Giant Spider for Your Recumbent Trike

Do you want to ride your trike in the halloween parade? Dress it up with a giant spider and make everyone jealous. Best of all it only costs about $25 and the parts are reusable. Then your only problem is deciding what YOU are going to wear!

You will need 25' of 4" black flexible drain pipe and 2 each 55 gallon black plastic bags. In addition you will need some cable ties, a scrap piece of plywood (about 12" X 26"), a 2' length of 3/4" hose or plastic pipe and a 10' piece of 3/4" EMT conduit (Electrical Metallic Tubing). My mount also used a couple of 1.5" X 1/4" carriage bolts with nuts and lock washers.

I got everything I needed at Lowes.

Open the pipe package and stretch the pipe out to maximum length. It should be just about 25' long.

Pull two bags from the box.

Each leg will be about 3' long. Use a utility knife to cut each one all the way around at the bottom of the fold. Be sure the pipe pleats are fully extended when you measure.

My piece of plywood was about 12" X 26". You can adjust your sizes as needed to match your plywood.

Make two lines with a felt tip marker parallel with each long side. The first line is 1/2" in and the second line is 1" in. Then measure 2" in from each end and make a mark. Then make a mark 9.5" in from each end.

Drill 3/16" holes where each line overlaps. These 16 holes are for the cable ties.

Start from the inside of the pipe and push a cable tie through the third hole in from the end. Run the cable tie down through the outer hole in the plywood and up through the inner hole. Feed the tie back through the second hole in from the end of the pipe and pull the tie tight.

Do this for all eight legs. And then compress the legs as shown.

Fold the 24" length of 3/4" tubing in half. Mark two holes about 3" in from the end of the plywood along the center line. Drill 3/16" holes at the marks and use a cable tie to hold the feelers in place.

Mark two holes where each feeler approaches the edge of the plywood. Drill and tie the two ends as shown in the Photo.

Put one bag inside the other and expand them out fully.

Starting from the feeler end, slip the two bags over the plywood, feelers and legs. Work the bags all the down so they pull against the feelers.

Push the feelers through the bags and slide the plastic up to the plywood. The feelers should stick out of the front as shown.

Make sure the bags are both smooth over each foot and cut a small hole through the bags centered over the foot pipe. Expand the hole just enough to push the leg through and pull it through. Do this for all eight legs.

This is one way to mount the spider. You may need to use some other way for your trike.

I took a 10' length of EMT and put in a 90 degree bend starting 4.5' from one end. This end goes down into a vertical tube on the back of my trike. (You can probably get Lowes to bend the EMT for you if you don't have a bender.)

Then I drilled two 1/4" holes through the EMT. One was 2" from the far end and the other was 18" from the far end. These were drilled in line with the vertical bend.

Insert the EMT into the trike and hold the plywood base over the EMT. Drill 1/4" holes through the plywood base over each hole in the EMT. Use two 1.5" carriage bolts to mount the plywood base on the end of the EMT.

Fill the bags above and below the plywood with wadded up newspaper. You could also use plastic grocery bags or even leaves to puff up the body.

I thought the legs were kind of droopy so I put a 40" piece of 1" plastic pipe through each leg midsection. These four cross braces stiffened the legs and made them look better, but they are optional.

Then tie the bags closed.

Tidy up the leg openings and leg shape. I may add a head and some painted features. (My neighbor suggested a red hourglass underneath light a black widow spider.) I would love to hear any suggestions you might have...