Spartan Trike Project

[Liteway]

Toyo Proxes R888 205/40 17. Maybe.

DOT legal, designed for track and autocross use, not recommended for the street. Hydroplane city.

[captainamerica]

That is correct, exactly. I don't do much in the rain so its not been a problem, but its still treaded a bit so its not end of the world if it sprinkles. Same tire on all 3 corners

[Liteway]

I would never leave the house in the rain or if there was even a fair chance of it, nonetheless I have been caught out in sudden summer downpours several times, once got heavily hailed on. I had only planned a 10 mile outing. It was hot when I left, so one of the rare times I left the helmet behind.
That was bad.

[DaveJ98092]

AHHH, a sudden rain and being not prepaired. I once had a 65 Dodge Dart GT with a BUILT 340 and a 3200 RPM Stall converter. I was running a spool "Posi" rear end. I did have fair tires for dry weather on it. I was 25 miles from home when the rain hit. That car was not controllable at all. The rear was trying to swap ends and the crown of the road was trying to make it slide down hill.

I parked it inside at a Shucks Autoparts store that had a repair shop and I knew the manager. His parts driver gave me a ride home.

[Deleted]

May 8, 2017 13:58:08 GMT -5 captainamerica said:

That is correct, exactly. I don't do much in the rain so its not been a problem, but its still treaded a bit so its not end of the world if it sprinkles. Same tire on all 3 corners

How do you like the R888 compare to regular tires you had before?

[captainamerica]

How do you like the R888 compare to regular tires you had before?

I would say they are much stickier getting into the corners, but once you get used to something it doesn't stand out as much. I would say its still very much an under steering vehicle with powered over steer if you aren't careful with the throttle. I am running more camber to help with more aggressive turning, I could go more aggressive but the tire wear goes up and I am not trying to push it most of the time. Mostly since the accident and since buying my house I don't drive it to much, maybe 2-3 times a month.

[Deleted]

Jun 14, 2017 11:45:54 GMT -5 captainamerica said:

How do you like the R888 compare to regular tires you had before?

I would say they are much stickier getting into the corners, but once you get used to something it doesn't stand out as much. I would say its still very much an under steering vehicle with powered over steer if you aren't careful with the throttle. I am running more camber to help with more aggressive turning, I could go more aggressive but the tire wear goes up and I am not trying to push it most of the time. Mostly since the accident and since buying my house I don't drive it to much, maybe 2-3 times a month.

Great thanks for the info! looking forward to put some r888 on my project. 

[skifffz1to3]

Last Saturday, I had the pleasure to meet Andrew...and take a very unexpected ride in Spartan! WOW! Andrew is a wonderful, gracious, and talented engineer. He gave me a pre-ride briefing, and I made several "laps" around the block.

Well done Andrew, well done.

[skifffz1to3]

[skifffz1to3]

Last Saturday was a surprise birthday outing for my grand son (12). We were headed to the "Pit" in Mooresville, NC, for a day of karting and lazer tag. I mentioned to my son, Daniel, that Captain America and his Spartan Trike lived there. We both have followed the Spartan build. He agreed to make a slight detour if Andrew was home...and was available for us to take a look at his creation. Andrew and I had spoken a few times via phone, but had never met. It was great to finally meet, and a big surprise when he asked "Want to drive it?"!!! Well, YES! Andrew told me that was his way to pay it forward as he had been given the same kind of surprise from the owner and builder of the P6 Scorpion early on in his Spartan build. That helped to encourage him to get it done.

My impressions? I had never ridden a Reverse Trike, so I had no preconceived ideas of what to expect. My few laps around the block was not sufficient to give an in depth overview of the many attributes. I'm still learning about under steer, over steer, castor and camber...yadda, yadda. The open wheel, low slung Indy style is fun. I was grinning ear to ear the whole time. It was noisier than I expected, but not unreasonable. Spartan is very appealing to the eye, and awesome as an adrenaline rush.The clutch had no feel or pedal play, so I choked it out more times than I care to admit. Andrew did give me a heads up about it and said what he planned to do to fix it.  Throttle response was crisp and very responsive. Spartan is very appealing to the eye, and awesome as an adrenaline rush.

