Custom Reverse Trike Builds and Other Custom Projects
its almost a roller!
Posted on
5
Feb
2010 - by
stevem In:
gasoline electric trike
got the rear swing arm on and the front control arms all buttoned up. the front end looks a lot better with brake rotors to simulate the wheels. its also a lot easier to align (which is on the agenda to be done next (camber anyway). as of right now she weighs in at 130lbs we’re hoping to have a functional roller weighing around 250-275 lbs. we still need suspension (front and rear) steering rack, front wheels, and a rear tire. oh and brakes! (those are important!) check out the pictures
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TomA
February 8th, 2010 at 11:27 am
How much ground clearance do you want? It looks like in front you’re going to have 4 or 5 inches at best. That’s pretty low, especially for those sharp front corners. See Gary K’s ZW2-C trike at zwheelz.com that has about this much ground clearance- and he wasn’t happy with it at all.
That front end set up is not the standard use of the components (heim joints,) as I mentioned before. I’m especially interested to know how much travel it has up and down before being limited by heim joint bind. The simplest way to protect the joints and frame from that kind of bind loading is to have solid bump and rebound stops somewhere on the suspension and frame, or in the shock/strut units. It doesn’t matter so much how, but you really should do something to keep travel safely within the limits of free joint movement.
It would be best, of course, to cut off all the ears holding the heim joints to the frame, rotate them 90 degrees to vertical, and reweld them onto frame, but I know that’s a lot work. It may be required, though, if you don’t have enough free suspension travel this way, or insufficient ground clearance at the neutral (zero angle to the ground) setting of the A-arms given your wheel/tire package height.
Tom & crew, don’t misunderstand me. I have great respect for your time and work, and particularly your “lets just do it and see” approach. You guys have done and already learned so much more than the vast majority of online “builders” out there, including me, but the further this project gets, the more it strikes me as a misadventure. I don’t especially like being critical of the trike and your effort in public, so I’ll have no more to say about it here, but if you want to know what else I think that could help improve what you have, drop me a line.
TomA