Degrees of Extraneosity

After a rocky start from sniffles and sneezes and other such symptoms on Friday, we hit the road for Oklahoma, namely the Turner Falls area.

It's very nice up there, nice riding, yada yada...

Sunday morning, I noticed a bit of oil on the ground under the yellow trike. This oil was in a rather irregular patch, as opposed to a nice round spot. I found some fresh oily wetness near the oil cooler hoses, so I presumed that was where the problem was. It wasn't a whole lot of oil and the dipstick reported plenty of oil, so I decided we'd just keep an eye on it for now.

We took off down the meandering path to home. Twenty some-odd miles into the trek, we had cause to stop. It was a little chillier than expected when we left, but not quite so chilly once we were underway, so Gabby needed to shed a layer of clothing. Whilst we were stopped, I checked the leak.

Ummm, there was a LOT of oil all over the engine and exhaust and everything back there.

With a little testing and looking and revving the engine, etc, I determined that the lower tubing on the oil cooler was leaking. I first thought it was leaking from the hose, but then I saw that the cooler tubing itself was bent and leaking from a crack in the tubing.

It was a simple enough matter to remove the cooler and bypass it with one of the hoses. The weather was mild and these engines tend to run cooler in trikes than cars anyway. I didn't even get very dirty doing it.

Fast forward a bit to our late lunch in Ardmore. I noticed as we were approaching Ardmore than there was as strange kind of "flex" feeling to the seat. I knew that it is mounted on 2" X 1/4" flat steel rails and thus had some springiness to it, but this sensation was different and had developed recently just during the ride. When we stopped at a restaurant, I discovered that the "body" of the trike, the blocky structure covering the engine and surrounding the rear seat, would bounce independent of the suspension. I started bouncing it gently and observing where the flex was, fearing that some bump in the road had broken a weld or something equally nasty. I also observed that an existing crack in the left fender had worsened and during this bouncing, I could see why. Once I saw what the problem was, I got that sinking feeling, the one you get when you know what's wrong and that it's your own fault.

Remember back on October 7th, when I was working on replacing the throwout bearing, I said "Then there was the extraneous piece of metal that used to hold up something long gone by bolting it to the engine, but now served only to keep the engine and transaxle loosely connected to one another once all the bolts were removed"?

It turns out that a sloppy weld on a piece that *looks* like its supported elsewhere doesn't necessarily mean the piece is unused. Turns out that it was an only slightly extraneous piece of metal supporting much of the weight of the body of the trike. Add to that a full gas tank, fill up the side boxes and strap on some luggage, and the now-known-to-be-cantilevered body puts too much stress on the 3/4" square tubing frame that is welded here and there somewhat randomly.

Also now apparent was that the bottom of the oil cooler, having been mounted on said bouncy body, was damaged by slamming down on to the relatively immovable engine. Ah, I see said the truly blind man....

So, while munching and playing with Gabby's new Nuvi, I formed a plan to brace the thing up so that the trip home would not result in any permanent damage. It took less than $8 worth of hardware from Lowes and the borrowing of cordless drill services from a Lowes employee who had been putting on some kind of cabinetry demonstration.

I took two 12" long perforated angle pieces and braced between the top engine-transaxle bolts and the cross piece in the body. It's probably more solid now than it's ever been, and these are removable.

We got home without further incident, at least if you don't count our headset batteries going dead and timing that took us by Texas Motor Speedway shortly after the races let out. We lost about an hour in that traffic.

Dragon Trike work to get underway tonight

I haven't done an update in a while. Several things to report...

Intermittent rain and other issues kept me from picking up the body until last Thursday. I used a purpose built trailer (the trike itself) to tow the body home. We took some pictures of it before I left Joe's. Since it was still threatening more rain and possible hail, I took it directly to the BTW clubhouse.

There was a BTW Halloween party Saturday night at the clubhouse and everyone was just gushing over the trike. Not without plenty of suggestions, but nobody hated the paint :)

Before I continue with the Dragon Trike, I have a brief Yellow Trike update.

I have mounted (uglyly [... is that a word?]) the VDO speedometer sensor and the speedo works wonderfully now.
It does only one thing that is slightly odd, and I fully understand why it does this. As you are rolling slowly up to a traffic light or other such stop, then suddenly stop, for about a second, it continues to indicate that you're moving at 3mph or whatever. With only 5 magnets to count at 3mph, it expects 0.32 seconds between pulses and after you stop, it has to make sure you're not still rolling before it recalculates your speed to zero.

In any case, speed and distance correlate very well with GPS measurements and I pronounce it done. Well, I will probably make a nice bracket for the sensor and the instrument itself has a springy mount that makes it move a lot on the road, but those are minor issues.

Back to the Dragon.... There are basically 3 things that need to happen for it to be on the road by my short term goal of December 12th.

1. The engine, which hasn't run since I put all the bling on it, needs to run. That includes building and installing the throttle cable. It may also include troubleshooting an air leak, for it had symptoms that I now recognize before I took the engine apart for the afore mentioned blinging.

2. The wiring, which includes all lighting and the new "everything" speedo, needs to be done. Lighting includes finding some way have front signals without drilling the body.

3. The front wheel and especially the front tire are not very safe. The tire is aged and cracked, though it does seem to hold air pretty well. The rim is nearly rusted through in a couple of spots.

4. Yeah, I said three, but I forgot that it needs an inspection, too.

That's what's needed to merely get it ON the road. I really want to see if I can get it running EFI by then. Um, that's 39 days. It's not impossible. What it changes, however, is that EFI adds more engine and wiring work. See the EFI blog for more details on that.

There is a cubic buttload of stuff that also has to be done, preferably before December 12, but I doubt I can get it all that soon. Stuff like upholstery, fenders, footpegs or floorboard, baja cage and hitch, torpedos, navigational deflectors and other such goodies. A few more decorative bits like paint the inside of the wheel spokes and rechrome the handlebars. I suspect wheelie bars will be more of a requirement than an option at some point in the future.

Busy Wednesday

The VDO speedometer sensor arrived today. Even though the dimensions are listed, it still looks bigger than I expected and just as ugly as expected. For reasons of expediency, I will still put it on the front wheel, but I may try to move it to a back wheel at some point to hide it.

The Acewell speedometer for the dragon trike also arrived today, and it is smaller than expected. It should mount well on the handlebar, though the cable may be too short to hide the connectors. There appears to be 14 conductors coming out of it; luckily they are small wires.

Finally, I go to Joe's to pick up the dragon body today!

Speedometer and nose cone

Rather than use the drill again, I wound this coil by hand. It's not necessarily better. I was at home and didn't want to go to the clubhouse that night. :)

Once wound and connectorized, I put the meter on it and it read 22 ohms. The other was 14 ohms, so this one really only has 57% more turns. I was hoping on doubling it.

