Easy Racers Tour Easy Narrow Seat Aero Pod
By David Cambon (randobarf) on Mon 28 Mar 2011 21:53 (US/Pacific) Reply (10)
Long Wheelbase Perfection Designed by the Legendary Gardner Martin
Who Buys a Bike Like This?
I did not intend to be a recumbent cyclist. I was in a bike shop one day and there was a RANS Rocket on display. The Rocket is a kind of crazy-looking short wheelbase recumbent with 20" wheels. I had never seen anything like it and I asked to try it. After one trip around the block I was hooked! I bought it and I had a blast riding it over the next few months. I had no idea cycling could be so fun and entertaining. I bought a few more recumbents and I learned more about recumbent design and performance. Like many recumbent riders before me I eventually arrived at the Tour Easy. The Tour Easy is not generally the first recumbent people buy.
To the casual observer the Tour Easy does not stand out in the sea of recumbent bikes manufactured these days. The Tour Easy tends to be the object of desire for suave and sophisticated recumbenteers with a few years of recumbent experience.
I ride recumbents because they are fun. I don't have any ailments or complaints that prevent me from riding upright bikes. I ride both upright bikes and recumbent bikes. I think I'm fairly typical of recumbent riders. I'm open to unconventional transportation ideas and I'm not afraid to ride those ideas around in public, despite the unrestrained scorn I may receive from my cycling colleagues who are normal. The Tour Easy offers more comfort than an upright touring bike and it is no slower than an upright bike.
The Frame
The secret to the Tour Easy lies in its frame. The Tour Easy frame is non-flexy. It is stiff both laterally and vertically. That is, the Tour Easy frame does not deflect sideways or up and down when you are pedaling. Your pedaling energy is not lost to frame flex. It's a frame that's more efficient at transferring power than most recumbent frames. Vertically the Tour Easy frame is fully triangulated like an upright bike. Laterally the Tour Easy frame has twin keel tubes that prevent sideways deflection under pedaling forces.
The Tour Easy frame is a derivative of the frame of a bicycle that was built into a streamliner fairing designed to set speed records at the hands of bike racer Fast Freddy Markham. After stunning success at breaking human-powered speed records Easy Racers owner Gardner Martin turned his attention to a partially-faired bike suitable for everyday touring and transportation and the Tour Easy was born. The Tour Easy is uniquely American and the Tour Easy has a long and glorious history in the world of bike touring. The Tour Easy is the product of genius and the design remains essentially unchanged to this day. It is one of those timeless bikes that was designed right in the first place. There is no need for improvement. Nonetheless, there are a steady stream of self-appointed internet recumbent boffins who drearily pronounce with depressing regularity that they refuse to buy a Tour Easy because they have determined that it is outdated and must be improved, or else. Us smirking Tour Easy aficionados are so accustomed to such thoughtless commentary that we do not bother to respond. We may even be out riding our urbane, yet humble, Tour Easy, smugly oblivious to its debilitating antiquity.
The Driveline
The Tour Easy has a direct drive-side chainline. The upper part of the chain has no idlers or chain tubes. That means power transfer along the chain is as efficient as an upright bike. Most recumbents have higher bottom brackets that require the drive-side of the chain to be directed around bike parts (like the seat and fork) by idler wheels or plastic tubes.
The Tour Easy uses a chain guide on the return-side (the lower, non-drive-side) of the chain to prevent the chain from whacking the paint off the frame and to prevent the back wheel from running over the chain. There is no significant power loss associated with the return-side chain guide on the Tour Easy. The chain guide on the Tour Easy can be a plastic tube or an idler wheel. I have used both with success. TerraCycle idlers seem to work very well and last longer than chain tubes.
The low bottom-bracket on the Tour Easy makes it very suitable for stop-and-go urban traffic situations because your feet are closer to the ground than most recumbents. The low bottom bracket also allows the seat to be more upright so you can turn your head to see behind you and it allows you to be closer to the fairing for greater aerodynamic efficiency.
The Long Wheelbase
There are two basic types of recumbents: long wheelbase and short wheelbase. The long wheelbase recumbents are about two feet longer than an upright bike and the short wheelbase recumbents are about a foot longer overall than an upright bike. The short wheelbase recumbents have more laid-back seats because the bottom-bracket is higher than the bottom-bracket on a long wheelbase recumbent. Some of the short wheelbase recumbents have so much laid-back snoozefest lounge chair comfort that they are more comfortable than lying at home in bed watching TV. On the other hand the Tour Easy has better high-speed downhill handling than any short-wheelbase bike and probably any bike, period. The Tour Easy rides like its on rails and the wheels are so far apart that it is like riding in a limousine.
