Spartan Trike Project

[captainamerica]

December '17

Not much happened here, I ended up back in California for 2 weeks for the holidays while the lady went off and toured southeast Asia with her friends, vacation perks of being a college professor, we engineers get the short straw on benefits but the cool jobs. I did see some cool cars, one at car show in town and the other up at a biker retreat in the mountains of NC just off the blue ridge parkway. The first one is just a cup car rat rod basically, and the second one is a buddy with an RX-7 engine with transaxle (and NOS cause why not) with giant wheels, had a decent chat with the owner and my number one take away was the weight mixed with the tire size makes it squirrelly as heck in questionable conditions. I still want one. Finally I built myself a new desk, cause the old one didn't fit me very well and I wanted more space to cover with piles of crap. I used an epoxy bar top finish on it which turned out super nice. The torch is actually used to cause the air bubbles to rise out of the epoxy, just don't get too close. I promise this is heading back to trikes soon, I feel like I have been sitting on most of a trike in my garage for over a year and I want to get it done and driving by the end of winter!

[captainamerica]

January '17

Time is flying by but I am finally back to work, started working on test threads for threading the ends of the steering rack so the Renault rack ends can be attached. Now that I have my machine tool nearby expect a lot more work to occur. It is also very cold and it snowed like 4 inches which isnt helping but it is a lot of fun to drive in... until you realize you have to share the road with other "drivers". Currently also tossing around the idea of building a shop on my property here, although I may find that its easier and better to just rent a shop in town as I may be starting an engineering and fabrication business in the near future, more on that soon.

[captainamerica]

Custom Suspension Idea

Putting a feeler out to the group on this forum or whoever read this stuff. Is there an interest in purchasing custom suspension components for home build designs? The idea would be that I could produce straight forward adjustable options for A-arms, uprights, bell cranks, tie rods, and so on and you would submit your desired dimensional needs (upper and lower lengths, castor, king pin,etc) and connection types (rod ends, ball joints) all of which would be within parameters that I have set out (ie king pin can be between 0-15 degrees) and I would produce the pieces and sell them at a reasonable price. Also there would probably be pre-designed options that I will have done up that include all these things and then you just have to build a chassis that can handle it. Maybe I am reaching here, into a market that doesn't seem to exist for a reason, but PM with your opinion/interest if you care to do so.

I am also going to post this somewhere else on this site, not sure where it would go but somewhere.

-Andrew

[Deleted]

Hi, I was wondering how tall you are? Some friends and I are wondering because we stumbled across this build and would like to use it as a sort of base for what we'd like to do.

[captainamerica]

I am 6'-4", tall enough to bounce my knees off the dash when I hit a bump, the new design solves this if I ever get it done by placing the driver between the lower chassis rails instead of on top of them which drops you 1.5". However it leads to some humorous things like when my friend who is in the low 5' range, taking the trike down the drag strip, and needing to wear his backpack full of stuff while in the seat just to reach all the controls. He was sitting about 8" forward from the pads so I doubt the head rest would have helped him much, glad nothing went wrong.

[captainamerica]

March '18

So I let one to many nice people that I meet drive my trike and finally someone really put it to the test. Luckily no one was hurt, but there will be some new rules from me about when and where people can take the Spartan out for a joy ride. This happened almost 100 yds from my garage, the driver put the throttle to it pretty hard, possibly hit some gravel, oversteered into a 180, hit the aluminum trailer backwards which sheared all the attachment points for the right wheel off. The A-arm dug into the dirt and made quick work of my neighbors lawn. Apparently the tire went over the drivers head after he slid to a stop, lucky it didn't hit him or I would be in a whole different world of trouble. All in all the damage done was less then 1k, all the parts were ordered earlier this week and Saturday it should be all back together assuming I haven't missed some other major issue. The biggest thing is the hit to my reputation in the neighborhood as well as rebuilding the steering attachment on the upright, that was a hand made custom bit. In better news I got tired of the humdrum of the racing world and left my job about a week ago to start an engineering and fabrication business, more to come on that soon.

