Silencing the Smoby “Be Fun” push trike

In my first post on the Smoby Be Fun Trike I wrote that it is generally a good bargain priced tricycle with a handy push rod. The drawback however was that it was seriously noisy. In my second post I did some good ol’ problem analysis and thought of some ways to solve it. So in this final installment, my solution.

First on what do you need:

• Smoby Be Fun Trike
• An (old) inner tube of a bicycle tyre.
• Scissors
• Ducktape

Seriously that’s all

So what we are going to do is tape the bicycle tire tube to the wheels of the trike.  You start with measuring the circumference of the 3 wheels and cut the old bicycle tyre in according length. Then tape the pieces of tire tube to wheels using your trusty duck tape and there you have it a whopping 15 db noise reduction (remember that every 3 db the sound level is doubled).

There you have it, a simple solution to an annoying problem and one that can be done in 30 minutes with your basic household inventory. Enjoy!

Note: The picture shows my first solution using only ducktape. This worked for a while but after a few weeks of driving, the tape lost its dampening power. So I decided to add the tube for higher durability and increased noise reduction

The smoby be fun trike review

We just bought a cool tricycle for Timothy, a Smoby - "be fun trike" (what kind of name is that?).He loves it and is happy with it, check out the how he even bought flowers for mommy on his second ride, awwww. 

Anyway cool features why we bought it:

• Lockable front wheel 
• Pedals can turn freely or power the front wheel 
• A push bar 
• Adjustable seating 
• Price :) about 30 eur

What did you say?

So far the good stuff, now comes one of the major cons... it noisy! Using my highly effective and trustworthy iPhone decibell app it maxed out at 84 dB and on average it was around 80 dB. To put it in perspective, sitting in a room quietly listening to music is around 55 dB. Ok so maybe that's not the best example since one person's quiet music is not the other. Well according to this website: noisy website, it's about the noise level of a diesel train traveling 60 km/h at a 30 meter distance. Now that's usually no problems outdoors, but you do get a lot of looks, and you hear it all the time. So this looks like a great project for household tweaking. So to approach it scientifically we have our problem description:

Problem description

Smoby be fun trike has a >80 dB noise level while moving on the side-walk 

Hypothesis

Given that all 3 tyres are made out of hardplastic and there is no suspension what so ever, these are problably the biggest noise makers. Then again there is this cool bucket at the back that can be used to lug things around. This bucket is directly connected to the rear wheel base causing it to pick up all the vibrations of the wheels and amplifying it with its big spherical surface. 

H1 - The hard plastic tyres are the main noise makers 

H2 - The bucket at the back is the second biggest noise maker 

Goal 

Get the noise level down by 10 dB

Solution

Ideas anyone?