I installed and tested it. It works *better* but still not right. Now I only have to get it to about 20 MPH before it indicates. I didn't have my GPS with me to test for the actual speed, but it feels about right.

Consequently, I ordered the actual VDO pickup coil from eGauges. It should be here next week. I will need to make a bracket for it, but it should be pretty simple, little more than a flat with two holes in it.

Speaking of speedometers and things gaugey, I ordered the Acewell speedo that I want to use for the dragon trike. It has most, if not all, of the instrumentation I will need. It shows speed and mileage, engine RPM and fuel level in addition to indicator lights for left and right turn, oil, neutral, highbeam and "trouble", though I will probably use the neutral light for the alternator and trouble light for MegaSquirt. It also has some other cool features like two trip odometers, average and max speed memory, a clock and ride timer. By having all that in one unit, I hope to mount it on the handlebars and avoid cutting any holes in the fiberglass, but I digress....

I replaced the transaxle nose cone on the yellow trike last Friday night.

Per Doug at Qualitat's suggestion, I used high temp silicone to seal the nose cone and installed it on the transaxle with little trouble. As is often the case, things went downhill from there.

Long story short, we had the front transaxle mount for a '66 to '72 model and the frame is apparently a '62 to '65 model. The older mount has a smaller center post. I thought the old mount was completely trashed but when I looked closer, it was somewhat trashed, but was also the newer model that had been modified to fit the older frame. So, I did the same modification, else I would have to wait until the next day to buy another one.

Since the nose cone has the mounting hole for the back up light switch, I opted to install the switch and will at some point wire it up. Besides backup lights, I think a dashboard 'reverse' indicator would be neat.

So, the new nosecone tightened up the shifter even more. The only thing left that could do much more would be to replace the hockey stick. It's a little worn where it goes through the nosecone, but the gearshift works better now than it did and it was already acceptable. I will say that, if the transaxle has to come out for something else *anyway*, maybe I'll replace it then.

The new front mount tightened up the transaxle and stopped the disturbing and potentially damaging banging of the nose cone to the frame during rough shifts and on rough roads. Every little thing like this that we fix makes it rattle less and tightens up the feel and generally improves the driving experience.

Gabby was planning to take it to work tonight. I have not yet received an email verifying whether or not she did, but she most likely did. It will be her first time to do more than just run up and down the street or around a parking lot with it.

Yellow Trike Speedometer and Starter

Speedometer:

I installed the VDO speedometer with a 4 pin weatherpack connector. I was concerned about having to splice into power and ground for it, but I just used the wiring for the old speedo's lights. Power and ground right there. Internally, I wired the lights and speedo power together.

I wound my own pickup coil. Using a drill mounted in a vice to roll the form, I first used the entire 200 foot roll of 30ga magnet wire, but where I was originally going to place it, it was going to be too long. After I unrolled it (yes, as clumsy as it sounds), I wound a new coil with the same wire that was really a nicer coil, but smaller. I then essentially soaked it in black spray paint for both weather resistance and to stabilize it against vibration and spun it slowly in the drill under the heat of a 250W work light to dry.

Once I had it in hand, I discovered a much more elegant place to mount it, using one of the front brake caliper mounting holes. This hole is in near perfect alignment with the 5 bolts that hold the hub and spokes of the wheel together. I mounted 5 rare earth magnets to the bolt heads with 3M mounting tape and mounted the coil with about a 3/32" gap between the bolt head on the coil and the magnets.

I put the meter on the coil. It reads 14 ohms. When I spin the wheel manually, I see the pulses, but they seem smaller than I would expect.

I did a little math to figure out how many pulses per mile this setup would provide. Divide the wheel and tire circumference (7 feet even in this case) into 5280 to get how many wheel rotations are in a mile, 754.3, then multiply that by 5 magnet pulses per rotation to get 3771. Following the directions for manual calibration of the speedometer, I set it to 3770. The speedo always forces the last digit to a zero. Shrug.

So, I had the front end up on the jack with the speedometer powered up and spun the front wheel.

Nothing. I spun it as hard I could and still nothing.

I wasn't completely surprised, considering the small signal from the coil.

I did find accidentally, while testing the timing on the road, I looked down an the speedometer was indicating! Turns out my coil is too small and doesn't provide a large enough signal to count at low speeds. Above about 40 mph and it works great. I tried using an audio transformer connected in reverse to boost the voltage a bit, but it doesn't work at all then.

I have the stuff and dimensions to wind a new coil. I expect it to be about 25-30 ohms and probably double or more the signal.

If *that* doesn't work, ok, I'll *buy* a VDO pickup....

The entire speedometer assembly is fairly mobil in operation. I made a brace to help hold the dashboard still, but it turns out that much of the speedometer movement is in the speedo's own mounting bracket. I'll think of something.

More coil details tomorrow.

Starter:

The verdict is in. I'm pretty sure that the starter flakiness was due to overloading the starter button contacts and thus eventually burning the switch out. I got a grounding type button and rewired everything with a relay instead of direct and it did not fail in 30 start.

I know that the original starter needed replacing, but I'm not so sure the 2nd one did.

Paint!

Yesterday, Bondo Joe called and told me that, while it wasn't ready to pick up yet, the paint was done on my trike body.

Went there at lunch today and took a couple of cellphone pix. They didn't come out great, but....



This pic does almost NOTHING to convey just how incredible it looks in person, and this is with it covered in dust from sanding and buffing....

Even with the dust, you can see my wife reflected in the surface of this pic where I was trying to see some of the details of the scales...

The Flat Spot is Banished!

Monday evening, I picked up a warranty replacement starter with no quibbles and installed it with no difficulties. So far, so good. It has not yet failed to crank, though it's only been used a couple dozen times thus far.

I am not an expert, but I think I have done enough reading and comprehension at this point to understand ignition advance better than I ever have before, even through the EFI conversion on Buzz.

In the extreme short version, the spark needs to happen at the right time based on a large number of engine operating factors. With some engine applications, a lot of these factors can be ignored, or maybe more accurately, considered to be static. It's the changing parameters that make good ignition hard to do.

The biggest factors are engine load, meaning the work that the engine is *expected* to do at any given instant, and RPM. How the ignition system needs to respond to these two factors is somewhat affected by engine and air temperature, compression ratio, fuel quality, combustion chamber geometry, ignition spark energy, even intake tract length and probably a thousand other little factors, many of which can be taken as constants in any given engine. For example, your compression ratio is not expected to change during normal engine operation.

The reason the ignition timing has to change is because the burning fuel mixture contained within the cylinders tends to burn at about the same speed regardless of the engine's RPM. In order to extract power efficiently, the spark has to be timed such that the fuel burns and produces peak pressure just as the piston begins to travel downward on the power stroke, just after TDC (Top Dead Center, which might be a good name for a band). If the spark is too soon, pressures build dangerously fast and you get knocking, overheating, melted pistons, etc. If it's too late, you miss out on much of the available power and greatly increase the amount of unburned fuel that goes out the exhaust.

