There was no set criteria for the Michigan HPV Rally's first "best homebuilt" contest, but it's likely no one objected to the winner, Steve Katterhenry and his beautiful, two-rider, wood frame fully-suspended quadracycle.

Steve and his son, Lee, 15, competed at Waterford, but his quad was not built for racing. For starters, it weighs 110 pounds.

The practical reason he built it was for riding on the bicycle path in Xenia, Ohio, about 45 miles (as the crow flies) from his home in Sidney, Ohio. Steve made sure it would be narrow enough to not get blocked anywhere on the trail.

The width is 42 inches from wheel center to wheel center; the wheelbase is 46 inches.

"I started with an idea and got on the Internet and looked at all the three- and four-wheelers I could find," he said.

Then he started designing it using a CAD (computer aided design) system. "I spent hundreds of hours on the computer."

Steve works for Monarch Lathes in Sidney, originally as a machinist, then a CNC (computer numerical control) operator and now as a painter.

In addition to his skills as work, which came in handy in building his HPV, his hobby is wood working, so a wood frame was a natural.

The two beams are solid, consisting of two inner layers of 3/4-inch plywood and a layer on each side of 1/4 plywood.  All of the plywood is cabinet grade oak.

To ensure uniformity, Steve stacked up eight pieces of plywood and cut them all at the same time on his bandsaw.  All the pieces were glued together using Gorilla Glue, which is waterproof. (He built his first wood bike, a two-wheeler, from Groundhugger plans, using glue that wasn't waterproof. The bike got wet and started coming apart.)

The three crosspieces tying the two sides together are 1 1/4-inch round solid spruce.

All of the cables run through the frame, which required routing holes lengthwise through the wood structure, and missing the holes bolts or fittings running crosswise through each beam.

Once the frame was done, Steve covered it with fiberglass, using epoxy resin. Unfortunately, he had a lot of air holes in the fiberglass, so finally decided to paint it (bright yellow), leaving no hint that the frame is wood.

"I went to Wal-Mart and bought two mountain bikes for parts," he said, mostly the drive train components. The drive train is separate for each rear wheel, with a triple chainring and seven-speeds in the rear.

All four wheels are standard heavy duty 48-spoke BMX wheels with 14 mm axles, strong enough to be supported on only one side in front. The rear wheels are threaded for freewheels. None of the wheels was made especially for the quad.

The front suspension is independent, with the dual A arms on each side made from threaded stainless steel rods, screwed into the rod ends used for pivots. (The quad uses a total of 22 rod ends.) The front shocks are from mountain bikes, with coil springs added.

The rear end uses the suspension pivots from the bikes bought at Wal-Mart and moped shock absorbers. Originally, each rear wheel was suspended independently, but Steve found they were leaning in at the top, so the suspension arms are now linked with a square independent tube, so the wheels move up and down in unison. He's designing a new rear suspension.

Hayes mechanical disk brakes are used on the rear wheels and are controlled by the "driver" on the left, who does the steering. Even with brakes on only two wheels, "I have never had any trouble stopping, even from speeds of 25 to 30 mph," Steve said.

Pieces made from aluminum plate were cut on a bandsaw and everything that's bare metal was polished. "You spend hours polishing," Steve said.

Steve made the seat frames from EMT conduit and he also made the fabric seats. "I even learned how to sew."

The only work he didn't do was the small bit of welding required, done by his father and brother. As of June 5, the quad had been ridden about 500 miles.

The writer of this article suggested the "best homebuilt" competition and was the judge, though I asked a few other people if they agreed with my selection.

There were several homebuilts competing at the rally. Hopefully they and their builders/riders will be back next year, when we likely will conduct the contest again.

Steve's prize was a copy of Atomic Zombie's Bicycle Builder's Bonanza, by Brad Graham and Kathy McGowen (McGraw-Hill, published 2004, 388 pages).

For anyone interested in oddball cycles, in addition to recumbents, there's lots of ideas in there, so the book is worth reading, even if you never build anything.