| With
the
success of
my third trike I had already designed and made what I thought was the
most optimized design for off-road use with that layout. I felt that I
could only ever do minor upgrades in the design and therefore far short
of
anything significant enough to justify a whole new ground up build. I
had considered going away from the traditional front wheels
steering/rear wheel power layout a long time ago to something a bit
more advanced but I was too limited in my ability, knowledge and access
to equipment. For literally years I was puzzled over how to make a
spline type system for powering drive shafts until I had a breakthrough
some time ago. So my plan was to have all of the three wheels driven
and the front still steer. I also wanted to not go over 17kg (weight of
trike 2) which considering the all metal construction and elaborate
drive line would be quite some task. This has now changed to 19kg as I
changed my plan to use some heavy 19 x 2.5" trials tyres all round. This will be a long project and it has only just started. So far I have done not much more than planning and some small but elaborate machined pieces. |
| Aimed
weight: 19KG Steered wheels: Both front wheels Materials: mostly 4130 Cro-mo Powered Wheels: All three wheels Planned width: Approximetly 900mm Front wheel specs: Nimbus extra wide 19" (391) dual wall trials rims, stainless spokes and custom made spindles in the place of hubs. Rear wheel specs: Nimbus extra wide 19" (391) dual wall trials rim, stainless spokes and custom made rear hub. Gears: 16 with an additional geared under-drive Brakes: Single V-brake for the rear Tires: 19 (391) x 2.5" Maxxis Creepy Crawler |
| Due to the fact that this will end up being a very long and ellaborate build it has been broken up into various sections as listed below. |
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Design through
sketches: Multiple hand drawn sketches showing a small amount of design work that went into working out the design of this trike. |
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Parts selection: Details of the finer points of the part selection covering reason for parts choice, specifications, modification, problem solving, pictures and plans. |
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Electric assist: From analasis to designing and then finally to construction this section is all about implimenting an electric motor for powered assistance in short powerfull bursts. |
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Construction: Moving from the design to the machine shop where the fabrication begins. Starting with the small intrictate components before moving onwards to the frame itself. |