The Jappa in my garage.....

[Nade]

Some progress on the trike, small steps. I made a stencil of the area on the bike that we're using to attach the rear sub-frame too. Transferred that shape to 3mm MSteel and cut out the LHS plate, some rough shaping and a 16mm hole. Fits ok, but still needs some more shaping and mounting holes drilled. The stencil transfers to the RHS with a little bit of allowance to be made for jiggly poke poke fitting.
From these two plates will be welded the connection points for the new swing arm pivot point.



This is what I'm aiming to replicate:

 

[rb70383]

CAD. My preferred method as well..:up:

Cardboard Assisted Design

 

[Nade]

Stencil board......living up to its name! I was introduced to it 20 plus years ago and I still use it to make one off parts. Quicker then designing it on the PC and leaves plenty of room for fudging..LOL

 

[Nade]

So there has been some progress, spent they day doing some fab work.




We splashed out and bought a new Pipe bender,

and I had some bits floating around so I made a manual press brake to fold 3mm plate,

 

[Nade]

Some more progress, and some backwards steps.
We purchased a new, smaller, diff to use but I soon realized my mistake in not thoroughly checking out the ratio's available for the crown wheel and pinion. Of course this was AFTER I had stripped, cut, shortened and re welded it. The diff currently has a 5.57:1 ratio gear set in it and I was of the understanding I could purchase aftermarket sets to change the ratio to around 2.6:1 as per the original bike rear end........but the housing is so small the gear set needed to get that ratio is too large to fit in the housing and therefore not manufactured in any way shape or form.....:sorrow: So I have gone back to my original diff housing with a gear set in it that is 2.9:1. The reason for purchasing the smaller housing was to reduce the weight and improve the handling, but they are now things that will be compromised to a degree by using the original housing I had.
I purchased a tube notching tool to speed up the process of fitting pipes together at differing angles as I was over spending 2 or 3 hours a weekend grinding and fitting pipe.(as were the neighbors) A tedious task that I wasn't happy about doing, made much faster and easier.
I had to modify one of the new tube bender former's as it was over sized and kinked the pipe during bending instead of 'forming' it neatly. The 20mm former was 2mm over sized which dosen't sound like much but allowed the pipe to expand sideways during bending and that caused the pipe to crush and kink. It needs to be held snugly by the former at all times through the whole process so I scrounged some 0.9mm metal sheet from the scrap bin at work and shimmed the former on both sides. Problem solved.
I have formed, fitted and fully welded both the LH and RH lower chassis mounts and got them bolting up nicely with the chassis and I have dug out the original diff housing that I had begun to narrow and got it set up for welding, so that will happen in the next few weeks.
Onwards!

I will post up some pictures of the finished Chassis mounts soon, I have to resize them (the pic's) and I can't be arsed at the moment. Too much to do and not enough Nade to go round.
Heres a BUELL to look at:up:

 

[Nade]

Here is some pictures to show the mounts and the welding of the narrowed diff.









I have made some rear upper mounts for the rear tray/ suspension cross bar and dummy fitted it for the moment.
I have sourced some Drag Link Bar bushes that I want to use in the swing arm, just waiting on the finance department to get the barbed wire out of her pockets so she can open the wallet.
I will take some more photo's of the assembly as it is now, not much to look at but believe me there is many hours of thinking and tinkering to get things to work.....there is a pile of '1st attempts' and 'version 2' slowly accumulating.

 

[Nade]

So I thought it might be time to update this a little bit.

I've been banging my head against a brick wall for a while with re-guards to a Certifier. I'm so far away from the nearest one's that they have not been willing to engage in the process, and this pissed me off. I forged on ahead with the build, over thinking alot, re-doing parts over and over until I was satisfied with them.
so now I'm at the point of really needing a certifier to be onboard so I can finish the damn thing. Hopefully I have a guy who will do it but he asked me leave it till the new year.....its the 1st of Jan 2021.....is it too early to annoy him yet!?
I have some more photos of bits and pieces to share, so progress is being made......slowly slowly.
I also splashed out and bought a new Bench lathe and new TIG welder for home, so no more taking bits to work to finish them or having to wait until I am at work to do things.
rear subframe being bent and fitted ready for welding off.

 

[Nade]

New bench lathe
New TIG welder
A view to a Buell....or 2...always a battle, to build or to go for a ride....