Timing is expressed in degrees relative to TDC. Because of the nature of the engine and the time it takes for the fuel to burn, timing adjustments are almost universally towards the advance, so that the spark occurs before TDC. If either the load (throttle opening, really) or RPM or both go up, the spark needs to happen earlier so that the burning fuel can catch up with the moving pistons.

With an old school ignition system with mechanical points and distributor, this advance is generally introduced by moving the points in a limited arc around the distributor shaft. This is usually done with a piston or diaphragm connected to a vacuum source (not just any vacuum source will do; see below), centrifugally with weights and springs that respond to the distributor RPM or some combination of the two.

The ubiquitous Bosch '009' distributor, an extremely popular replacement unit on VW engines, uses the centrifugal method and thus responds only to engine RPM. The weights and springs combine to provide an advance curve that generally runs from about 5 to 30 degrees. The weights and springs can be changed out to tune the curve and the maximum advance somewhat, but generally, you set the distributor to the maximum advance appropriate for your engine, usually around 30 degrees, and the rest of the advance curve lands where it lands. With some carburetor combinations, this results in a notorious "flat spot" off idle. The driver opens the throttle needing more power, and the small amount of advance provided at low RPM isn't enough to to make the engine respond quickly. Since the fuel delivered by a carburetor is very dependent on the volume of air flowing through it, the open throttle combined with the as yet low air flow though the carburetor makes the mixture rather lean and the engine stumbles. The resulting "flat spot" can range from minor annoyance to deathtrap, depending on severity. Proper setting of the accelerator pump, which squirts a bit of extra fuel down the carburetor throat based on the rate the throttle is opening, can go a long way towards compensating for much of the flat spot, though it really just masks the actual problem, too little ignition advance.

A distributor equipped with a vacuum advance system can be much more responsive to engine load. This vacuum signal is provided from small holes placed very carefully at specific places in the carburetor throat. Generally, they are placed very near the throttle butterfly, usually just above it. By placing it so, when the throttle is closed, there is little or so vacuum on the advance mechanism, so no little or ignition advance. When the throttle is opened, especially at a moderate to high opening rate, a relatively strong vacuum is presented to the advance and the engine responds much quicker to the open throttle.

There are distributors that combine vacuum and centrifugal in one unit, allowing the engine to respond quickly to throttle changes, but letting engine RPM dictate the total advance.

With the yellow trike, the flat spot was about the middle of the range, more frustrating that anything else. It was pretty easy to kill the engine, especially when the new foot controls were just installed and nobody was used to them yet. It was also pretty easy to get unintended (and generally unwelcome) wheelies, especially if trying to make some quick maneuver such as a U-turn, as I tended to rev the engine pretty high to avoid killing it and would end uppartly dumping the clutch while wrenching away on the bars, working the throttle, holding your feet up on the clutch and brake, etc.

As mentioned in a previous post, I got a vacuum advance distributor (which may be vacuum and centrifugal; there was no documentation provided and I have not had cause to disassembled it enough to see) in an attempt to tame the flat spot. At first, it did not seem to make a bit of difference in how the engine ran. This made me crank up the research as to why. The most important point I discovered (and this should be intuitive) is that not all vacuum distributor designs respond the same to the vacuum and not all carburetors provide the same vacuum signal.

I picked up a vacuum gauge and kind of plotted the vacuum signals from each of the ports on the Brosol H30/31 carburetor and the response of the generic distributor to an applied vacuum.

On the distributor, I used a handy vacuum pump that I had hanging around (my mouth) and watched the gauge and the advance plate while applying various degrees of vacuum. The plate begins to move at 4-5 in Hg and has moved through it's range by about 15 in Hg. As verified later with a timing light, this plate movement represents about 30 of degrees advance adjustment.

I checked all 4 vacuum ports on the carburetor. Here is a pic of someone elses (dirty) H30/31 carb with the ports marked with the results of my testing. I simply didn't have a suitable pic of my own.

The port on the left side of the carb, the one that normally connects to the vacuum advance, provides a signal that responds appropriately to the throttle, but is nowhere near strong enough to move the mechanism on the distributor. The next one had a very strong signal with the throttle closed and dropped with throttle opening, pretty much the opposite of what we need. The third port had no measurable vacuum at all. Finally, the fourth port, the original purpose for which I cannot venture more than a guess, provides a strong enough signal.

With idle timing set at 7-10 degrees BTDC, the engine revs much better and the distributor provides advance to about 40 degrees when reving. The engine definitely worked better but the flat spot was only reduced, not eliminated.

I observed the operation of the accelerator pump and concluded that it was probably set too light. I tried for a bit to get to the adjusting nut, but where it is placed, it was fairly easy to see and nearly impossible to touch, especially with enough force to adjust it. While it's not conducive to tuning and tweaking, I decide that I would need to remove the carburetor to adjust the accelerator pump, so I set about that simple task. The gasket would need replacing, which would involve a trip to the parts store, but this thing needed adjusting. I'm glad I removed the carburetor because it revealed what I think was probably the single biggest contributor to a host of problems.

The throttle was very stiff, stiff enough that my forearm and hand ached from the road trip last weekend. The throttle did not return to closed very well, either. This helped obscure the flat spot issue to a large degree by keeping the revs up, but when I tweaked with the throttle return spring and was able to get it to return better, the cost was an even stiffer throttle.

Well, once the carb was off the engine and I was trying to adjust the accelerator pump, it became apparent that the accelerator pump linkage was the source of this stiffness. It required substantial effort to push the pump lever and it dragged down the spring's attempt to close the throttle.

I carefully removed the pump diaphragm from the carburetor and found that the pump arm did not move freely. I drove the pin out and discovered where the problems were. I bent the top arm a bit, reamed the pivot holes open a bit, filed the flat part of the pivot a little thinner then reassembled and oiled it. It now moves very freely. I also maximized the pump stroke to deliver a bigger shot of fuel. I also installed another spring that I had for throttle return, though I need to experiment to see if it's really any lighter than the stock spring.

The result was just short of magical. Throttle effort is reduced to maybe a little stiffer than a motorcycle. Reving at a halt is quick and has a very strong, hot roddy sound. If you REALLY try, you can just detect a tiny stumble if you are rolling at idle and slam the throttle open. You have to try carefully because doing that behavior will definitely get you a little bit of front wheel air, about 2" up for a couple of feet if my estimate is good.

I rode up and down the street quite a bit, hard and fast, light and easy and I could not trip it up.

