The multidisciplinary nature of this project is really handy for me, not only for when I am physically unable to tinker, but also because it greatly amplifies the iterative design process. As everything is connected, making choices in one spot greatly influences options in another. Sometimes this is a reason to not commit, but seeing as I have little choice, I commit more easily.

Right now the day's are not very kind, but when I take it easy I can in fact build hardware for testing and measurements. These exercises also cause necessary change. As a test I decided to mock up a suspension arm with the stuff I had gathered. This would give me a rough estimation on how to mount them, how to attacked the shocks and what I want to use as axle buses. I also needed the practice with the welding machine and needed to find out if I could neatly cut out a half moon from a pipe for welding structural members.

This experiment resulted in this suspension arm :

This setup is adjustable and quite flexible. In fact I was so happy with it, this will be 1 of 8 final arms. It also does not veer off from the original design :

The adjustability also makes it easy to play with the camber to help steering and traction. It also gives me a higher margin regarding the construction of the center piece.

Next up was the donor bike :

It was time to chop it up, and good thing I did! While measuring the remains of the handle bar, I stumbled on a new configuration that made a lot of sense with regards to my idea's on the seat. Seeing as I am going to have armrests, the bars van be vertical and a nice bend in the tube seems like a natural fit in that area. To be sure, I have to properly design a folding seat with armrests.

I have the handles swapped around and the right side should get the electric motor control, but you can see that with your arms resting, this will not be a chore to control all the time. The hollow hinge is there for mock-up reasons, but in combination with the slight bend, I hope that these will fold down precisely under the seat.

Now for the seat design which will further dictate a lot of the placement of these parts.