 

[Nade]

So....how many years now......so much messing around. BUT I have a guy coming next month, who is a trike certifier, so there will be flurry of action for the next few weeks.
Below is the method I am hoping to use to connect the swing arms to the diff tubes. There are gussets as well to joint the tube to the box.

 

[Nade]

LH swingarm fully longitudinally welded, ready to be welded to the diff mounting blocks

LH and RH diff mounting blocks. These slide over the diff axle tube before I weld the bearing cups on, and the swing arms butt onto the flat faces.

These are the wheels my GF has chosen, and a sneak peek of how things will look.

 

[Nade]

progress. It is rideable, but the rear brake master cylinder needed to be changed to a larger one, and that meant i had to redesign and fabricate a new foot rest assembly, still in progress. steps forward.....sideways shift....

 

[Cooter]

Wow! Still plugging away at this. Looks like it's getting very close:eagerness:

 

[Nade]

yes, its a labour of love. The light at the end of the tunnel is shining bring on my face tho

 

[njloco]

I new this guy who was a welder, he built his own from the ground up and installed a turbo diesel vw motor, he's the center of attraction where ever he goes.
Cool project, good luck with it.

 

[cvc]

Interesting read and nice work on the trike. The regulations for customizing vehicles concerns me both for and against. The east coast of the. US mostly has annual safety inspections the west emissions tests. The middle mostly lax on either. But for suspension brakes and frame modifications it seems like you have a wonderful resource for engineering help and final safety inspection.
I wish we had a similar program here.

 

[Nade]

Yes, the system does work.....and I have learned ****loads along the way. Good things take time, and sadly I wayyyyyy underestimated how much time goes into building a trike.....the physical building part is really quite small compared to the time spent researching, planning, preplanning.....the forward thinking and the little details.

 

[Nade]

So this Trike has taken several years. Ain't life wonderful.

It is very near ready for its first official teat ride by the certifier. I have a minor issue where I used the wrong tube nuts on the brake likes and the threads bottomed out before sealing. I got brake fluid everywhere......and I have to redo all the hard lines again with new tube nuts as cutting the existing lines to fit new tube nuts makes the lines just a bit to short and messes with the aesthetics. pedantic, yes. time consuming, yes. I am putting together a file for the Certifier with all the materials and any conceivable photo of everything I've done, which he will submit to the powers that be, and then if he is comfortable with the way it rides etc I get to then pull it all apart again, and then paint it all up pretty and nice. The Blue guard I sprayed out shows the colour. Once I paint it all, put it back together and the certifier is happy I haven't changed anything and tried to hide it with bog (bondo) or paint......I can then let the good woman ride. And I get my Buell to myself.....

I do have a short video somewhere which I will find and post eventually, of me test riding it a few months ago........

 

[cvc]

Congratulations looks like your labor will be rewarded soon.

 

[Nade]

Here is the first test ride I did a couple of months ago. At the time the rear brakes weren't hooked up, the Handle bars were the original Suzuki 'GLP' factory set up, and the rear guards were as we purchased them. Since then I made a new 'Drag bar' type handle bar to give more leverage for the Mrs, it was really heavy to steer....this seems to reduce the effort required to steer. The rear guards had to be lengthened as the legal requirement is the guard must cover 1/3 of the tires circumference and have a minimum 3mm radius on all edges. (pedestrian safety bollicks) I fiber glassed an extension onto the rear of the guards to give the length required, and to reduce spray off the tire that is flung forward. While doing that I decided to add an aluminum tube to the edge of the guard to run the wirering for the tail lights. got carried away and fully fiber glassed it in to blend with the guard shape and style. Protects the wires from possible damage.
I also fabricated a new forward foot board cross member as the fitting of the rear master cylinder created some head ache's and that lead to fabricating new foot boards, gear shifter mounts and modified the original gear shifter to also have a heel kicker.....the list of things just in that small area that needed redoing grew pretty quick

 

[Nade]

I also have spent the best part of the past 2 years battling C-PTSD. Only recently have I been able to access therapy and openly talk about it after years of pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol and lots and lots of denial. This has added many many months to the build as I have seconded guessed every thing I have done and procrastinated for fear of failure. BUT it also has ensured everything I have done has been to the best of my ability.
I'm not looking for sympathy, just a bit of understanding I guess. My PTSD was not caused by my Military service (although it did help in bringing it out so I could deal with it).
Hugs not Drugs kids......unless they are free! (and not in the back of a van)