Importantly, the rear wheel axle on the Tour Easy is far enough behind your head that it will never shake your eyeballs out on rough roads the way some short wheelbase recumbents can (especially the ones with hardshell seats). Some of the short wheelbase recumbents have rear suspension because the rear axle is so eyeball-shakingly close to the rider. The long wheelbase configuration of the Tour Easy completely obviates the need for suspension.
The Wheel Sizes
People accustomed to having the same sized wheels on the front and rear of their bike are naturally suspicious of two different sized wheels on one bike. The idea of carrying two sizes of spare tubes is mortally repellent to most people and they will avoid the Tour Easy for that reason. In reality however, the different sized wheels on a Tour Easy are not a horrifying impending catastrophe.
The back of the Tour Easy uses a 700c diameter tire because that is the fastest and smoothest tire size for touring. There is a rearward weight bias on the Tour Easy. The front of the Tour Easy is lightly loaded and does not require the low rolling resistance of a large wheel. It can use a smaller, lighter 20" wheel that also reduces wheel-associated air resistance. The overall result is that the Tour Easy with a fairing is faster with the 20" front wheel than it would be with two 700c wheels.
Because the front tire on a Tour Easy is so lightly loaded the front tire does not wear quickly and the front tire is less likely to attract the puncture fairy. When I first started touring with a Tour Easy I carried a folding spare tire for the front and the back. After a few tens of thousands of miles of dragging around an unused spare tire it dawned on me that I was not getting flats on the front tire and I had not catastrophically damaged a front tire. So I stopped carrying a front tire.
 Tubus Cargo pannier rack. This rack also fits on normal person's bikes. The plastic bag is a Seal Line kayak map holder I use to store miscellaneous items. The map holder also keeps mud from splashing onto the back of the seat mesh. Make sure you use liquid threadlocker and Nylok nuts to attach you pannier rack and other paraphernalia. |
| Image on journal page: Equipment in journal Dempster Highway to the Arctic★ by David Cambon (Completed Sep 2009) in Bicycle Touring |
To make things confusing a Tour Easy can use two different sizes of 20" front wheels. The size that you should use for touring is the 406mm 20". The other size of 20" wheel is 451mm. 451mm tires are skinnier and designed for lower wind resistance but are lighter and flimsier and not really tough enough for touring. A large 406mm tire has about the same outside diameter as a skinny 451mm tire and that's why one bike can use both sizes of wheels. I mostly use 406mm 1.5" (roughly 40mm) Schwalbe tires on the front (especially the Schwalbe Marathon Racer 406).
The Fairing
The Tour Easy has Lexan and carbon fiber fairings that are made just for the Tour Easy. The fairing on a Tour Easy protects you to a certain extent from rain, snow and cold air. You can wear short pants earlier in the season when you use the Tour Easy fairing. The fairing extends low enough that it provides a substantial amount of rain protection for your feet. The fairing also makes the Tour Easy more aerodynamically efficient, especially at higher speeds where air resistance has a more pronounced effect. The added weight of the fairing is actually worth it for the slight speed increase it provides. The Tour Easy has the best fairing setup of any bike.
The handlebar on a Tour Easy is also the fairing mount. That means that stuff you store in a handlebar bag will stay dry (and out of the sun, if you paint your fairing). The handlebar has two sets of water bottle bosses that place your bottles right in front of you in a position of convenience unmatched by other bikes. Your bottles are protected from road slime and they are super easy to access. The handlebar also provides a perfect mounting location for a Mirrycle mirror (and you must use a mirror on a recumbent).
 What is that shield on the front of the bike? Is it a bug deflector? No, it's a Zzipper wind fairing for reducing air resistance. It's made of very lightweight Lexan polycarbonate and it also keeps rain and snow off the cyclist. In cold weather the fairing keeps you a bit warmer too. It's covered with 3M Scotchlite retroreflective sheeting and 3M low-angle conspicuity tape. At night it lights up like a supernova in the headlights of cars. There's a lot of reflective material on other parts of the bike as well. The aluminum bar sticking out of the back of the bike is a camera boom I use for making bike videos. The location of the picture is a couple of blocks from my noisy sub-microscopic housing in Vancouver, which is a city of real estate speculators and substandard construction too pricey for the middle class, never mind the groundlings such as myself. The ball in the background is an IMAX theater. |
| Image on journal page: Equipment in journal Dempster Highway to the Arctic★ by David Cambon (Completed Sep 2009) in Bicycle Touring |
The blue material on the underside of the upper part of the fairing is six coats of Pactra metalflake Lexan paint. I put the paint on to provide shade after I did a disastrous 600k brevet in deadly global warming conditions without a fairing (on another bike). I put the paint on with a brush, which gives a cool effect but the paint should really be airsprayed on and left semi-translucent with a white topcoat. If you want more shade you can paint the whole underside of the fairing.
