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- #21
DOM tubing is the easiest and most common to use. It is mild steel. Chrome moly is not required for a plain application like this.
Steel (not iron) water pipe, EW (electric weld) tubing and DOM tubing are all plain carbon steel. Steel pipe is not very uniform in wall thickness and quality. EW tubing is much more dimensionally correct and better. Both of these have a weld seam to work around. You must turn the weld seam (visible inside the pipe or ew) to the inside of the bend and also watch which way the load forces will be. It can be done and used to be the only thing available to work with back in the day. Lots of welds, support plugs in the splices and fitting and grinding.
Now there is DOM (drawn over mandrel).
It is the same as EW but as the name implies it has been drawn. The weld is worked in and normalized. You now don't have to clock seams or even pay attention to the physical properties of the pipe/tubing anymore. You can just pick it up and start bending compound bends every which a way.
Square tubing is strong until you have to bend it. So for the most part it will need to be a lot of straight pieces instead of bends.
Many a trike has been built using the original vw design concept. Replace the tunnel with a large piece of square tube cut and angled up to the neck. Then add on running boards.
Just a thought.
Thanks for this. Was told chromoly was the way to go but DOM sound's better. Might combine square or rectangle tubing with round. Square for strength and round for looks. Any ideas on a fork neck? Was looking at one on ebay that is shaped like an hour glass at each end.
Doesn't leave much room to weld. Also found a rake calculator that say's I need a triple tree that is offset 10 degrees. Seems that finding a correct girder is getting to be difficult. I found one build where a guy stuck a broom handle down the neck and adjusted it for different front wheel axle centers so he could find the correct trail. Is this the best way?