This will be a major challenge. The lefty fork when on a bike has an integral axle that doesn’t need to turn. Adapted for a unicycle, this axle would need to have some kind of bearing assembly that was both strong enough to take the extra forces of being one-sided, without much flex, and have close to zero play side-to-side. Any movement or flexing on that axis would just kill the whole feel of the unicycle. It would feel like the wheel is loose.
the hub would indeed be that hradest part to engineer but it might be cool to try anyways just to say it was done.
I have though about this also… perhaps a short giraffe would be an interesting way of putting suspension to a unicycle. The problem you mention is called chain lengthening, (also a big problem with bike suspension) and could probably be taken care of with a spring mechanism to add tension to the chain as it “lengthens.” Just like the derailer does on a bike.
Suspension hubs or cranks may be the best way to add a little squish to a unicycle, but I’m not sure if there is yet an effective way of building either so that it can stand up to hard abuse.
Here is another suspension Idea that has also been running around my mind. What if you built a normal style unicycle frame with suspension fork, but put the cranks 3 or 4 inches up on the frame, running the hub with a set of short chains. In between the hub and cranks would be the suspension… isolating the rider from the wheel, but only adding a few inches to the height. It would be a difficult machine to build, but if someone could build one… maybe it would work.
w00t brian to the rescue!
Where’d you find that / is it commercially available?
Ionsme,
Looks like there is nothing newer then 2006 on this thing. It does not seem to be available.
Another thread at: http://www.unicyclist.com/forum/unicycling-discussion/general-unicycling-discussions/44454-another-weird-unicycle-sort-of-on-ebay#post754144