The extra throttle response definitely highlights that the front transaxle mount has got to go. The nose cone clanks against the frame member underneath it. That will definitely lead to Bad Things (tm) if allowed to continue. Likewise, the headlight really needs to be mounted better and higher because the fender hits it when you brake hard and the chassis pitches forward a bit and especially when you land hard from the high wheelies which are easier and more controllable now. [did I write that out loud?]

Tonight, I hope to work on getting the VDO speedometer working electrically, which will involve running a wire from the front to the rear. I think I may add some wire from the fuse panel to offload some of the draw on the main ignition switch fuse and add a starter relay. I have blown that fuse a few times with the starter solenoid. I am expecting a mounting cup for the speedometer to be delivered tomorrow, so getting the wiring done tonight would be great.

The Road Home

The weather turned out to never clear up. We decided Sunday morning that we'd rather take a meandering way home instead of adding a long return trip from Fredericksburg. Next time. We took a couple of small side trips, decided against a couple others and neglected to make a shopping stop we'd planned to make. When we got home, we had time to unload everything from both trikes and go inside to relax before it started raining. Perfect timing. Unlike the engine...

The starter gave me no trouble first thing in the morning at the hotel, but it did surprise me a couple times during the day. For example, I killed the engine a time or two at a light or in some other traffic situation and it chose then to just go clunk instead of turning over. Continued stabbing at it was generally successful and it would start perfectly when the starter would finally turn the motor. When we were nearly home and stopped for a late lunch, it wouldn't start in the parking lot until I'd pounded on the solenoid a bit.

The Autozone starter has a lifetime warranty, so I don't expect any difficulties in exchanging it, beyond the minor pain of changing it out. Way easier than on a car.

The other problem I had may turn out to be my own fault, at least partly. During the course of the weekend, especially on Sunday, the engine got worse about hesitating at takeoff, which contributed to the afore mentioned killing at stoplights. It got to where I would keep it reved to around 2000 RPM at stops.

As Toni napped on the couch last night, I did a lot of vacuum advance distributor and carburetor selection research on the internet. Lots of good data there, if you have the patience to wade through the irrelevant, or at least unrelated, stuff around it.

For the big picture, I think it comes down to this. The Solex H30/31 carburetor provides a vacuum advance signal, but it is a fairly weak signal, intended for the stock vacuum advance distributor with it's large vacuum dashpot. The distributor I have has a smaller dashpot and is probably intended for the 34PICT carburetor, which provides a stronger vacuum advance signal. I also have learned authoritatively which port the advance is supposed to connect to. Armed with these bits and without the performance anxiety of a crew of lookers-on, I will see if I can make this combination work. The new carburetor started and idled nearly perfectly out of the box, so I have done no adjustment on it at all. I will adjust it as best I can with either the new distributor with no vacuum attached or if I must, with the 009 reinstalled. If after that I still can't get the vacuum advance to work correctly, I will see if there is any change I can do to the distributor, maybe change a spring or something of that nature. Finally, I will replace it with the $160 unit from aircooled.net that is made specifically for the H30/31 carb.

In any case, it occurred to me this morning that I don't remember ever tightening the clamp on the distributor. I remember looking for my 10mm socket for that reason, but I don't remember actually doing it. In adjusting the throttle cable a time or two, I had to remove the distributor cap and may well have moved the distributor. Besides, an unclamped distributor is subject to movement just from being on a running engine.

So, at lunch, I checked it. Sure enough, it's not clamped down.

The other issue was the speedometer. The cable was squeaking Friday night. I oiled it Friday night and it was quiet Saturday, but still apparently broke at some point. I had my GPS bungied to the tank, partly because I wanted to check the speedo against it. After the speedo died, I just bungied the GPS to the face of the speedo and used it all weekend. While I probably can just replace the speedo cable, we have a new VDO electronic speedometer that I picked up intending to use on the Harley trike before I succumbed and ordered the actual replacement Harley speedo.

Electrically, the VDO speedometer is going to be trivial to install. A pickup coil that I can probably wind myself and a few magnets attached somewhere, probably one of the rear wheels, a little geometry and programming and it should come up easily. The trickier bit will be mounting it. I found some VDO gauge mounting cups, the back of which is not 100% water proof, but I'm sure can seal it well enough and it will otherwise work and look really good.

Road Trip!

Due to interruptions, it took until Friday night to finish getting the yellow trike road worthy once more.

One of those interruptions was a dead starter. Luckily, I had the troubleshooting braintrust of fellow BTW members at the clubhouse, for our monthly meeting had just ended and everyone wanted to see, point and contemplate. Zipped down to Autozone for a replacement starter, back to the clubhouse to install it and zowie, does it spin over better.

Finished the last bits of it about 1AM and took it home for the night.

We wanted to go to Fredericksburg, but were getting such a late start, that we decided to just head south out of the metroplex and go as far as we felt like going. Once we got to Stephenville, it didn't seem all that far to Brownwood and from Brownwood, not all that far to Fredericksburg. I am posting this from a hotel room in Brownwood.

We will decide in the morning whether we want to continue to Fredericksburg, or perhaps more importantly, whether we want to trek all the way home from Fredericksburg tomorrow afternoon.

The trike has done well with a couple of exceptions. The flat spot that the distributor was supposed to improve is slightly better, but far from gone. Similarly, and likely related, rather than the nice low idle we've been enjoying, it seems to want to idle at about 2000 RPM. The throttle appears to not be returning well. At this point, I suspect it has something to do with my running the throttle cable in at a lower angle in an attempt to reduce throttle effort.

The air shocks were deflated to ease their removal (actually, the removal of the baja cage) and until we were underway it didn't occur to me that a few issues were symptoms of the ride height being too low. I didn't have a gauge handy, but I zipped a bit of air in there, enough to raise the already high rear end another inch or so. It went back to riding quietly. Once in Brownwood, we wanted to seek out a place for dinner. We decided to go two up on the trike. With just Toni's added weight, it got all kinds of squirrely, most disturbingly a lurchy kind of sway. Circled back around to the hotel and with her off it, it settled right back down. It didn't do that with her up there when we rode around the neighborhood on it the Friday we were leaving for Turner Falls.

Finally, we found good food and finished eating. When we ready to leave, the trike cranked twice (they are a bit cold natured, ya know), but then stopped cranking. The solenoid was clicking, but the motor was not turning.

Long story short, I whacked on the solenoid a few times and next time, it stared fine. We'll see about the morning.

Clutch trauma

Ok, I think I see what happened.

Before I could get to the clutch, I had to remove the baja cage. While I appreciate the desire to mount the cage securely, they had welded a part that, for a street vehicle, I think I would have bolted. Removing the cage meant removing both of the monster bolts which hold the main engine/transaxle support to the frame. Of course, in my naivete, I removed the first and was partway through removing the second before I realized that I was in the process of crushing my arms under the combined weight of the engine and transaxle. Luckily, I did realize it in time :)

Furthermore, I am spoiled to the extremely easy access that my trike affords to the four bolts holding the engine and transaxle together. The bodywork on the yellow trike definitely impedes access to these bolts.

