The great outdoors

We are finally going to take some time off this year. Family camping week is coming up, and although this month's weather has been dismal, looking forward to getting back to Nature and enjoying the great outdoors. Soon...

Will be bringing the LodeRunner 2 Tandem Trike with us and E-Style Electric BMX. Even if it rains, like the long range forecast predicts, we will still have a good time. We don't have time to go camping very much these days, so might as well make the best of it. I can almost hear the loons calling and see the eagles flying overhead...

Warrior Racing Trike - 95% finished

The Warrior is now fully functional minus shifter and brakes! The steering and efficiency seem amazing so far!



Siting in the pilot's seat makes me feel evil and crazy at the same time!

Rather than rush and burn out, I am stopping here and will finish the rest of the trike once back from camp. No doubt, this will soon be my main ride!
Not much left to do besides the rounded profile seat, brake mounts and paint, so I estimate completion by August 12th or so.

After that, I will take it out for a real abuse test and then begin the plan compilation if there are no bugs to be worked out. So far, I can't see any.

Brad

Warrior Racing Trike Success!

After almost 10 tries at getting the steering exactly the way I want, the battle was finally won.

Using the StreetFox Ackermann design (I knew that had zero scrub), I tied into the WildKat under seat steering parts.

It still took 4 attempts to get this to work the way I wanted, which was...

- Perfect Ackermann steering with zero tire scrub. I have also heard about this "we wanted tire scrub to slow down our trike in corners" thing, but honestly, I find it to be a flaw. Brakes are for slowing down, not worn tires. I know, I am picky!

- Steering must move to the full range of motion before lockout evenly. This was extremely difficult to archive. Having the control arms parallel to each other actually caused a massive imbalance to one side.

- Handlebars must sit perfectly where the hands drop, not some awkward locked elbow stretch, or uncomfortable bend. They are also adjustable.

- There must be room for the chain under the seat!

So here is what I ended up with:



The first small photo shows how far off from parallel the two control arms are from one another (white lines). This is what took the longest to find, and required many cuts, re-welds, and new control arms. I wasn't going to give up until the two front wheels made the same angle of turn as the handlebars moved left and right. Parallel gave a decent amount of turn, but on one side, lockout occurred at almost 3 inches (15-20 degrees) more.

The head tube control arm is also 1/2 inch longer than the wheel arm to introduce some mechanical advantage, which gives a bit more stability and kind of a "power steering" feel.

The last two small photos show how the wheels move to the maximum lockout equally compared to the handlebars for left and right turns.

Tomorrow I add the chain and brakes, so it's smooth sailing from here!

We are heading to camp for a week on Friday, so The Warrior plan will probably be released mid-August.

Thanks for all of he comments and input - it's been a lot of fun so far!

Brad

Warrior Racing Trike - setback

Well, today's progress was...failure!

After many hours of welding, cutting, drilling, then cutting and welding again, I have decided that not only is the crossover steering system much to finicky to get right, it is not nearly as good as the simple tied Ackerman system.

Even with a huge bucket of miscellaneous steering rods, plates, and do-hickeys, it took all day to get this to work (with luck).

In the end, it was almost impossible to achieve a good balance of turning radius and wheel scrub, so I am scrapping that idea. Even on the commercial trikes that us this system, I have heard reports of wheel drag in sharp corners, and to be honest, that is just not acceptable to me.

I am going back to a system much like the StreetFox, but will just tie into the right control arm like I did back in the dark ages on my Marauder trike concept.


This also makes alignment easy (no guessing), so that is so much better for the plans. I did manage to get chain clearance and the under seat steering to work nicely, so it was not a fully wasted day.

I know... I can't win-em-all, but that doesn't mean I can't throw my wrench across the room and cuss out loud, right?

Tomorrow...I win.