The fairing is attached to the bike with plastic wingnuts so you can easily remove it. The Tour Easy makes an excellent commuter bike and in the hot part of the summer when I am urban commuting I leave the fairing at home so I can get a cooling breeze. When I'm touring I leave the fairing on all the time but if for some reason you want to remove the fairing it rolls up into its own bag you could lash onto your pannier rack. Apparently there are people who take their Tour Easy for a ride on their car, so they have to remove the fairing when they do that. I don't own a car and I use my Tour Easy for transportation. My Tour Easy has never suffered the indignity of a car ride.
The Seats
There are several different seats available for the Tour Easy. The fastest type of seat (best power transfer) is the carbon fiber hard-back seat (the Carbon Cobra seat). The best type of seat for touring is the mesh-back (Koolback) seat. The mesh is lounge chair comfortable and the mesh breathes, which may be important if you sweat a lot in hot weather. I use both types of seats. There is world of difference in comfort, especially on rough roads. The mesh-back seat acts like a shock absorber. Hard-backed seats can shake your eyeballs out on extremely rough asphalt roads and dirt roads. The mesh-back seat is heavier and slower when climbing but who cares? You will never notice the difference in climbing unless you compare them side-by-side. Comfort is important when touring and that's why I recommend the mesh-back seat.
Recumbent Butt
If you read recumbent discussions on the internet you might think that recumbent butt is such a horrible affliction that you will beg for your own death to stop the agonizing butt pain. I take most of the recumbent butt discussions with a grain of salt. Recumbent bike riders tend to develop abnormally high standards for comfort. I believe that tendency for ultra-comfort arises from discovering a type of bike that rides like a lounge chair. There is indeed a phenomenon called recumbent butt. However it is no worse than the day to day pains in the butt you get from an upright bike seat.
Nobody knows the exact causes of recumbent butt but recumbent butt probably arises from cycling in a position that you are not normally accustomed to. Recumbent butt seems to bear no relation to the hardness or softness of the seat or even to the type of recumbent seat. You can get recumbent butt from a seat that is extremely laid back or a seat that is bolt upright. Internet discussion group know-it-alls freely pontificate that recumbents with more upright seats (like the Tour Easy) are more likely to cause dreaded recumbent butt. My own experience is that I am more likely to get recumbent butt on a laid-back short wheelbase recumbent than on a Tour Easy. I think the likelihood of recumbent butt decreases with recumbent riding experience, to the point where you will simply not get recumbent butt.
When you are learning to ride a recumbent and you get recumbent butt you can slow down to make recumbent butt go away or you can stop for a few minutes and the recumbent butt will go away. Pushing too hard when you are a beginner will probably give you recumbent butt. I have not had recumbent butt in years and nobody else I know has either.
Acclimation to Recumbent Cycling
Recumbent bicycle riders use many different muscle groups in different ways than an upright bicycle rider. You cannot just jump on a recumbent and expect a complete cross-training transition from your upright bike. Like any new exercise you must break yourself in slowly. In many ways, learning to ride a recumbent is like learning to ride a bike all over again, although a lot more fun.
Do not expect yourself to begin passing cars in the first month of recumbent cycling. Take it easy, smell the flowers and work yourself up to speed in a reasonable amount of time. Recumbents encourage easy-going cycling so that should not be too difficult.
Although some people adapt to recumbents almost instantly, most people are better served by a learning curve. Most people should take six months to two years of recumbent cycling to fully acclimatize themselves to the recumbent cycling position. The acclimatization period for short wheelbase recumbents is usually longer because of their higher bottom-bracket.
No special exercises or literature are required for teaching your body to ride a recumbent. All you have to do is get out and ride it.
