It's been a long time. But I have been tinkering...

She is officially mobile!  Today was the first time I pushed her out into the driveway so I could get some decent progress pics to upload.  Man that felt good.  Probably should update where I am on the build. 

Front end is pretty much together.  Suspension is built and tacked in place, steering rack is mounted, channel-locks attached to steering shaft (gotta have on of those!).  I did end up switching from Chevette to Miata uprights because parts are way easier to find - and there are even some aftermarket parts available for the Miata.  Only thing I didn't really like about it is the way the steering and lower mount have such a high angle - next time I build one I will have to take that into account and angle the mounts for the rod ends.  Next time.  For now, there is only a little bit of binding at full droop of the arms so I can live with that. 

Engine is semi-mounted (2 of 4 mounts built) and the brackets for the jack-shaft are tacked in also.

I even got the car onto some scales to see how I'm doing on the weight distribution - not too bad!  With me in it it was 222 LF, 225 RF, 385 R (front rotors/calipers not installed so closer to 234, 237, 385).  The left right was pretty much dead nuts so that made me happy.  The rear is still a little heavy compared to the front, but just about everything left to add to the car will be in the front so the majority of the additional weight will be where I need it.

Here's some pics!

I'm at the "what do I do next?" stage

Have made some real progress with the trike.  Chassis is as done as I can make it until I get the motor located for sure.  I got it off the jig table and it's just on blocks now.  I test mounted the rear shock, have one of the front corners tacked on waiting for shocks.  I got the wheels/tires and mounted one up.  Looks great, works great.  I made the steering rack mounts. 

I do have a couple of final dimensions (no body of course).
Wheelbase: 96"
Track Width: 53"
Overall Length: 121"
Overall Width: 61"
Ground Clearance: 5.25"

But now I'm stuck on what to do next.

I could put the floor in - but I don't want it to get in the way of welding other pieces.
I could put the other front corner on, but I want to make sure I have the suspension geometry finalized before I build the other side.
I could finish up the steering rack, but I want to have suspension done first.
I could work on the steering column, but I need the seat located first. 
I could do the seat but I need the floor.
I could work on the rear swingarm bracing, but I need to get the jackshaft fabbed and located before I know where I have room.
I could get the engine mounted, but I really wanted to wait on that as long as I can to make sure everything else fits.
I could work on the jackshaft but, well, that is the scariest part of the build and I'm still working that one in my head - no epiphany yet.

So I've basically been staring at it for the last hour trying to figure out what to do.  That didn't work so I'm going to get a beer.

Triangles and Packaging

Of course it's never as much progress as you intended/hoped for - but this thing is starting to look a lot more like something you can drive!  The front end is worked out (except the upper shock mounts), figured out what I think is the best way to stiffen it and have been adding metal bit by bit.  Still have a handful more pieces to put in, but I don't want to close it in so much it's hard to get around the bits to weld.  It's getting to that fun (to some oddballs like me) part - packaging.  Figuring out where all the big parts will go and how to mount them without makind dumb looking, obviously afterthought bracketry.  I think I have it mostly worked out - see new the pics and let me know what you think!  Originally I had planned to have the tank in front of the engine but after moving it as far forward as I could it was way too close to the headers for my comfort  - but I think where it is sitting will work out OK.  Can't wait to pull up to a gas station, pop the door in the middle of the hood to put gas in it.

Should have another set of posts in the very near future - have tires and should be getting wheels tomorrow!  The one thing I am struggling with right now is shocks.  I have a pretty straighforward way to mount them, should have plenty of travel with a 4 or 5" shock but I'm just really nervous about spending that kind of coin on something I'm not sure how it is going to work.  There really aren't any shocks out there designed for a 1000lb vehicle - anybody have advice on proper valving and spring rates?

I have got to get a real camera. The quality of these pictures stinks...

Holiday Progress!

Holidays are great. You get a couple days off work to visit family and get all those things done you've been putting off. I had this strange idea I was going to get tons of work done on the trike. Yeah, not so much. But, finally, Sunday was my day. Got to spend a good 5 or 6 hours on it, made some decent headway. My goal is to have it on it's own 3 wheels by the end of the Christmas break. I'm happy with the progress so far - today I got the roll-bar tacked made and tacked in place and I cut and layed out the front end chassis. I've updated the drawing somewhat with a new sloped nose front end and have figured out most of the mounting points based on the uprights I'm using. Really need to get some wheels before I finalize it.

Some parts I have acquired: Steering rack and uprights/hubs/rotors from a Chevette. Got those from my dwarf car racing days - they regularly use the Chevette uprights and rotors. The steering rack was in my first beater car - one of the first things I ripped out and replaced because it was way too wide for a dwarf car. Perfect for the Trike though!

Found a rear shock that I think will work perfectly. Had a problem when I flipped the swingarm upside-down because there used to be a 6" wide pivot where I plan to mount the shock. I had to come up with a way to put a sturdy shock mount there - spanning a 6" gap with a 10mm bolt. No way that would work as is. The shock I found though fixed most of that - got it from an '86 Kawasaki GPZ 1000. What's slick is it has a T bottom mount instead of an eye. That will let me distribute a lot of that force for the shock bolt across a much wider area. The lenth was perfect, will let me do a simple mount to the top frame rail. Plus, it's an air shock so I can play with ride height easily!

Got a couple of sprockets from Fastenal and a 1" shaft from Ebay to start building the jackshaft assembly. Have alot of thinking/fabbing for that one, but that comes later. Bearings are my big wonder there - it's easy to go buy a pillow-block bearing but I have a hard time believing a $20 setup will hold up under the speed/force of a jackshaft. Research required...

Don't have them yet but ordered my pedals/master cylinders and a steering wheel from Desert Karts - I have got to build me one of those some day... Anyways, on to the pics!

And the engine goes here!

Inspiration for the front end

I've been hesitating on the front end design.  I don't want a box.  I don't want a wedge.  I want curves.  Problem is, the frame at the firewall is pretty wide - about 42".  Based on the steering rack I have, the front end lower suspsension pivot needs to be about 25".  So from the firewall, I have to come in about 8" per side in a very short length.  I just couldn't think of a pretty way to do the body with an open wheel/bicycle fender look - a-la the Lotus.  Then I saw a pic of an Audi Lemans car:

 and the epiphany.  I have nothing at all in the front end of this car except steering, suspension and brakes.  Why not make it a slant nose, bubble fender enclosed front end?  Searching around for a little more inspiration, I came back to Lotus and really cheesy old-school looks of the XI:

Move the cockpit to the other side, reduce some of the bubbleness of it and that's me.  So once I do get to doing the body, some kind of blend between the old and new is the plan.  What this does for the build is frees me from having to make the frame rails up front look good/proportional when exposed - because they won't be!

The build after 2 weeks

Bought some new tools, got some steel, built a jig and now I'm tinkering.  I've got a pretty good feel for where everything from the firewall back will be so that's what I'm going to work on.  Figuring the front end will be pretty generic so I'll do that part later once I have things like the driver, engine and rear end located.  Here are some pics of the progress so far.  It has gone fairly according to plan with the original skecth - I think the only real dimesion to change so far is the layback of the rear part of the chassis tub.  So far I have the lower frame, part of the cockpit flooring, most of the vertical risers and the back half of the top rail in place.  I have created the mounts for the swingarm and have it bolted in to get a feel for the geometry and where to put the shock, chain, jackshaft, etc.

Yeah, I know, my welds are in need of some work.  But I'm getting better - a few of them I'm actually proud of!