[joe]

Glad nobody got hurt, our trikes don't handle like a typical car. I've probably have been over precautionary giving dissertation on safty steps to prospective drivers, and only hope they paid attention. Good luck with your new engineering business venture!

[2rike]

Like Joe says "Glad nobody was hurt" but it is a testimony to your strong design, no one ever wants to do impact test in the real world, but I bet you scrutinized the broken parts for valuable information. It certainly passed with flying colours top work Captainamerica
2rike

[Liteway]

I'm curious about the attitude of the perpetrator.

Were you offered any compensation for their carelessness?


I would be very careful whom I would let loose in it as I am with my own.

It's one-of-kind, high powered and possessing handling characteristics that no one but yourself is likely to fully fathom.

What could possibly go wrong?

Sorry, hindsight is always 20/20.

And at least, as the others have said, nobody got hurt.

[captainamerica]

The driver was apologetic, and has paid both my neighbor and myself back for the damages as well as coming by last weekend to help me get the wheel reattached, which we got done. The nose cone is damaged so that's getting remade as well. I got lucky that the wheel hit right on the spoke and seems to still be round, I haven't replaced the tire yet but probably will. The sad/humorous thing is that fixing my neighbors trailer was just as expensive as the trike fix.

Pictures to come but the steering attachment on the upright got damaged beyond repair so that got replaced with a slightly better design. At the same time I was putting that back on I inspected the left side and found a crack at the weakest point so it looks like the left side will get an update as well. In the future I would like to transfer the whole trike into a chassis and front end like the new trike I have been working on for far too long. With ball joints and spherical bearings on the front suspension, which will change the failure mode to something a little safer from a bouncing tire perspective.

That said, while it will be much stronger, the failure of the rod ends actually limited the overall damage and reduced the repair cost significantly.

[eclipse]

Hi all! I’ve just joined the forum after discovering this fantastic thread whilst researching for my own project, and I have to say it’s truly inspirational!


It’s very encouraging to see such a comprehensive and calculated approach to a home-build project of this nature, and with so many helpful hints and tips along the way this thread has been a gold-mine discovery for me.... so much so that it has convinced me to start a thread of my own to canvas opinion and source constructive criticism for my own project, albeit only in the very early stages.
I hope to have something up on here within the next few days and look forward to your collective opinions.

Keep up the good work captainamerica et al!


-Rob

[captainamerica]

May-July '18

Lots of happenings, few updates sadly. Probably the biggest thing is that I left my NASCAR job in March, right around the time of the trike accident and I am now running my own engineering and fabrication business. This has been something I have wanted to do for a long time and when I turned down the job offer in Australia last November I realized that that was the end of my career in racing and that I was rather bored with being a desk jockey even with the big budget and quick turn around it still wasn't the things that I wanted to be working on. It also helped that I finally cut all my strings with California last year and sold my house for a reasonable profit which gave me some flexibility money wise. My company, or the two of them, Mac's Performance Engineering and Mac's Performance Manufacturing are now up and running and generating revenue, I wouldn't say profit just yet but business is starting to pick up.

Company Website (soon to be updated)
www.macsperformance.net

In more Trike related news I am back to work on my second trike after about 6-8 months of inaction. I reduced the track by about 2" to ~63" which required new A-arm jigs which should be finished next week. The chassis is coming out of my garage and over to the new shop this coming week. I have most of the parts to get the rolling chassis done just sitting in boxes waiting on a couple of crucial parts to complete it all. I think seeing the roller will inspire me to get it done. I now have a plasma table (5'x10') which I am going to use to cut the aluminum body on. Aluminum is getting expensive though so I may revert to steel and just go a little thinner.

I have also completed most of the repairs on the current trike, new nose cone being the big one. I initially have big ideas of making a new round front end and even bent the tubes for it but I couldn't make it look right so I just went back to the original design. I attached pictures of the new upright steering mount with comparison to the original design (left to right at this point). While I am not worried about it breaking there are signs of a crack forming right at the corner of the top plate, right where you would expect the high stress point to be. The new design has a single large flat plate on top that removes that point. It's still there on the bottom plate but its now much more rigid as a whole due to the top.