Then there was the extraneous piece of metal that used to hold up something long gone by bolting it to the engine, but now served only to keep the engine and transaxle loosely connected to one another once all the bolts were removed.

You may recall, though I doubt it, that this post is about the clutch.

I think the real problem was adjustment. I had the clutch arm adjusted so far down, to make it disengage easily, that when I rested my foot on the clutch at a stop, it pushed the throwout bearing WAY too far. Repeated sojourns into this extreme position eventually wrenched the spring clip off one pin of the bearing, which then dangled from the remaining pin and ceased to engage correctly. The spring clip can be seen resting comfortably at the bottom of the bell housing.

Examining the cross shaft while still installed, the ends of the fork arms (fingers?) appeared to be bent, which would further indicate that the resting weight of my size 13's is beyond the design limits of the clutch system. Once I had the cross shaft out, however, the semi-circular cuts that mate with the pins on the bearing do not appear to be distorted, which I would have expected if the forks were bent.

So, since I was in there, I replaced the cross shaft, cross shaft bushings, the bearing itself and the spring clips. The new cross shaft has wider fingers, so while the old ones did not bend, the new one almost certainly wont. On the other hand, the spring clips are of a slightly different design, with a full turn of wire at the spring end. They are substantially stronger than the simpler U-shaped springs. This concerns me slightly in that if, despite my efforts, the clutch is still not adjusted like it needs to be, the wider fork fingers might wrench off the spring clips again because the clips are too stiff to just spring out and back. Shrug. I'll find out soon enough.

It seems that the slave cylinder will "pump up" somewhat, regardless of the amount of bleeding I've done. I must conclude that it is a design characteristic. If I adjust the clutch such that it operates correctly with one step on the pedal, I run the risk of a second step, as could very well happen in normal driving, could potentially pump it up far enough to exceed the physical limits of the throwout bearing. The main saving grace is that the new components seem to engage the clutch earlier in the step with the adjustment set almost to mininum, giving it more room without crashing. Only driving it for a while will truly tell.

While the engine was out of the way, I replaced the badly worn transaxle mounts. I also cut the welds on the lower tubes of the baja cage so that it can be installed and removed without pulling those big hairy bolts which hold pretty much the entire drive train to the frame.

I took the opportunity to add a connector to the ignition and oil pressure wires and an inline fuel valve, all which will allow the engine to be removed more easily in the future.

Finally, while the engine was out, I rerouted the throttle cable from the original location (red arrow) to a new, lower location (green arrow) in an attempt to achieve a better pull angle on the carb and thus a lighter effort at the hand throttle. Throttle effort is slightly lighter, though less so than I'd hoped for.

I picked up a vacuum advance distributor today. I hope to install it tomorrow evening as well as reinstall the baja cage and thus the shocks.

That should put it back on the road.

Sad day in mudville

Well, ok, the rains came late enough to not really affect much, and even then it was not any kind of flood, but how can I pass up a great title like that?

There was a bit of disappointment. We got up Saturday morning and met up with Roundman, planning for breakfast. With Toni on Gilbert and me on the as yet unamed* yellow trike, we went from the hotel into Davis proper for breakfast, then back to the hotel, then on to Turner Falls Park. As we approached the entrance, I was having trouble downshifting. Once I was stopped, I realized that the clutch was not disengaging and that it felt wrong, with no "step" between free play and actually pushing against the clutch.

While looking at the cylinder and working the pedal, the hydraulic line popped out of the fitting on the clutch master cylinder. When working on the clutch bracket Thursday night, the slave cylinder end came loose. While I attributed both breaches to installation error, it is apparently fairly common. I got more than a couple of suggestions that I should change the lines to steel because the plastic, while the material can handle the pressure, is subject to enough distortion that it can slide out of a compression fitting. Changing them to steel will not be particularly difficult, requiring only that I bend the tubing and add a flexible piece for the clutch slave cylinder.

In any case, the problem appears to be related to the throwout bearing and/or the cross shaft that actuates it. While the actual replacement of those parts is not particularly difficult, it *does* require pulling out the engine and while it's out, we may as well clean/paint/replace all the tins, etc.

As for the rest of the trike-in, I proudly rode bi*&h with no loss of manhood and we towed the yellow one around behind my truck for those who wanted to see it.

While we missed taking a lot of pictures, at least we took a few, mostly of trikes that caught our interest for one reason or another.

We dropped the trike off at the clubhouse last night and are definitely planning to be there tonight to tear into it. Toni may even get a throwout bearing and cross shaft today. They should usually be replaced any time they are exposed, just because they are cheap parts that are hard to get to.

* concerning a name, one that we really hope doesn't catch on occurred to me. "Sponge Bob Square Trike"

On the road

It's been a couple of days. Working too hard on the trike to update the page!

In the last couple of days, we got the thing back on the road. In fact, I am updating this blog from an Oklahoma hotel room.

We didn't *ride* up here, though. Just enough doubt to not want to finish a refurb this major then just get on the highway with crossed fingers. We towed it up here and will ride around the area with all the other trikers at Turner Falls :)

Biggest adventure was last night. About 4:30 or so, I was putting the clutch slave cylinder back on and noticed that when working the clutch, the casting that the cylinder bracket is hooked to was flexing several millimeters. I figured it wouldn't last long like that, so I repositioned the bracket to pull at a different angle. Apparently, that was a bad idea because about the third time, the casting broke off.

Long story short, my first bracket was not holding up and was eventually scrapped and remade. This one appears to be holding.

Otherwise, all the hit list has been cleared and a few things added along the way.

I have been up till 3AM for 5 days in a row and have an opportunity to be in bed before midnight, so I'm going to end this update. I promise to provide a better update later....

Wow, another good day's work

The rules of the place where the BTW clubhouse is hosted prevent us from doing certain "obvious" work during the day, but we are able to do quiet time work. We arrived about 2PM and left about 2AM.

We had a todo list and knocked these items off it:

degrunge tranny and frame
paint frame
paint trim
make dashboard
license plate light
alternator light
oil light (wiring done, but switch is bad; need to replace)
finish shifter
breather hose
spark plug wire keeper
handlebar and mirrors
first clear coat (more about this shortly)

There is still a substantial list, but I'm fairly confident it's a one-day list.

As for the first clear coat, we're using Duplicolor "Paint Shop" ready to spray paint, which greatly simplifies things for the do-it-yourselfer. No need to thin it, almost no need to strain it, but you should anyway. It cleans up with acetone. All in all, easy to use.

They also have a clear with prismatic sparkles in it. It looks great over the yellow, but it looks stunning over black!

