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The Kneeslider

Doers Builders and Positive People

Building a Steam Trike From Recycled Parts

By Paul Crowe

Professor Pardal’s steam powered trike built from recycled parts

If you have a pile of old motorcycle parts, some tubing, an old steel drum, the seat from a junk car, you might think it’s time to get it all hauled away, so you can get serious about building your next project, right? But wait, why not upcycle this junk and turn it into parts? Professor Pardal in Brazil did exactly that, he looked at all of this and saw a steam powered trike hiding in plain sight, so he built one.

Professor Pardal on his steam powered trike

The principle behind the drive system is well known, you heat water in a boiler, build up a head of steam and release the pressure into cylinders that drive the wheels. You can even scale it up into something huge.

Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 Big Boy uses the same priciple to drive the wheels as this steam trike

The professor has a channel with multiple videos showing how he built this trike and it’s well worth watching. There’s a lot of ingenuity in this build and it’s the kind of project that can stimulate young minds to think, “Hey, I could do that!” and if they give it try, they might.

Simple steam drive system

Sometimes we get bogged down, we can’t build anything until we have all of the right materials, a well equipped shop, a great set of plans, maybe Solidworks loaded on our computer so we can turn out those CAD drawings and 3D renders, and while we’re spending our time and money assembling all of that, someone like Professor Pardal is out building something and driving down the road.

I like this guy. I like this trike. Very cool.

Professor Pardal on YouTube

Related: The Hubbard Steamcycle

Posted on January 18, 2022 Filed Under: Alternative Fuels, Three Wheel Vehicles Tagged With: DIY, old school skills, steam power


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Comments

  1. todd says

    January 18, 2022 at 3:10 pm

    Pretty cool. As long as he does regular boiler inspections he should be fairly safe from getting blown to smithereens. The only improvements I would make would be to reinforce the frame behind the seat, relocate the foot pegs and add an orange and red triangular sign on the back. But yeah, I could build that with what I have laying around.

    • Paul Crowe says

      January 18, 2022 at 4:05 pm

      If this were going to be a regular, daily use, road going vehicle, all of that would be appropriate, but I think he’s just doing this as an inspirational demo and for that, this does the job.

  2. joe scopa says

    June 2, 2022 at 7:34 pm

    do you have a parts list the steam bicycle and drawings

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