Also the sides of the nose cone were bent on my sheet metal brake so they are a lot cleaner then the original which I did by heating it with a torch and hitting it with a hammer over the edge of my fab table.

[endeavor]

You were lucky nobody got hurt that is bad on many fronts. As you know when designing a vehicle like this there will always be compromise. In fact every aspect is a compromise. More caster better straight line stability but harder cornering, less equals better cornering but less straight line stability etc. Same goes with structure. More heft regarding A-arms and spindle sets equals more resistance to the type of breakage you encountered here but also adds more weight which will affect upspring. And it does make a difference if you are doing the work for yourself or for resale as in the resale arena lawyers become another compromise situation.
I use Mustang rotors and spindle sets along with standard automotive low friction ball joints leaning towards greater strength (less lawyer) One of the side benefits of this type of construction is the wheels become quite heavy which is not good as far as upspring but turns out a real plus in roll over prevention as the heavy wheels become a sort of outrigger which makes it almost impossible to lift a wheel.
It is a compromise, but it works.
I recently had a customer hit a "bump" which was actually a very deep pothole, The damage was a ruptured tire, bent rim, exploded shock and fractured shock mount. A-arms were fine and not other damage. I now beef up the shock mounts but other than that the test was a success. :-)

[Deleted]

Hi Andrew and all the guys! The project is a great job and the most great, that you has leaded it to result.
I think, one person vehicles must be very popular concept in a modern world, or at least one of the concepts, who people can drive.
A motorcycle does not cover all the requirements of one-person-vehicle, because to drive in winter on it is quit cold and dangerous.
But reverse trike stays exact between a normal car and bike. It's already reliable enough, but need less power, fuel and does not overcrowded with excess volume. It's exact, what a common city dweller need each day for the purpose to drive to job, to find a park place near job, to feel comfortable on the way and to pay just for moving of his/hear body and not for moving of big food trolley.
Additional advantages gives an electric power. First, consumption costs are cheaper, second, it's easy to construct. The costs for batteries can be not too much on start, because, if you make a trike yourself, you can build up a capacity.

All this things are preconditions for open source hardware. There is an example of such approach www.openmotors.co/download/
They have a huge experience in auto firm (as they wright). Now they have made an open platform that each one can download. The problem is that the goal not make a car for each one, but to make custom solutions for small tasks, like golf-mobile, where you don’t need to register it.
In case of reverse trike, it can be spread all over the world an can be easy registered.

What is the idea of open source business? It's an alternative to such business where each one has investigated something and try to care of it from the steal. Here you becomes a leader of steal process. You say: ok, please steal as much, as you can, but if you what to become something, that you exactly need, come to me and I make a customizing (for money). Today people does not want to have a copy. No one buys music songs, singers earn with concerts. People pay for individual impression.

[TomyJ]

Jan 25, 2018 22:04:44 GMT -5 captainamerica said:

Custom Suspension Idea

Putting a feeler out to the group on this forum or whoever read this stuff. Is there an interest in purchasing custom suspension components for home build designs? The idea would be that I could produce straight forward adjustable options for A-arms, uprights, bell cranks, tie rods, and so on and you would submit your desired dimensional needs (upper and lower lengths, castor, king pin,etc) and connection types (rod ends, ball joints) all of which would be within parameters that I have set out (ie king pin can be between 0-15 degrees) and I would produce the pieces and sell them at a reasonable price. Also there would probably be pre-designed options that I will have done up that include all these things and then you just have to build a chassis that can handle it. Maybe I am reaching here, into a market that doesn't seem to exist for a reason, but PM with your opinion/interest if you care to do so.

I am also going to post this somewhere else on this site, not sure where it would go but somewhere.

-Andrew

Andrew,on my next RT build I want to go with TCI IFS because of looks and adjustable. I hope to build the frame design around the control arms and do away with their cross member, but I love their cam design adjustments and overall looks. (See my shenanigans model). Will you build IFS close to this?