We're planning to shoot a couple coats of plain clear over it for depth, but wow! It looks pretty nice like it is.

Lick O' Paint

We accomplished quite a lot today. In short, got the pedals on and operational and got a first coat of paint on 95% of the trike.

The pedals went extremely well. The brakes were even easy to bleed. The bad news, and it's pretty minor, is that upon reflection, I don't think the wheel will clear the fittings on the pedals in the event of a hard turn while braking, so I will need to move them. It's just a matter of drilling 4 news holes.

The paint was really an all day affair that Toni was working on before I finished the pedals and could join in. In no particular order, we masked off large portions of the trike, removed the fuel tank, cleaned a LOT of surface with acetone, finished painting the front wheel, painted the 'faux' tank and the body of the trike. It will definitely all need another coat and we ran out, so we'll have to buy another can.

Diversions

Just about the the first thing that happened yesterday was that the driver side power lock actuator on my wife's truck jammed. I spent about an hour getting it out, figuring out how it works and removing a gear to allow at least the key lock to work. Today's projects will include securing a replacement and installing it. I found one at a wrecking yard for $40, about half the price of a new one.

After laying out and drilling for the pedals (the weights are soft cast iron and thus drilled very easily), we needed longer bolts. It was lunch time anyway, so we closed up shop, got lunch, bolts and matting to cut for the floor, all of which took a couple of hours.

We got a really good start on painting, especially the troublesome front wheel. The reusable aerosol can from Harbor Freight works pretty good for paint, so long as it's thin enough. The spray head tends to sputter pretty badly when the air pressure begins to drop off, but it's easy enough to keep it filled up.

I just barely got going on the pedals when a good friend called needing a rescue for the flat rear tire on his Suzuki M109. It's a huge bike with a wide tubeless tire on the back and the bead had come unsealed, so there is no getting it to air back up so long as the bike is sitting on it.

We cleaned up the shop and I headed to Dallas with a trailer and picked him up, about a 3 hour adventure. It never fails to warm my heart to see someone who REALLY appreciates what you're doing for them. My karma is balanced.

Speaking of diversions, I have been gathering some parts for the eventual EFI of my trike. The only thing left is a 36-1 trigger wheel. I think I have the plan for mounting one on a stock VW pulley, of which I now have at least a couple. This sort of mounting looks easy enough to do without a lathe. According to the article, this trigger wheel came from a Taurus. If time permits this week, I may drop by the local pull-a-part and see if I can find a suitable trigger wheel.

All that's left after than is the manifold and all the work.

Since when last it ran, my trike engine was exhibiting symptoms similar to the yellow trike, I think I will see if the same thing seems to be happening with it, a leak around the throttle shaft in the carburetor. If so, I will borrow the new carb from the yellow trike and get the rest of my engine tuned and operational before I attempt the conversion, but I see no reason to spend the money on a new carburetor for my trike when the plan all along has been to run EFI and almost all the the major parts are in hand.

Busy Update

A lot has happened since the last update on the as-yet-unnamed Yellow Trike.

On the way home that afternoon, I picked up the control switch from Mid-Cities. It appeared very solid and had nice long leads.

That evening, I had enough of a break in the rain to allow me to rearrange the driveway so that I had the trike under the 10x20 garage tent that we use to expand the driveway. When the rain really came down, I still got soaked with a lot of mist, but at least I was out of the direct precipitation, so I could continue to work even in the weather. It was still pretty miserable. :)

Just about the first thing, I worked the throttle a couple of times, gauging how much work it was going to take to get throttle effort down to a more reasonable level. As I was doing that, smoke suddenly started emitting from all along the frame tube and another pocket of smoke came from the battery area. My first thought was to turn off the key. Um, I hadn't turned on the key. So, the only other electrical control was the headlight switch, so I toggled it a time or two. The smoke stopped, but as I suspected, it had nothing to do with the light switch.

The previous owner had a cigarette lighter socket on the left side of the dashboard. It turns out that when I moved the handlebar, working the throttle, the wire feeding the lighter socket had gotten pinched between the triple tree and the dashboard, shorting to the dashboard. Whether the 18g speaker wire powering the socket burned in half somewhere along its length or if my panicky gyrations had relieved the short, I don't know, but the wire was now good and melty.

I should probably mention at this point that, as some builders will do, EVERYTHING on the trike except for the starter is powered from the same power lead going through a 30A self-resetting circuit breaker. Even doubled up 18ga will yield before a 30A breaker does.

After that little adventure, I tested everything else... well, everything that had previously been working... and found that no other damage was done. I had a moment's panic when steam formed off the exhaust. Looked a little too much like smoke :)

So, now began the task of wiring up some lights to the new switch. Of course, that meant decoding the existing wiring.

The wiring was essentially functional, and since people I know know the previous owner, I will say only that I don't think automotive wiring was their first language. To their credit, the trike is several years old and they rode it all over the country for most of those years, so it couldn't be TOO out of whack. There appears to have been a few repairs done over those years, wiring spliced and respliced, often with what was apparently the wire on hand. There was THHN insulated 12ga spliced to PVC insulated 14ga, using crimp connectors that had seen inside the jaws of a pair of vise-grips. Though I was under the gun to get the trike inspected the next day, I determined pretty early that I would be rewiring the whole thing.

The switch pod is pretty cool. It's designed to help make a dirt bike street legal and most features are to that end. It has a parking light/headlight switch that actually has an off position. According to the installation sheet, this switch is intended to serve as the main switch in the absence of a keyswitch and pretty much everything depends on this switch being on. It also has a press-to-cancel turn signal switch, a horn button, a kill switch and a blue high-beam indicator LED.

It took till late in the evening, but I got it in place and as operational as I could. The front signal lights were pretty pitiful, so Saturday morning, we got some nice little lights from Mid-Cities and I returned and finished up the wiring and took it to be inspected.

Our usual inspector was out of motorcycle stickers, so we had to find an alternate. Now, inspections are a minimalist affair in Texas, pretty much verifying you have insurance and that you aren't so stupid that you drop the bike. Consequently, it's pretty standard faire for a motorcycle to be inspected on a trailer or in the back of a pickup. This guy refused to do so, insisting that I ride it into his shop. First time EVER that's been an issue. When we told him that we'd never had to do that before, he said that the state requires it and those who don't are not following the proper procedure.

So, I get out in the rain, unhook the trike from the trailer, uturn on the side street and pull it around into his garage. After this is done, he begins the proper procedure for inspecting a motorcycle in Texas. This procedure *apparently* consists of not testing the brake lights, turn signals, headlights, horn... He doesn't test anything, but he fills in his paperwork and puts on a sticker.

I prefer to think that he just didn't want to get out in the rain. In any case, the trike was now legal. Probably.

