# Three wheels on my trike



## kek_63 (Apr 20, 2008)

Aside from the WIKI and GARAGE on this site, do a "motorcycle" search at www.evalbum.com . There are some trikes there. Also check out the forum at www.elmoto.net 
It's dedicated to electric motorcycles. Best of luck to you with your project.

Later,
Keith


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## chimpchoker (Jul 1, 2011)

Thanks keith for the links..


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## kerrymann (Feb 17, 2011)

I just got done building what you described and I would recommend you reconsider the trike configuration. It is great if you want to go fast in a straight line but it understates like crazy. I would do it as a reverse trike instead.

http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/my-crazy-goldwing-trike-9-motor-58378.html


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## chimpchoker (Jul 1, 2011)

Thanks for the advice Kerryman. I've seen quite a few reverse trikes with the 2 wheels at the front and wondered if it was only the ease of driving one wheel at the back as opposed to the two. 
A neighbour has a two wheel petrol engined trike and I remember a while ago he said his understeers a lot. 

Mind you at the moment nothing is getting even planned as my back has kicked off again big time but thanks for your advice. 

Alan


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## nwohater (Jun 11, 2011)

An electric that can do 50mph and look like an occ chopper and have any range at all will cost SEVERAL thousand dollars.

Since you say you don't have the money for electric, you'd be best off building a gas trike that you can afford to finish and use right now to get over your way high fuel costs you are currently paying, which will allow you to stuff all that saved money away for the e-trike. Every mile you drive now and until you have something to do better is just flushing money straight down the crapper. 

If you could settle with something like this it can be made for just a couple hundred and get 120mpg+.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvTprfZf6io

Or if reverse trike isn't out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTovZdu2SU4&feature=related

Or just buy a scooter or less than 250cc motorcycle. These little 200cc kikker 5150 hardknocks and other bikes under 250cc can get over 70mpg and 70mph and don't cost much at all and might have the closest thing to the looks you want at a price anyone can afford. You can find them used or new they come as kits for less than $2000. And you can buy a trike kit soon I heard they were working on one, might be done already.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA-tRJQ46HA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVSTFZ6__oM

Any of the above options will practically be free after the first one or two thousand miles or whatever at the rates you're paying. Could pay off in less than a year easily, depending on how much you drive.




No amount of looking cool driving whatever it is you're driving now is worth what you're paying, suck up some of that wasteful pride for just a while so you can save all that extra money and get what you ultimately want later.

OCC style heavy gas bikes with over 1000cc engines and heavy fat tires with lots of wind drag and road losses wouldn't save you anything though, 35mpg or so. You would have to be content with a small engine to really save serious amounts and thinner tires are most efficient. 

These options may seem drastic, but drastic times call for drastic measures. At 14mpg and 11 pounds per gallon guessing at the exchange rate you're over $1 per mile, that's seriously don't waste any time cutting back drastic sounding to me.

The kikkers are small but lots of fun and serious attention grabbers, way way more than full sized harleys. Everyone has had or has seen all the big loud harleys and people barely notice them anymore. Plus to be honest the fat tire harley OCC chopper "poser" look is all way played out anyway. Kikkers aren't trying to pretend to be bad ass biker look alike rides, and won't make you look like a middle aged dentist with more money than sense, they're just fun little old schoolish looking oddities that can save a lot of gas.


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## chimpchoker (Jul 1, 2011)

Thanks for the advice Nwohater,

The link to the occ page was just to establish a mental image rather than a full on copy of one etc but you are right when you mention the cost of fuel. I spend around £70 / $130 a week basically going to the shops etc and with effort the local busses provide a route to the shops so money could become available faster. 

I don't like the idea of the pedal bike conversion as the coppers over here will have a feild day with that and the effort needed to get it road legal would actually be quite hard in the UK. 

The limit for non motorbike licence holders, i'e. car licence holders driving bikes over here is 125 cc and then it's only for a year before you have to take a full bike test. 

I looked at the u tube links you provided and one of the links that poped up in the same vein as yours was this one and it's a UK company. http://www.mevltd.co.uk/etrike_video.htm

So for the small cost I reckon these are the plans for me.


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## Woodsmith (Jun 5, 2008)

Hi Chimpchoker,

I am also, slowly, building a trike in the UK.

Surely you can drive a three wheel vehicle here.