Thank you, Andrew, for the riding experience...and the boost I needed to finish my build.

[DaveJ98092]

In the past and present, Andrew has offered to share his engineering tech with others. He is a great asset to this forum. Like Andrew, the free sharing of information is what makes this forum still worth saving. Yes the forum is SLOOOOW at times. But the members that participate freely like Andrew makes it worth joining.

[captainamerica]

June 2017

I haven't said much in quite some time on here, life is busy, but I have made a little progress. The motor is now mounted but will probably need to come out a few times before it goes in for good. The mounts seem to be about 1/16" to far apart vertically so I will probably be cutting on the chassis a bit and rewelding with the engine mounted to get the spacing correct. I think in the future the welding of the engine mounts will be done with a broken engine mounted in space on the table where I plan to have the real one and have the mounts bolted to the engine as its being welded to make sure everything is sitting correctly. I also blew the money and bought the steering rack, rack ends, column weld on spline, and the momo wheel. Total price was about $1500 for everything, all from pegasus autosport. I now need to have the titan engineering steering rack modified with threads on the ends since in the infinite wisdom of pegasus the stock rack that they sell doesn't seem to fit any of the rack ends sold.

I took on a number of new projects around the house that are consuming my time, like rebuilding a broken riding mower that I got for $50 (400 into it and its basically new, 2009 model troy bilt), widing the door to my garden shed to fit said mower which turned into a complete tear down and rebuild as the whole structure seemed to be dry rotted, and finally working on getting the city to let me build an 1100 sqft workshop on the property so the lady can have the garage all to her self work on her wood furniture.

It was also really good to meet Bud and his family and allow him to use the Spartan to get his first drive in a trike. He seemed to enjoy it and I enjoying bouncing different ideas we had back and forth. To anyone out there who wants to make the trip here north of Charlotte, NC you are more then welcome.

[ouraydog]

A very impressive and ambitious project. A couple of questions about the basic architecture.

Are you happy with the wheelbase and width of your trike?
If you were going change either, which way would you go?
Are you happy with your choice of tire sizes?
If you were going to change tire sizes, which way would you go?

Regards, Bill Barton (Frankston TX)

[captainamerica]

Bill,

I would say its probably slightly to wide and to long, but the length is pretty much set by how close I can put things in the chassis and its not getting any shorter. The width could handle a 2-3" drop I think, it gets a little close on the narrow North Carolina back roads. The new design has a similar width but is 2" longer, 1" in the engine area to give me some more room for plumbing and maintenance access and an extra inch in the drivers compartment specifically for me since I am tall. The engine bay is cramped because it was originally designed for a GSXR-600 motor which is about an inch shorter at the head and would have cleared easily, on the current trike the shoulder harness mount point actually allows for clearance of the valve cover underneath, it has about 1/4" clearance. For a shorter person you could easily drop 4-6" off the drivers cell and if you kept the wheelbase to width ratio that would reduce the track by 2-3".

I chose the tire size because there was a set of them on the demo rack at summit racing for $120 and the price was just to good to pass up, I think originally I wanted 205/45R17s vs 205/40R17s for a slightly higher ground clearance. That being said I think I would go with smaller rims with a similar tire wall ratio to allow for better driver visibility and to reduce unsprung weight, however that might not look "correct" with the 17" rear bike rim.

Andrew

[ouraydog]

Thanks so much for the info, it is exactly what I was looking for. Experience is a wonderful teacher!

Regards, Bill Barton

[captainamerica]

To those of you who read this specific forum page,

If you feel the way this gentleman/woman does about getting a hold of my designs...please read what I have written here. Hullynickel, you literally copied the statement that says to PM me and exactly what I am looking for in said PM. This is not a PM, nor have a received one from you. While forums are basically unlimited in space for text, I have given instructions, pretty clearly. This is not just for me, it also protects your private information (ie email address) from the world. You PM me with your email and the other information I am looking for here to help protect my ideas and designs and I email you, and that start a dialogue to getting access to what your looking for. I do login to this site about once a week and look at the messages so my response may not be immediate but I will get back to you. If I have not, and its been awhile, feel free to ping me with a comment on here saying you sent me a PM and then delete later once I have seen it.