We took gathered some general working supplies and tools and such and arranged to meet a keyholder at the BTW clubhouse where we could work on the thing under a roof with lighting and powertools.

First order of business, get the wiring stable.

Very quickly, I decided that stabilizing the existing wiring would likely result in years of psychological therapy, so it needed to be scrapped. It took several evenings, but in short, there is now a fuse panel, relays and terminal strip in one of the storage boxes. I found a Honda keyswitch in the club junkpile that fit the forks and had keys, so I was able to eliminate the dashboard. This put more wiring to front, but I was still able change the ugly frayed bundle of wiring into a nearly undetectable sheath that has far more circuits in it. The only existing wire left are leads coming out of lights and the distributor.

I started the trike on the new wiring at 11:57 one weekday night, barely meeting the goal of "finishing the wiring tonight".

Well, even so, it's not *quite* finished. The oil and alternator lights do not yet have a place on the as yet unmade instrument panel. The speedometer is mounted on it's original bracket, but the bracket has been flattened and cut to mount with the keyswitch. I will be making a replacement of this bracket with room for these and other indicator lights.

Some place in there, the newly covered seat came back. Almost immediately, we saw that it was not up to the usual standard of the shop doing the work. We took it back and had them tighten up the fit and generally just redo it. This time, it came back looking like it should.

The next big thing that needed attention was the engine. It was not obvious when we tested it out, but it would not idle when warm. In reading about idle problems with aircooled VW engines, it seemed like a vacuum leak. Long story short and $160 later, a new carburetor eliminated the leak around the old one's throttle shaft. Oh, my, what a difference it made! It's fun to drive now!

It's too bad, we now have a very clean yet utterly useless used H30/31 PICT carburetor. Somebody makes a throttle shaft bushing kit and I may experiment with that, for my trike has similar problems that were undiagnosed when last I played with it.

We also got quite a few engine dress up items like pulleys, distributor cap, wires, coil cover. At this point, we're going to wait to replace the tins, but they will one day be either replaced or painted.

Besides paint, the last *big* thing is the replacement of the pedals, which I'll be working on today. We got pedals with a 3/4" and a 7/8" master cylinders, nylon lines and a new clutch slave cylinder. I've already made a bracket for the slave cylinder, to eliminate the side loading inherent in mounting a cylinder in place of the stock cable. Installing the new pedals will involve cutting out the old foot throttle and obviously the old brake and clutch pedals and their linkages. The biggest problem I see, short term, is that I must drill through the old weights welded to the bottom of the floorboard in order to mount the new pedals.

Yellow Trike Work

The rains came just as I got home.

I spent the time inside putting the end on the throttle cable and assembling the throttle, well, assembly. I have just about decided that building my own cables, especially custom cables, is just way less frustrating than trying to shop for one that will work, so long as you have all the parts.

I got all my cable parts online from Flanders Motorcycle Accessories. Knowing the size cable, sheath and ends you need will help a lot. Use your digital caliper a lot when or you will be destined to either not have the right parts or order a bunch of stuff you don't need to get, hoping you get the right one. Even so, it takes a while to get good at remembering all the separate parts you really should order, like adjusters and boots and such. If I were doing full time building, I would try to stock a lot of parts to sort of standardize on, then I could build them as needed and just reorder stock instead of designing every element of a cable before ordering the parts for just that cable. I digress.

I'd hoped on being able to keep the foot throttle (easier for highway cruising) but I didn't have a good way to attach both devices to the carburetor. I have a couple of ideas that I can try later, but for now I'll just use a hand throttle only.

The throttle lever and spring on the carburetor is designed for foot-type forces and thus is hard to turn with the hand throttle. I will first try lightening the spring. If that doesn't work, I will reconfigure the throttle for better leverage. There is more than enough travel in the cable to allow for some adjustment room there.

After the throttle, I did some electrical reconnaissance. The dashboard switch that we were lead to believe was the turn signals, is in fact the headlight switch. The headlight works! All we had to do was turn it on.

The turn signal switch is an after market affair kludged into place on the left hand control, where the stock one might have been many years ago. The baton for this switch is broken off, which is why I never noticed it before. By shorting the proper terminals together, I verified that the turn signals do indeed work.

We ordered a left hand control switch from Mid-Cities Cycle, which is due in this afternoon. Assuming the weather holds, I should be able to install the switch tonight then take the trike down for inspection tomorrow and it will be completely street legal!

I should probably bleed the clutch to make it easier to drive, though... :)

Well, there is one caveat. The seat is out for recovering, so for the inspection, I will probably need to attach a temporary seat, rather than just sit it there. Our inspector is as lenient as one could hope, but he's not actually corrupt!

Nearly ready for paint

I called Bondo to ask what about painting Buzz with a single color and while I had him on the phone, we talked about the fenders and what he's having to do to make them pretty. Lots of filler, unfortunately, as I had expected. In any case, it's nearly ready for primer, which means the whole thing is nearly ready for paint...

As an added (though welcome) distraction, my wife just bought a home built VW trike. It's already road worthy with the exception of troubleshooting the turn signals and headlight. Get those done and get it inspected and it could be driven anytime.

Well, there is a major design flaw that makes it VERY difficult to drive the trike on an incline. The placement of the brake pedal and accelerator makes it impossible to feather the throttle to gently climb an incline, you know, like our driveway. These engines are notorious for a low torque idle (at least in my experience), so I can't feather the clutch without feathering the throttle and I can't get to the throttle without releasing the brake.

She would rather have a hand throttle anyway, though there's no reason we can't have both.

It's been hot and I've been busy

... but not busy on my trike.

However, stuff is happening.

I spoke with Bondo Joe a week or so ago. He's almost ready to paint the body. There were a LOT of stress cracks and pinholes and general agedness to contend with. I mentioned that I was planning on putting on some fenders and he has asked to have them so that he can paint them to match, which means I need to get that together right away!

I tried standard trailer fenders (from Northern Tool, though you can get them other places) but the widest they have is 9" and my tires are 11" wide, so it didn't look right.

After reviewing various methods of widening the fenders, I elected to do it by purchasing a third fender to use as donor material. I split that fender down the center, leaving two 4-1/2" half fenders. I split one of the other fenders at 7" then welded the 7" and 4-1/2" pieces to form a 11-1/2" fender. Blending this weld is turning out to be a lot more work than I had expected, but a couple more evenings and I'll have the fenders ready to deliver.

Well, there is one thing that must be done first. The fender mount on the left side was bent in the old collision. I need to straighten this bracket, which will be easy if I can get enough heat on the bends. I may not have enough torch to do that, so I may need to get some help with that. I need this repaired so I can have the fender drilled before it goes to Joe. If he puts any artwork ont the fenders, as opposed to single color, he'll know where the holes are going to be and can accomodate them.

hmmmmmm

Or, I may be able to secure mounting brackets on the bottom of the fenders to leave the tops pristine....