With bike licence you can drive Cat B1
_'Motor tricycles, quadricycles and three or four wheeled vehicles with an unladen weight no more than 550 kg'
_
With a car licence you can drive any vehicle with three wheels, ie Reliant Robin.

Your build, like mine, will come under the MSVA inspection regulations and that allows an unladen weight of 1000kg. Unladen means without driver and fuel (batteries). I think I have a link to the MSVA guidance. I'll try to attach it or pm it to you. (It is too big to attach. I can email it to you if you pm me your email address)

Also have a look at Boom Trikes rental section. They only ask a deposit and a full car licence to rent and drive their trikes.

You can also try The Trike Doctor forum too.


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## nwohater (Jun 11, 2011)

Yes some places do have real problems with motorized bikes, I have no idea what it's like there. I'm glad you aren't offended with my suggestions at least, because they were pretty far off your goals but man I just can't imagine staying with the status quo and flushing all that money away at those kinds of prices.

Our high gas prices are looming around $4 US per gallon and I thought that was bad, I bought a 150cc scooter and 250cc motorcycle to combat those prices and am still looking into further alternatives. Bikes and scooters are fine in dry weather but where I live it rains most of the time, so I'm looking into covered trike options.

My car is at least for now just parked and I cancelled it's insurance, I'm also looking into making moonshine (ethanol) for $1 per gallon or modding an engine for propane which is around $2 per gallon equivalent, or CNG which would be even cheaper and could refill at home, or electric too. But for me electric is a last resort only because I can't get the range I need and if I did the batteries are prohibitively expensive atm, but damn... 
You're on a whole nother level with price gouging there, I'd be in full on panic mode at those rates.

I don't see how that trike you link to can be built for less than a couple grand, but I didn't look into what components it's based on. Maybe they're suggesting used golf cart motor and reviving dead batteries or something... You could certainly make a trike and then fit it with either gas or electric later, depending on budget at the time you finish the frame.

If you like that reverse trike layout, you might like these body styles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd0M3VwykrA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEAadQkhXr0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M8Rwp9r6Uo&feature=related

You'll have to build any of those yourself so you can finish them any way you like obviously. There are several that are fully enclosed I've been looking into, and I'm probably going to build a 150cc scooter powered amphibious trike like this myself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD0o1tVy-ZM&feature=related

I planned to use a foam core fiberglass laminated body contruction method for a trike anyway for safety reasons as well as weather protection, based on this x-prize vehicle. Yes no reverse but hey, motorcycle parking, simple cheap construction, safe and leightweight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBGEs7RCCto

Having looked at their crash testing and this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIMKZkP7Rkc

I knew my constuction method would make it float anyway like they show there, and be a little safer than just an open steel frame, then went looking for ideas to make use of it floating and do something better looking, and that amphibious landshark trike is the best example I could find above. I won't be using it's water drive setup though since I have no way to fab up a proprietary wheel hub/water pump like that has for the rear wheel, I'll just add a prop takeoff somewhere. Besides prop is most efficient, and I have a very small motor in mind so the pump just wouldn't cut it. It might sound stupid and overly ambitious to make it amphibious, but it's only because the body design I have in mind makes it float anyway and there's hardly any extra drive effort or weight added or changes needed to do it, so I figure why not...

But based on comparisons and with the 150cc scooter motor like the spira4u I'm pretty certain I'll be able to get over 120mpg just by adding HHO, with a top speed of 75mph, so with figures like that I won't mind still being stuck on petrol for a while if my other alternative fuel thoughts don't pan out. (Here we have to get a permit to make any ethanol at all first before I can even play with that, but oddly enough no permit is needed to make hydrogen.) Go figure...

For electric I'd have to have lifepo4 batteries and quite the big expensive packs for the range I'd need, so it will start off gas with a cheap 150cc scooter motor with integrated cvt and clutch, which will be easy as hell to set up, cheap on gas, and which can be easily swapped out later if those battery prices ever come down. 

Anway, any vehicle you make light and aerodynamic enough could be either gas or electric, and would go a long way to help save you from that ripoff gas gouging. If you want protection from the rain I've bookmarked a few other body styles, but making a leightweight and decent looking full body sounds like it's going to be the hardest part of the whole project.

I don't get what the difference is when your money is worth more than ours, yet you pay more than twice as much for gas. I guess you folks didn't kill enough people or invade enough countries or install enough puppet dictators or something stupid like we do. 
(/Sarcasm off)


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