   360Wh: 452 € (standard for eWAW as acceleration assist)
   612 Wh: 689 € (heavy commuting full electric)
New price 10/2014: 10.105 €
Now: 6500 €

More pics:

WAW379 eWAW and large GPS holder.

Ready for a 45 km daily commute.

Replacing a Bafang Freewheel.

The Bafang motor our velomobile motor with PAS sensor is based on, is a charming motor but the later generation has one weak point: The freewheel separating the Human Powered transmission from the Electric, is a traditional ratchet / pawl system. Unlike the velomobile motor we developed for the first hybrid velomobiles, as well as the new torque-sensor motor, both of which have unidirectional bearings, it's possible to break such a freewheel with the right amount of wrong pedalling. Not that anything is wrong with a freewheel as such. It just suffers more abuse in a crankset than in a rear wheel.

Powerful and/or unsubtle riders can break the (brittle) hardened steel pawls if they tend to kick on the pedals rather than gradually ramping up the power - not allowing the pawls to engage well before exerting maximum power.
Joint damage is somebody elses problem later on :-) but regarding the freewheels we have had - give or take - 15, or about 10% of the eWAWs we built with Bafangs, come in with broken pawls. Fortunately it only happens once after a litte education.
Since the introduction of our new velomobile motor the problem has all but gone as we tend to prescribe our new motor with clutch bearing to stronger / less experienced cyclists. We haven''t had it on other machines either, simply because the eWAWs are ridden much harder than any other velomobile or trike.

We can quickly exchange the freewheels and usually do that for free (once!), but for our distant customers and many other Bafang motor owners I thought it would be useful to write up a little manual on how to replace the freewheel but also to better understand how to treat this fine little motor.

Yet another eWAW, and some lesser known WAW options.

WAW375 was delivered to Erwin.

Fietser.be velomobile motor (torque sensing), Rohloff, air suspension of course. 100km daily commute.

A good opportunity to showcase some lesser known options:

1) the large gps-mount, folding away behind the dashboard for discretion and easy entry and exit. Room for all kinds of gadgets: smartphone, gps, heart rate and cadence, battery and e-assist monitoring, make-up mirror, tablet...

Private sale: WAW218 with acceleration assist (Sold)

A nice clean WAW, hardly used. 

Just WAW.

I realized I have been posting a lot of 'specials' lately, forgetting that our main activity of delivering a velomobile almost every week is quite special in itself. So here are some pics of WAWs picked up at our shop in the last weeks.

Hase Pino upgrade from hydraulic disk brakes to Oversized Rotor with Large Displacement Piston claw.

As the practical cyclist knows: disk brakes are diabolic. They're the devil's ruse against cycling. If the upright citizen is scared out of cycling by threats of mandatory cycling helmets, the gullible geek is lured by the ill-deserved hi-tech ring of the rotor.
In reality however - be it a bunch of dogs thrown on your precious trike on the roof of a Nepali bus, or just parking your fancy bike in town - these damned flimsy rotors can never stay straight, and if they do it's the claws locking up for no good reason while all you want is to calmly commute.

Zing, zing, you got disk-braked! 

One way to improve on disk brakes would be to safely wrap them in a sturdy case. Like, the hub...
Or one could enlarge the diameter of the rotor to the maximum wheel circumference. Wait, that's the rim. And the brake pads could retract far enough to avoid that Ring of the Rotor. Magura brake pistons, for instance.

This customer was tired of the constant misery with his disk brakes. He had been immobilised by a locked up front disk brake too many times, inducing many a visit in vain to the Local Recumbent Shop. We proposed to do away with the disks and upgrade to good reliable Magura HS11 hydraulic brakes.

We had to turn special brake bosses on the lathe to fit the M8 holes in this Spinner sprung fork.

Life and times of WAW134.

From our very special Fietser Friend Kris, owner of Bbouwadvies.be, ecologic building consultant.

Here some nostalgic pictures from places where I went on my long trips from home, without car and family

In Front of the Dom in Köln

Im schwarzwald 30 km gravel...

In Mannheim

Near Eastbourne (UK)

Nieuwpoort the Belgian Beach

In saint-Valery sur Somme.

In Holland on "de afsluitdijk"

In Winterthur

In winter

In Rotterdam

Kris Bruneel

Bbouwadvies 

When energy matters...

Never too old for a velomobile.

My last job before the summer holidays was a ride to the P&O ferry terminal in Zeebrugge. This pretty hybrid Orca was delivered to an 83 year old gentleman from the UK.
George is an ex pilot who rode a Quest for five years. His knee joints demanded an e-assist upgrade and he came to Ghent to buy an eWAW. Since he had very long legs, entry and exit of the WAW were a bit difficult. The Orca, we thought, was a better choice.
Since there is a waiting list of almost a year, there are enough Orcas here for test rides, and the velomobile is his main means of transportation, we agreed to sell our demo Orca.

I shouldn't, since it is my business, but I realised I was sad to let it go. After a good half year of regularly riding it I must say the Orca is truly the pinnacle of bicycle evolution. She's refined, reliable, and overall just more relaxed than the eWAW: it became my favourite vehicle for short to medium distance rides. It's nice and easy to hop in and not worry about anything, it just brings you to your destination, all fun and no fuss. If the WAW is a Hayabusa, the Orca is the Goldwing of cycles.

Folding bike delivery service

Two Dahon S.U.V. folders in one of the zero series of  "Zelda", a speed-e-cargo bike designed by Fietser.be.