We'll see...

Wires, wires, everywhere!

Crankin', but not runnin'...

I have the engine wired up. It took several days, mostly because it was hard to dedicate much time to it.

After much waffling, I finally decided to put the fuse block on the frame downtube. It will be more accessible for troubleshooting there. Almost everywhere else within reach would be exposed engine heat.

I welded two tabs to the pipe and drilled them to fit the mounting holes in the fuse block. The fuses face downward so they will be visible from underneath once the body is back on.

For weeks, I've been spending time trying to draw up a wiring diagram, but I've started it over repeatedly. Just can't seem to get it together. I decided to kind of wire and draw simultaneously, based on a checklist of things that need wiring. For example, I need to wire everything on the engine that needs straight 12V when the key is on, so I list them: electric choke, fuel cuttoff solenoid, coil (through ballast resistor).

On the checklist, I set the wire colors, based arbitrarily on some concepts in my mind. For example, red is almost universally 12V power, but I like to think of things that always have power should be red. What's reddish, to indicate 12V, but not always? Ok, orange. :)

So, I cut a piece of orange wire long enough to go from the choke to the fuel solenoid. put my nice quick disconnect spade connector on one end, cut another orange wire for solenoid to the ballast resistor, then put both of those in a spade connector for the solenoid and a ring connector on the resistor end of that one. Then run a wire from there to the fuse block, cut to length, put another ring on the resistor end and for now leave the other end a little long, but cut it.

There is a stop-run switch on the handlebar, so I guess my orange wire should extend up there before plugging in to the fusebox. Of course, that requires that I decode the wiring to the switches and connectorize it. The connector itself takes a while, but when it's all wired up and ready to go, I meter it all to make sure they all work and then I finally draw out that bit of the diagram, remembering to include all the connections and connectors. I also try to draw the parts in a rough representation of where they are on the trike.

Ok, next wire.

So, you see, it takes a while.

The payoff is that by dedicating my thoughts and wiring retentiveness to the job one circuit at a time, with a big picture in mind, I think the trike will be well wired, reliable and easier to troubleshoot when something does crop up.

In the beginning...

I tend to go on. You have been warned.

For now, I will skip much of the detail about how I came to seek and acquire my VW trike, but some details will be handy at some point in the future.

I found this on a CraigsList ad in Houston. We went to see it on a Sunday and I returned the following Saturday to pay for it and pick it up.

The previous owner found it in the back lot of a pawn shop in this condition. I believe he said it had been there for 8 years. He had it himself for several years. He had another project he wanted to take on and he needed the garage back.

While he had it, he repaired a big crack in the fiberglass, shot a coat of primer on it, made the gas tank removable, put a good 1600 dual port engine on it and changed the tires out.

There was a battery and enough wiring for the engine to start and run, but that was all. The alternator was not even connected. I'm a wire guy, so I kinda like that I have a blank canvas for the wiring.

In short, as I received it, it only needed all the wiring, brakes and a front tire to be road worthy. Not pretty, but road worthy.

The brakes were not difficult to repair. All I needed was everything but the drums. Luckily for me, that was still a pretty short list. Master cylinder, switch, 5 steel lines, 2 flex lines, two slave cylinders, a handful of springs and clips and 4 cans of brake cleaner. He stops now.

With brakes in place, I was ready to take a clandestine trip around the neighborhood. I had trouble keeping it in gear, but the thing worked!

The trike ended up at the pawn shop after a collision. The PO did a pretty decent job of repairing the fiberglass damage, but there were other things that, in analysis, was actually collision damage. The majority of it had to do with the shifter and things attached to it. The shifter itself was fine, but the mount was cracked, one of the linkages was bent and the nose cone on the transmission had a really nasty hole and crack on it.

To replace the nose cone, I should have had to remove the transaxle, but the mounts, especially the front one, were so shot that the transaxle could move enough to let to do that procedure with it still in the frame! The shift linkage is joined with rachet U-joints. The shift shaft in the nose cone was welded directly to one of these U-joints. I had to cut it short enough that the shaft could clear the bushing in the nose cone, but keep it as long as possible for reconnecting to the shift linkage.

All that helped shifting, but with the motor mounts set to extra sloppy, it was still hard to put/keep it in gear. I bought new urethane mounts that have only in the past week or so been installed. I'm looking forward to another ride to see if that finally fixes the shifting.

The motor mounts are just one of the items that I've been gathering since about Thanksgiving 2008 to be installed on the trike. We're getting close to our vacation and it would be very cool to take the trikes somewhere for vacation, so for the last month or so, I've done a lot of work on the thing.

We attended a BTW benefit last fall and my most lovely and generous wife bid on and won a $1000 paint job for a trike or bike for substantially less than $1000. We wanted to make sure we had the bike titled before we sent the body off to Bondo Joe. I got that stuff out of the way and got the body to the paintshop a couple of weeks ago.

That evening, I received this email:

I've been back in the shop looking at your trike body and have come up with some ideas. What I need is some pics of the bike. You told me to do whatever to it so you must of talked to someone that knows me, so when I was looking at it a lot of things came into my twisted mind and I need to know if you like dragons because I came up with something that I think would look really cool. The way I see it a wizard rides a dragon. That’s all I'm going to tell you about what I'd like to do. If I do this to it nobody will ever call it the Enterprise again. It will be known as the dragon bike. And It will be purple. Do you want to ride a dragon? If not I'll think of something else to do.

I definitely like dragons, so I'm pretty excited to see what he comes up with.

In the mean time, I had lots of shiny bits to install, like chrome tins and polished aluminum valve covers. I painted a lot of engine parts using Krylon's X-Metal system. It's basically a decently high temperature candy color paint intended to lend an anodized look to polished metal. They also have a silver base coat called "metal converter" for surfaces that are not shiny metal. In my case, I used the converter because all the stuff I wanted to make colorful were themselves different colors, so I ended up using it on everything. Everything includes the intake manifolds, alternator and distributor. Doesn't sound like much when listed like that, but it looks pretty nice. I used the converter silver alone on the engine block.

Since that pic was taken, I have put the plug wires back on, mounted the ignition coil and ballast resistor (out of sight) and welded on tabs to mount the fuse block to. All I have left to do is wire everything. Everything.

I have 100' each of 10 colors of wire, weather tight connectors, 8 circuit fuse block and a wiring diagram that is about 90% complete. I hope to have the chassis wired and ready to add lights, gauges and switches when the body comes back from Bondo Joe.

Sorry I'm late....

I should have started a blog for the trike project as soon as I got the trike, maybe even before then.

There will probably be a separate blog on the MSruns blog like I did for Buzz whenever I start actually putting some EFI components in place.

In the mean time, I have to catch ya'll up!