[captainamerica]

August 2018

Time flies, almost the end of the month. I finally got the new trike chassis over to the shop and sitting on some plastic saw horses that I think will totally be fine holding all the weight...also super level. I cut the final pieces I needed for the lower a-arm and upper a-arm jigs on the plasma table, two large triangles with three holes. I cut the inboard mounts and ordered the press in bearings, and got everything setup on the jigs, had my neighboring shop TIG weld them up for me and voila my camber is 1.5 degrees to large. Lots of measuring and headache later I realized that I never double checked the position of the outboard holes on the lower and upper jig plates and they are both off in both X and Y in the range of 0.090 inches due to a measuring error I made when transferring the lengths and angles from the CAD arm to the CAD jig. It still looks good from a distance but theres nothing like a nice wall of misdirection to throw you off when everything seems to be going really well. I think the solution is to just remake the upper arms on a new plate and adjust their position to the corrected position for where the lowers ended up.

Even so I am moving forward, I ended up buying new spindles because I made errors on both of the originals...pressed on into the bearing to see how it works, badly it turns out and I accidentally cut the wrong section of material off the backside on the other one. That said I got the new ones all drilled and threaded for the rotors yesterday and pulled the rotors off the bike. The last bits for the uprights that I need to make are the axle removers, basically just bolts to hold the spindle nut to the bearing. I am toying with the idea of just buying axles and band sawing the ends off, but its seems like such a waste of material even if they are only $60, anybody got any spare 22mm bolts laying around?

Steering wheel is also up on the list of things to get put together, I also need to drill the end of the steering column to accept the quick release stub. Its a nice push forwards but frustrating that I have basically been sitting on the doorstep of having a rolling chassis for over a year now. More to come soon, hopefully me pushing this thing around the shop in the next two weeks.

[Liteway]

Good work and nice pictures. I suppose you will be using the bike calipers as well? Those bike brakes should save a bunch of unsprung weight and still be well up to the task.
Any particular reason for going to bushings in place of rod ends on the inboard lower arms but not on the tops as well? More load there? What is the bushing material? Maybe you are not using bushings, but needle bearings? Having used both neoprene bushings and needle bearings, I can say the needles work much better keeping the front end aligned under load in a way that can actually be felt in increased stability. They Reduce suspension sticktion as well.

Bronze bushings are another alternative but I would think you would need to keep a lot of grease on them.

The bearing cases look to be too small a diameter for either Needle bearings or neoprene bushings so just for sport I'm betting they are bronze.

[captainamerica]

Liteway the bushings on the lower a-arms are oil embedded bronze. We shall see how they last. The reason I went with them on the bottom is because of the way the body is shaped, it allows me to tuck everything inside cleanly while the rod ends and weld in thread inserts stick out about 4".

The parts I used from mcmastercarr
www.mcmaster.com/#2938t9/=1ecc4ot

I made some progress today as well, got the spindles drilled and threaded for the rotors and cut on the back sides for clearance. Pushed everything together, and its all locked up. Turns out the chamfer that I needed on the bearing carrier to clear the backs of the studs was about 0.030" to small and so the heads just touch. We knocked it back out about 0.015" to get clearance and allow it to spin. Gonna fix that tomorrow along with the a-arms, but that allowed me to put the whole thing back on the trike and attach the caliper and see that everything works together. The future redesign has the snap ring on the inside of the bearing housing not out by the spindle which allows there to be tons of clearance without anything special being machined.

The one thing that did go my way today was that the rim doesn't need a spacer to clear the calipers, its pocketed on the back side to handle the rotor bolt threads that stick through. Hooray for small victories. I didn't take a picture with it on there because I don't have any metric lug nuts, gonna pick some up tonight on the way home.

[captainamerica]

September '18

Finally got the wheels on the front end, the rims clear the calipers without spacers which is nice but I will probably end up adding in a 1/4" spacer to deal with other close clearances. Next up is getting the rear wheel on and then we can roll her around the shop.

[Deleted]

Hey Andrew, I've sent you an email couple of days ago to your company's address. Haven't heard from you so wondering if it reached you. Let me know. Thanks!

Great project!!