Trike Modifications and Improvements

Trike Modifications and Improvements

This is a group to discuss trike modificaitons and improvments that you have performed on your trike, or to find help on how to brainstorm and accomplish the mod you are trying to accomplish
  • Slideshow

Strobe Lights- My installation on Wheel Pants (spats for you Aussies)

By XC Triker

Categories: Tech, Equipment, Safety, Big Fast Trikes, Maintenance

When prices came down slightly from astronomical for LED strobes, I mounted a pair of Aveo Powerburst LED Strobes / Postion lights on my trike.

I debated between mounting them on the wing tips as my friend Henry and many others do and mounting them on the wheel pants.

  • The advantages of LED lights are:
  1. Low power draw
  2. Nearly unlimited life span (no burned out bulbs) / reliable
  3. No heavy power burst generator box (takes up a lot of room, heavy, electrically noisy (radio)
  4. No or minimal electrical noise
  5. Light weight

 

  • The disadvantage of wheel pant mounting lights is that the wing tip above blocks the view of the strobe slightly from above.  But, I sat down on the floor at the wheel pant and looked up toward the wing tip to get a view of the sky that might be blocked from there, and it was actually a very small portion relatively.
  • The advantages of wheel pant mounting that I went with are:
  1.  Less total wire run (closer from trike to wheels, than trike up mast out to both wing tips).  Less weight
  2.  Less chance of wires getting caught in wing mechanisms when folding up wing, or in operation
  3.  No wire running up mast and no flexing of wire near hang point
  4.  Wheel pant connection is less often disconnected than wing is

I'm not saying wheel pant mounting is better, just that when I weighed out the differences, I chose wheel pant mounting.