A mountain bike for those without use of their legs
Currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, Grit’s Freedom Chair is a lever-drive wheelchair that draws heavily on mountain bike technology. Built on the success of Grit’s Leveraged Freedom Chair (LFC)- an MIT project created for the developing world. The Freedom chair takes lessons learned from that product and adds the sort of changes needed to make it more suitable for recreational first world use.
While not a sporting device per se, the Freedom Chair was developed with the input of adaptive athletes and everyday wheelchair users with the goal of providing easier access to the places where access is difficult: trails, beaches, cobbled walks, and even the back garden.
The Freedom Chair’s long push handles provide the user the ability to manually vary their leverage (via chain drive) over the wheels- from 50% higher torque than pushrims at the lever ends to 75% faster at the bottom. Pulling on the handles applies their respective brakes, slowing or steering the chair.
The Chair also makes heavy use of standard mountain bike parts- from the 26in wheels, freewheels, and (easily exchanged) chainrings. The solid front wheel is cast around a bicycle hub and the fork spins on a standard 1 1/8in threadless headset.
Through Kickstarter, the Freedom Chair is listing at $2,700 plus $1,000 for international shipping (£2,370 total). Of course, the project will also accept support in amounts as low as $5 (£3). If not in need of a chair themsleves, supporters can provide an original Leveraged Freedom Chair to an Indian in need for $500 (£320) or a Freedom Chair to a disabled veteran for $2,700 (£1,730). It’s an interesting project that -given the LFC’s previous success- seems more likely to succeed than many.
Comments (4)
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This looks a cracking idea, the levers will have multiple benefits, increased leverage and also save your hands from getting caked in crap even when on the road.
Is the brake really just that metal bar that acts on the tyre surface?
That’s fantastic.
Lever vraking on the tyre worked fine for my go cart when I was a nipper 🙂
But I dont see why they cant add a pair of mechanical callipers to the back of the chair frame and fix some rotors inboard of the sprocket on each side of the axle. TT aero brake lever mounted in the end of the lever.
That’s screaming out for a collaborative approach with other disabled access MTBs. They have a reallygreat idea, which could be modularised into more sophisticated vehicles. The big problem with all of them, is that they can’t go uphill.