Bit O' Tinkerin'

I versed the turn signals on the white trike... re-reversed, I guess. I figure two re's make a null, so "versed". In any case, they work as expected now... :)

One of the troubles with this trike is the sloppiness of the shifter. It's a fairly short linkage, but when we got it, there was obvious movement in every single piece. The shifter itself was sloppy and missing the tension spring. The shifter box is only bolted on the front end, leaving the back end able to lift and move, especially when shifting to 1st or 3rd. The shaft had been spliced with a piece of 1/2" EMT with a single 1/4" bolt through each half, and those were lose. The coupler to the transaxle is a little worn. I presume the hockey stick bushing is sloppy, though I haven't specifically investigated that.

Really, improving any one of these areas would be enough to help, and indeed, just tightening the two 1/4" bolts splicing the shaft together helped. Installing a new standard Empi shifter and greasing the internals in the shift box helped even more, and restored proper reverse lockout operation.


There was an unused, or perhaps more precisely, abandoned, bolt hole in one corner of the shifter box. It went through the top of the box, the bottom of the box, the deck and through the 2" square tubing beneath that. The very bottom hole and the rest of the holes did not quite line up, but by the simple expedient of putting a slight bend in the bottom 1" or so of a piece of all thread, I was able to fish it through. I cut it to length and tightened down. It eliminated all but the slightest detectible movement of the shifter box and shifting improved about 10 times.

In exercising it, however, I noticed it was much stiffer shifting into 2nd, 4th and reverse that to 1st and 3rd. Watching that action while running through the gears revealed that the short end of the shaft flexes enough when going to the even gears that it puts the shaft in a bind within the bushing at the rear of the shift box. I found that I could loosen the new bolt and actually improve operation minimally. What turned out to work better was lubricate the bushing. I couldn't find my grease gun, so I used silicone spray for the short term and it served as the miracle cure.

The real solution will be to stabilize the shaft then maybe to adjust the height of the shifter box and/or the bushing if needed.

I think I can take this shaft out and either weld it into one piece or replace it with a newly fabricated one and eliminate almost all these issues.

The last thing I did was cut a new gasket for the front brake master cylinder. It apparently drips when underway, resulting in brake fluid drops on the right shoulder. Maybe good for street cred, but little else. For the ride home last night, we just tied a rag around it. :)