Hills and Recumbents
A Tour Easy is heavier than your upright bike. Therefore it will go uphill slower. On level ground it will be slightly faster than your upright bike, because of the fairing and the smaller wind profile. Recumbents aren't necessarily slower than upright bikes when climbing. Some light, stiff recumbents are just about as fast as an upright bike when climbing. Most recumbents, however, are fairly heavy and the Tour Easy is no exception. It's about 5 lbs heavier than a similarly equipped upright touring bike.
If you are really interested in maximum climbing speed there are lightweight versions of the Tour Easy made of aluminum, titanium and carbon fiber. You should also get rid of a bunch of your excess touring crap, which is another gravity-attracting item when going uphill.
 The Dempster mud is not natural mud. It's ultra-sticky calcium fortified bike cement. If it gets into your chain you are finished. Hence the mudguards. I would not ride the Dempster Highway without mudguards. My rear mudguard has plenty of clearance for mud. The front mudguard on this bike does not have much clearance but it's a lot better than nothing. Note that the front mudguard is actually a rear mudguard. Most front mudguards are not long enough to prevent splashback and chain-fouling even on a regular highway. |
| Image on journal page: Eagle Plains to Rock River in journal Dempster Highway to the Arctic★ by David Cambon (Completed Sep 2009) in Bicycle Touring |
Note the small, wall-climbing granny gear in the photo (and note that the chain is actually on that granny gear).
The Tour Easy is available with a triple-crankset granny gear. Don't even think about touring on a recumbent without a triple. You need the low gears because you can't stand up on a recumbent. On an upright bicycle one tends to become obsessed with the destination because the journey on an upright bike can be less than comfortable. On a recumbent, the journey is not painful and a hill may just be an excuse to slow down, spin and enjoy the sights and sounds. It is a question of attitude and some former upright cyclists just have to learn to be less aggressive and confrontational with the hills and a new and pleasant experience will unfold on a recumbent bicycle. Recumbent cyclists can also afford to dilly-dally on the hills because they will rocket down the other side and catch up to the upright cyclists anyway.
Wobbling Uphill
For years I had been reading reports on the internet written by Tour Easy riders who claimed to be wobbling uphill like a drunk when climbing steep grades slowly. At first I could not figure out what they were talking about because I was not having any problems going in a straight line on my own Tour Easy. Then one day I was riding my Tour Easy up a steep hill while blabbing on the phone like an idiotic motorist. Because I was concentrating on my phone conversation I was gradually slowing down and wobbling up the road like a typical cell-phone-talking-and-driving imbecile. It was then that I realized what those internet Tour Easy guys were complaining about. They were going so slow they could no longer maintain their balance on a bicycle! Here's my advice: If you are riding at walking speed then get off your darn bike and walk! That's what feet are for!
The Types of Tour Easii
I don't know what the plural is for more than one Tour Easy so I will call them Tour Easii. There are two Tour Easii. One is manufactured by Easy Racers in California and the other is made by Sun Bicycles in Taiwan. Sun has a much larger dealer network than Easy Racers so the Sun Tour Easy may be more widely available for viewing. I have the California version of the Tour Easy. The Sun version is fairly new and I have not tried it. Bryan Ball, the Editor of 'BentRider Online has tried the Sun Tour Easy and he likes it. The Sun Tour Easy and the Easy Racer Tour Easy are both Gardner Martin designs (Easy Racers is a dealer for some Sun bicycles) and they look similar but they are not identical. The Sun version is designed to hit a lower price point and does not come in as many sizes as the Easy Racer version.
Easy Racer Bike Rush
The Tour Easy is available in upscale versions made of more exotic material than the 4130 chromoly steel the steel Tour Easy is made of. The most popular non-steel version of the Tour Easy is the Gold Rush Replica (aka Gold Rush, aka GRR) which is made of 6000 series aluminum. I have a Gold Rush.
In the above photo the front wheel is the skinny-tire 451mm 20" size I do not recommend for touring.
