My trike is a Trice Explorer from the British manufacturer ICE, with the following options:
I also wanted my Trice to have the non-standard colour British Racing Green, which I felt would be most appropriate to a British sports vehicle such as the Trice Explorer. My choice has since been positively commented upon by several people.
I have weighed the Trice Explorer by putting one wheel in turn on my bathroom scale and adding the result to 22 kg. Since my touring bike weighs 14 kg, I have to haul 8 extra kg on my Trice. This, however, is probably a non-issue. I will have at least 20 to 30 additional kg of gear when touring, and speed is not important.
I have not measured the turning radius of the Trice, but I have heard that Greenspeed trikes are better that Trice in this respect. The Trice Explorer will turn 180 degrees on a narrow road, but not on a bicycle path. However, I have not found the turning radius to be a trouble. There is seldom need for turning very sharp, and if space is very limited, the best option to swing any bike or trike around is to get off and lift the rear wheel.
My Trice is too wide for the doors to the room where I keep it; therefore I have to carry it turned on its side. The weight is no real problem for me, and as soon as I have got the Trice on my shoulder, it balances quite well and is manageable.
I ordered my Explorer with the 3 gear rear hub option, giving a theoretical 81 gears.
Data about gearing:
The front and rear derailleurs are controlled by bar-end shifters, while the hub is shifted with a small lever mounted below the right handle. This lever is the only thing on the Trice that looks cheap; it's an ordinary Sachs Torpedo 3-gear shifter. However, this particular shifter is still the best choice among those provided for this hub by SRAM (former Sachs), so I will stick with it.
I actually owned a bike with a Sachs Torpedo hub once, witch I used daily for about ten years. I had to replace the shifter once during that time, so I think it works quite well and is reasonably reliable. It does look cheap, though.
So far, my experiences with the Trice's gears is that I tend to sit with my arms relaxed, hands around the bar-end shifters. Thus, I can change gears up and down with ease, a new experience to me. On my up-right, I could only change either the front or the rear derailleur, since I could only reach one of the levers. Thus, I had to make major changes, involving both derailleurs, in two steps. This caused unnecessary loss of speed since I couldn't pedal with force for rather a long time. On the Trice, all this is much faster.
I have so far used the hub gears mostly when stopping at crossings, when I shift down from the middle gear to the lowest one. Thus, the hub gear gives the extra freedom I had anticipated, since I don't have to prepare for the next start by shifting to a lower gear before stopping. Thus, I mostly go on the middle hub gear as a basic setting, and I use the derailleurs for active gear shifting.
The additional gear range given by the hub allows the rear sprockets to be closer, giving smaller steps in gearing. This I have found is quite convenient, and I constantly change gears to always have the optimum pedalling resistance.
The (optional) mudguards look like aluminium, but in fact are made of clear plastic with moulded-in aluminium strips. Thus they are both light-weight and flexible, and will probably last long. The front mudguard stays are beautifully curved, making them look like being fetched from a classic sports car from the 1930s.
The handle bar is made of three pieces, a straight one in the middle, and two L-shaped ones. This makes it possible to change both the width of the handle bar and the angle/distance of the handles. The handle bar is mounted to an aluminium stem, which is supported by ball bearings.
The home-built Trice I tested suffered from bad traction when riding uphill on soft ground. The Explorer shows radically less of this. I had tried it upwards a quite steep, grassy hill near my home. There was some wheel slippage, but I was able to get forward on very low gear. I am confident bad traction will make little trouble when I get going on the tours I envision.