Andrew

[DaveJ98092]

Jan 8, 2018 16:20:41 GMT -5 captainamerica said:

To those of you who read this specific forum page,

If you feel the way this gentleman/woman does about getting a hold of my designs...please read what I have written here. Hullynickel, you literally copied the statement that says to PM me and exactly what I am looking for in said PM. This is not a PM, nor have a received one from you. While forums are basically unlimited in space for text, I have given instructions, pretty clearly. This is not just for me, it also protects your private information (ie email address) from the world. You PM me with your email and the other information I am looking for here to help protect my ideas and designs and I email you, and that start a dialogue to getting access to what your looking for. I do login to this site about once a week and look at the messages so my response may not be immediate but I will get back to you. If I have not, and its been awhile, feel free to ping me with a comment on here saying you sent me a PM and then delete later once I have seen it.

Andrew

Andrew, That new member must have removed all their posts. It said two posts but there is nothing anywhere. PM me is there's a problem please.

[captainamerica]

I emailed the person directly with the email they had posted with and basically told them the same thing, they heeded my words and removed their posts. No issue on my end, I just get a bit frustrated with people who have clearly read this forum, are interested in my designs that I have offered up, but don't take the time to follow what I have laid out as a way of getting access to myself and my designs. And in this case he actually copied my original comment about PMing in his message, while hes not from this country and English may not be his first language the irony of it made me laugh a bit.

[captainamerica]

October '17

I was given the opportunity to possibly go work for the Penske/Richa Johnson V8 Supercar team, while I ended up turning the job down I did get to spend two weeks with the team in Brisbane surveying whether the position would work for me. Down under is a completely different lifestyle, still English speaking but definitely different and I hope to live there in there future. While I was there the team pulled off an extraordinary drive to win the Sunday race in Gold Coast starting from 11th on the tight road course which was followed by an all night bash with most of the team, a lot of whom had to go into work in the morning. The driver, Scott Mclaughlin, had 15 pole positions this year and lost the championship on the last lap of the last race, albeit in a position that he put himself in with mistakes, but it was still heart breaking to watch. To me it reinforced the fact that if you want to watch and enjoy racing you have to have a favorite driver, the best reason is to have met them personally but any old reason will do, otherwise its just cars driving around in circle. Commercial free circles in Aussie though, and with the Superview that you can buy from the sport, in the states, for $35 you can watch all the races whenever you want. Enough of that, it was an interesting time but back to work.

[captainamerica]

November '17

Almost immediately after my return from down under I was back in california preparing to sell my house and in doing so I was required to move my Mill and Lathe (and all the other junk I was still storing in the rental house). I ended up renting a Penske 26 foot box truck and, with the help of my Dad, driving across the country in three and half days to deliver the machines to their new home in the workshop of a friend of mine. After getting them here I did a complete tear down on the mill and fixed all the little things that had been nagging me over the years, the biggest of which was a large amount of lash in the X-axis. This turned out to be a loose bearing nut that was allowing the ball screw to move back and forth slightly. I disassembled the top of the machine trying to find the source of a noise that occurs when the main spindle and quill are at speed, the only thing I found was a worn key way and key in the speed reduction unit, I made a new key but its probably still loose and the sound is still there now which is frustrating because its quite loud. Beyond that I had to fix and amphenol connector for the Z-axis motor that had cracked when it was dropped a long time ago just after I purchased it, and during the drive it had finally come apart. Finally I found that the ballscrew nut mount that I had made years ago was mounted about 1/16" to high in the X-axis table as was bending the ballscrew slightly at max travel, an extra shim cured this issue. Tonight was the first time it was used for actual machining. The lathe pretty much worked out of the box but it also has a bearing issue related to the power feed that I am concerned about. The other thing I took a picture of is the circuit board on the mill, those little white switches in the red box control how the unit starts up and they can get rust on them internally and it stops the computer boot process (this baby runs a pentium 100 with 4mb of ram...top notch for the early 90s), so you have to flip them back and forth to break up the corrosion and get back to work. All part of the job.