 Easy Racer Gold Rush by a support tower on the Lions Gate Bridge. This picture was shot in High Dynamic Range to make it look arty. I took the panniers off so it's easier to see the rack and frame. The rack is a Tubus Vega, which is not even a touring rack, so don't try this at home kids. Those of you who read my previous Crazyguyonabike misadventure Dempster Highway to the Arctic may notice that I used a different Easy Racer bike for this trip. I used an Easy Racer Tour Easy for the Dempster trip. This trip was all on paved roads so I brought the Gold Rush with a hard-back carbon fiber seat which rides too roughly for dirt roads but climbs much better than the mesh-back seat on the Tour Easy. The carbon fiber seat makes the bike lighter and so do some of the other fancy parts I have on the Gold Rush (like a carbon fiber fork I should not be touring with and an ultralight pannier rack I should not be touring with). The frame on the Gold Rush is also a bit lighter than the Tour Easy frame and climbs a bit better because it's a bit stiffer. In fact, the way this bike is set up probably makes it the best climbing recumbent there is. I like the carbon fiber seat on the Gold Rush but I recommend the mesh-back Easy Racer seat for most people. The mesh-back (Koolback) seat has lounge-chair comfort that makes the bike ride like a dream about riding a La-Z-Boy chair. I also recommend proper touring gears, with a granny gear and not the Ultegra triple (with no low gears) I use on the Gold Rush. Unless you are a crazy guy on a bike you need low gears on a touring recumbent. My Gold Rush is set up for fast credit card touring and not the more weighty camping-touring I was doing on this trip. |
| Image on journal page: Easy Racer Gold Rush on the Lions Gate Bridge in journal Rumble Strips of British Columbia★ by David Cambon (Completed Sep 2010) in Bicycle Touring |
The difference between the Gold Rush and the Tour Easy is simply the frame. The Gold Rush frame has larger diameter tubing and an ever-so-slightly different tube configuration. The Gold Rush is definitely the better-looking of the two and the Gold Rush performs a bit better, especially when climbing. The Gold Rush frame is also slightly lighter. If you have the money, treat yourself and get the Gold Rush and you will not regret it.
The titanium Tour Easy is called the Ti-Rush. As you would expect, the Ti Rush is absolutely awesome and if you like the Tour Easy or the Gold Rush you should not deprive yourself of a Ti-Rush.
The carbon fiber Tour Easy is called the C-Rush and believe it or not, there is at least one person using a C-Rush for touring. If you are a light person a C-Rush might even make sense for touring. Your bike will weigh next-to-nothing, it will be more proportionate to your weight and it will climb faster than any other recumbent if you use the Carbon Cobra carbon fiber hardshell seat.
Buying a Tour Easy
There are not a lot of Tour Easy dealers. Most bike shop employees cannot cope psychologically with the trauma of having to deal with anything so otherworldly strange as a recumbent bicycle so most bike shops do not carry recumbents. If you do not have a Tour Easy dealer nearby you can buy one directly from Easy Racers, which is accustomed to selling direct. Measure your X-seam (not your inseam) using the instructions on the Easy Racer website and that will tell you which frame size fits you. Order the touring configuration of components, the Easy Racer frame bag and the Sunlite handlebar bag. You can buy the fairing from Easy Racers or directly from the manufacturer, Zzip Designs in California.
Everyone on the internet is always saying you must try bikes before buying them. I think that's nonsense. A test ride is not going to tell you anything except that you are not used to riding that bike and that it is not set up correctly for you. Test rides take months and the bike has to be gradually adjusted perfectly just for you. The Tour Easy is a longstanding proven design with a very large number of satisfied customers. You really can't go wrong and if you do decide to sell it there is a ready market for used Tour Easii. I would not feel uncomfortable at all about buying a new Tour Easy sight unseen (and I have).
History of the Easy Racers Company
Easy Racers was founded by Sandra and Gardner Martin in California. In 1986 Fast Freddy Markham rode into the record books by going 65 mph on an aluminum Tour Easy. That bike subsequently went on permanent display in the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Gardner died in 2004 from mantle cell lymphoma and Denton Coetzee purchased the company from Sandra.
I got my Tour Easy from Gardner and my Gold Rush from Fast Freddy when Freddy was working for Denton. Freddy has since started another bike company specializing in carbon fiber frames.
Reflective tape attached to the seat on the back of the Tour Easy. The aluminum pole is a video camera mount.
Addendum by David Cambon on Sat 21 Mar 2015 16:16 (US/Pacific):
In Memoriam
It is with great sadness that I must report that Easy Racers is now dead to me. This review is now a memorial. Although the company apparently still exists at the time of this writing, I have been so brazenly abused (on repeated pillagings) by Easy Racers that this company is now officially ridiculous.
It was a great touring bike and a great moment in cycling history. The bike still deserves five stars.
In lieu of flowers please send donations to Crazyguyonabike so this Memorial Page may be maintained in the hope that a cure will be found and Easy Racers will someday rise from the grave screaming.
Source: https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/reviews/board/message/?thread_id=209071
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