Engineering Senior Project - Reverse Trike - Tips Welcomed!

[Deleted]

Hello Everyone.

I'm working on my senior Engineering project in which I will be creating a reverse trike. I'm very new to the whole reverse trike idea and am not too familiar with designs and setups, so I'm glad to have stumble upon this board.

What I have so far is the motorcycle (1000cc honda CBR) I believe its a 2012. I wanted to integrate the bike into my design and basically keep the bike intact as much as possible (minus the front forks and front tire of course).

I am more than happy to hear any tips/designs/projects/pictures and issues you have run into. I would love to especially hear suggestions on front brake/assembly design, and how one can mount the bike into the frame. Also is it a good idea to buy a junk car such as a civic and pull parts from it like the steering assembly, brake master cylinder etc, brakes(front).

Thanks.

Stephen Christy

[joe]

You can go on ebay and find entire front end assemblies with; wheel spindles, brake rotors, calipers, upper & lower A arms,etc. Your design criteria with regard to track width, overall weight and cost can be useful to determine which vehicle to use. Generally it is easier, faster and most important safer to begin with a previous engineered front end. I personally like the last 2 generations of corvettes because they have lighter weight aluminum components, a wider track, hense increased stability and engineered for more demanding G-forces. Check out the build projects for additional insight and inspiration, best of luck!

[2rike]

Another option for front suspension that is light weight and in keeping with the lightweight three wheeler ethos is to use the locost /lotus 7 / cateraham type suspension which you can find dimensions and drawings in a book called build yourself a sports car for under £250 and there are lots of people making the parts and selling them on ebay for builders that just want to buy rather than make their own.

Here is a link to the book  www.amazon.co.uk/Build-Your-Sports-Little-Pounds/dp/1859606369

[DaveJ98092]

Just for the "WOW" factor in engineering, maybe look at the single coil over shock design that eTrike (?) and the orginal Indycycle used. It had the two front wheels with rods that came inboard to a swivel and that swivel was suspended on swingarms and used just 1 coil over shock. Indycycle later went to twin coil overs mounted inboard on lever swivels like a lot of newer builders have done.

A complete C4 or C5 Corvette front suspension runs about $750 plus shipping. There is a classic car (OLD CARS) wrecking yard in Vancouver Washington that has a few C4 Corvettes. But I imagine most other states have a classic car wrecking yard. This whole suspension is designed to hold up a 5000 pound cars front end. So in a lightweight trike it can be a bit of overkill. There is a lot of extra metal in many places that can be removed to lighten it up some if done right.

Unless you are building a TRUE sports trike, even a modified VW front beam axle works well. There are kits that cut the top tube and mounts inboard levers so you can do coil over shocks. The average driver will not out drive a lightweight trike with a VW axle.
But if you are thinking about pulling over 1.1G's then FORGET a VW axle.