Ok, on the advice of an engineering friend of mine, I'm posting what I think are my "final" designs. He's looked at them, and thinks they're going to work just fine, but told me to post on a trike forum where others have built their own trikes.
Background information:
For a power plant, I'm using a 2.5l Iron Duke out of a 1984 Pontiac Fiero. I dropped the cradle, engine, trans, drive train, axle, basically everything on the cradle. Using the cradle as the starting point, I'm going to build the frame around it. I got the idea from Conrad Lawrence (aka Onetonmagoo on Youtube), who has also given me some pointers on the frame. I plan on using 1.25" x 0.125" 1020 CREW DOM tubing, although I'm also considering higher grades. I plan on using a girder fork with bale front end. For the neck I'll be using 2-3/8" x 1.5 (ID) x 7" CREW DOM 1046 piece of tubing honed out to take a Timkin cup and cone bearings 07100 & 07204. The triple tree plates will be made of 1" x 3" x 7" 1020 cold roll plate with a grade 8, 1" bolt connecting them through the neck.
In the drawings below, I've color coded the various tubes for ease of reference, and left out the 3 cross members in the side view that are towards the front end, as well as 2 of the supports (green), but show them in the top-down view for reference. The drawing are to scale, based off of photographs and measurements of the cradle after having removed it from the Fiero. Scale is shown in both drawings, but 1 colored square equals 1".
I would greatly appreciate the thoughts and comments of anyone who has built their own trike or has any experience with tube welding. I do plan on using a fish mouth jig for all junctions. Thanks in advance!
~SD
Background information:
For a power plant, I'm using a 2.5l Iron Duke out of a 1984 Pontiac Fiero. I dropped the cradle, engine, trans, drive train, axle, basically everything on the cradle. Using the cradle as the starting point, I'm going to build the frame around it. I got the idea from Conrad Lawrence (aka Onetonmagoo on Youtube), who has also given me some pointers on the frame. I plan on using 1.25" x 0.125" 1020 CREW DOM tubing, although I'm also considering higher grades. I plan on using a girder fork with bale front end. For the neck I'll be using 2-3/8" x 1.5 (ID) x 7" CREW DOM 1046 piece of tubing honed out to take a Timkin cup and cone bearings 07100 & 07204. The triple tree plates will be made of 1" x 3" x 7" 1020 cold roll plate with a grade 8, 1" bolt connecting them through the neck.
In the drawings below, I've color coded the various tubes for ease of reference, and left out the 3 cross members in the side view that are towards the front end, as well as 2 of the supports (green), but show them in the top-down view for reference. The drawing are to scale, based off of photographs and measurements of the cradle after having removed it from the Fiero. Scale is shown in both drawings, but 1 colored square equals 1".
I would greatly appreciate the thoughts and comments of anyone who has built their own trike or has any experience with tube welding. I do plan on using a fish mouth jig for all junctions. Thanks in advance!
~SD
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