The trike is off the road...

Have been without the trike for a little while hence the lack of posts lately. As you can see it is looking a little worse for wear in its partially disassembled state and lack of pedals!

So what happened? Well in early September whilst heading up to school the Mountain Drive made a horrible noise then locked up! I could not rotate the pedals forwards or backwards so had to quickly wheel the bike home (downhill luckily) with the youngest on board, then put him in the car and drive up to school to pick up the oldest from Kindi. Was only a little bit late for pickup fortunately.

The manufacturer (Florian Schlumpf) was very quick to respond to my emails and I sent it back to him for inspection and warranty repair on September 21st after arranging for my local bike shop to remove it. I did not get the old cranks put back on because the thread in the bottom bracket needed repair and I thought I would just wait for the Mountain Drive to return (it does not use the bottom bracket threads).

The reason why it failed is rather unexpected to say the least! Upon receiving the Mountain Drive Florian said the one I had is designed for 'hand trikes' (something I had not heard of before). It uses only 2 instead of 4 planetary gears to reduce weight and has a 'softer' shifting mechanism. In short I somehow got sold a Mountain Drive never designed to go on a 'normal' bike and the extra stress has ruined it! I never even knew there was a Mountain Drive version not meant to go on pedal bikes and I will now be having serious words to the guy who I got it off locally. After all he knew exactly what type of bike the Mountain Drive was going on because he installed it!

Florian kindly agreed to repair and upgrade the Mountain Drive for just the cost of the parts and freight which is fair enough given it is not his fault it failed. It arrived today with some free extra bits thrown eg some new crank arms (my original ones were wrecked by having the pedals cross threaded on to them). Florian certainly stands behind the product he manufacturers!