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!

The Donor

To Craigslist I go!  Lots of crashed, old, cheap motorcyles out there.  I spent a couple weeks looking at GSXRs, R6's, an RC51, just about everything you can think of.  Then, like it was calling my name and begging to be part of my new toy, I came across a 1999 Triumph Daytona 955i.  Why is this one so special?  First and foremost, it's a 3 cylinder.  How freaking cool is that - a 3 cylinder engine for my 3 wheeler?  That has a couple other advantages - it's narrower than the 4 cylinders out there.  Next, I had dreamed of doing a single-sided swingarm.  I'm a sucker for that exposed wheel - just looks really sweet.  Oh, and rear wheel - 3 spokes.  That was the one.  Bought it, tore it apart.  Man I love tearing things apart.  The engine will work, the gas tank will work, the swingarm and rear wheel and tire will work, has a good battery and oil cooler too.  Here we go. Pics!

The Idea

I spent the last 5 years racing Dwarf Cars around Michigan.  If you don't know what that is, check out Midwest Classic Racers.  What a blast - learned a bunch, met some great people, just really strengthened my love of tinkering.  When I started, I bought a "beater" car because:
1) I knew I'd wreck it
2) I knew I'd be slower than dirt for quite a while so the car, no matter how bad, would be faster than me
3) I love to tinker!  If I could make a turd go fast, that would be something, wouldn't it?

Turns out I was right on 2 of the 3.  I did wreck it.  I did tinker and put the car in the top 10 on several occasions ('til I rolled it.  Another story, another day).  Unfortunately, I never got much faster than dirt myself.  The car was always faster than my brain could ever be.  So I sold out - but with the next project already working it's magic in my head.

I want to build a Locost 7.  Did a ton of research, had the whole thing dreamed up in my head.  Then came the fine print.  Michigan laws for titling a self built car are just more than I wanted to tackle.  Particularly the windshield with working windshield wipers AND washer.  That and a lot of other issues lead me to the next idea, a reverse trike.  I've drooled over the Campagna T-Rex for a decade now but Oh-My-God are they expensive.  So after a few weeks or rooting around the Internet and daydreaming, the final concept came to me.  I've seen lots of reverse trike builds where the front half of a simple 2-seater cockpit is grafted in front of a motorcycle with the fork removed.  Interesting idea, but they just don't look right.  Way way way too long and they just kinda look wonky to me.  No offense to those that have done it - I love the simplicity and if I need a 2-seater, I'd probably have to do something similar.  But I don't need or want a 2-seater!

Packaging is the fun part.  My first light bulb was, if I don't need a 2 seater, why not put the engine where the passenger would go?  Fairly equal weigh distribution, similar C.G, plenty of room in front of the engine for fuel cell, radiator, electronics, etc..  Where that layout fails though is getting the chain to the rear end.  The engine sprockets and the swingarm sprockets are both on the left side.  So, to help with that, I'm going to flip the swingarm upside-down to move the sprocket to the right side - almost in line with the engine!  Might have to do a short jackshaft to get the offset correct, but shouldn't be too bad!

So I started scouring for parts and found a 3D CAD package to start sketching it up.  Here's the sketch, more on the donor in my next post.