Water Bottles: I guess my post about the water bottle situation on the trikes might have been confusing. A poster (dzrtcat) on bike forums couldn’t understand the intent and then made personal attacks. It is a truly sad by product of the internet age that the anonymous nature of the net has caused such a decrease in civility. I’m quite sure the poster would not speak like he/she did in person. And please ddzrtcat don’t take that as a challenge of you virility just an observation that in my nearly fifty years exchanging O2 for CO2 I can count on one hand when I’ve been talked to that way. As I said on bike forum I don’t know what ax you have to grind.
So to be perfectly clear the issue is not that Catrike didn’t come with a bottle holder, which it didn’t. The issue is that Catrike only has provisions to attach one bottle holder. The trident has three locations. Those are facts which are indisputable. Now my opinion and my wife’s is that the location of the bottle holders on the Trident are better accessed while riding than the Catrikes location. When seated and peddling the Trident bottles can be easily reached without breaking cadence. With the Catrike it’s also possible not to break cadence but you have to lean forward then pull forward to release the bottle, but in our opinion it’s not nearly as easy. And my wife prefers to stop to drink because of the positioning. It’s actually easier for me to hand her a bottle as we ride. I like us to be able to drink constantly while on the fly. Again this is not subject to debate it is merely our opinion.
There are couple options as to where to add a few bottle holders. One is on the rear tire down stays(?). I could do a few braze ons but then there would be painting to match or use a couple SS hose clamps. The possible issue is rear rack clearance so I think SS clamps will be the first approach.
My Trident is experiencing ‘Autoshifting’. I identified the problem on Sheldon Browns great bicycling web site and would recommend going there for a complete description. But a short description is that when in 8th gear in the rear cog and peddling hard the chain will slip then be in top gear, 9th. When looking at the deraileaur in each gear all looks well. I contacted Tom at Trident and the same day he replied to check cable tension in high gear. Sure enough the cable was lose. Snugged the cable and no more autoshifting.
Next Trident Issue:
My trike has started to pull left on level ground. I check for brake drag, toe-in, axel clamping tightness, rear tire seated in drop outs, and tire/wheel issues by swapping sides. Tom again in great response time suggested “If swapping the wheels doesn’t work, then it has to be a wheel alignment issue. Toe in the left wheel a little, toe out the right wheel a little.”
I tried what Tom suggested but still have the problem so I sent another email Sunday. And a few hours later he responded that If I can come by the shop, which I can, they will make it right!
