Update:

I haven't given up on the Tri-Magnum so much as just stalled out so many times that I'm not sure if I'll ever get back to it. Here's the thing, I've got too many dang projects.

<shocking, I know...>

I have been rethinking the project, (Yes, the procrastinators Achilles heel - if you don't ever start it, there's endless time to think of how you should do it differently...) and while I still really want to build a reverse trike, I'm not sure if the Tri-Magnum is the way to go. The BIG thing is there's just WAY too much fiberglass work. Now I'm thinking if I do build, it will be a simple steel frame, no complicated and (from the examples I've read) incredibly time consuming body to build (think YEARS).


A hybrid between this (A Trirod F3 Adrenaline):
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and this (A SportCycle):
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is what I have in mind.

Anyway, I've been inspired by a few RT designs, most notably the Indycycle:

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The Norton Shrike:

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The Raptor:





What these all have in common is a simple frame and a high CC sportbike. No complicated body to speak of (OK, the indycycle's got a body, but is still very much an "open air vehicle") Now as I've studied the RT scene, I've noticed a vacuum. There seems to be very few RTs that keep the Motorcycle feel. While VW trikes retain a VW powertrain, they appear more bike then car. The RT scene seems to have strived to do the opposite.


So comes my idea:

Of course I'd like to start with a High CC motorcycle. Cruiser preferred.

It would appear to be more of a motorcycle from the front but still retaining the "bike in back" styling of the raptor or Indycycle.

The rider would sit in front of the motorcycle like the Raptor, but would still sit in a cruiser style seat, with feet in front, Harley chopper style, although much lower to the ground then a typical chopper

The front would still be two front wheels, with an indy-inspired suspension setup. Controls would remain motorcycle style with handlebar-mounted throttle and clutch, and foot controlled brake and shifter.

Comments, ideas or suggestions welcome. Any industrious artists willing to sketch out a rough design are welcome to do so. I've be happy to tell you if it fits what's in my head or not.

I found something tonight that is very similar to what I want to do:



The main differences would be I still want te retain the whole motorcycle in back like the Raptor and I want the seating to be a bit more "laid back" but otherwise, very close...

OK. So I've found the platform and have the idea in my head for modification.

The basic design will be lifted from a "SportCycle" seen below but honestly, the awkward looking body on these things just ruins it for me:
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but if we take a look at one without its "skin", you can see the potential. Hell, I think this one looks flat-out SEXY just like that, (kinda reminds me of the Ariel Atom) why ruin it with a stupid looking body? But hey, that's just me...
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ANYWAY, You can see at this incomplete stage its RIPE for the modifications I have in mind:

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- don't bother with a floorboard
- create a mount for a chopper-style saddle (obviously higher off the ground then where the Sportcycle designer intended, probably about as high as where the higher square tubing sits in the above pic)
- Raise the steering column height, axe the steering wheel and fit with handle bars
- don't bother with an automotive 3-pedal system, keep the bike controls

Sometimes its good to be a moderator...

I decided to let the Tri-Magnum thread die and split this out to a different topic. Discussions about the Tri-Magnum will, of course, still be welcome, but please keep them in that thread.

Thanks!

I've been reading and reading about the Sportcycle. I still really like my ideas, but I've gained a LOT of respect for the Sportcycle's designer over the past 24 hours. The sportcycle as it was designed is a very well thought out DIY vehicle.

Perhaps I'm missing the train, however I cant help but think of 4 wheeler in the front. Basically stretch the a arms and your done. Weld that to a Vtwin bike like a sportster or a dyna and theres your prototype.

Notice how the driver's seating position is almost on the ground on evey trike I pictured above? - This is by design. The problem is the handling characteristics of a three-wheeled vehicle are completely different then that of a 4 wheeled vehicle. A properly designed trike will out-handle anything on the road but the key is to keep the CG as low as possible and as close to the side-by-side wheels as possible. By just welding a 4-wheeler front end to a motorcycle, you'd be putting the CG WAY too high. Designs like that are why trikes get such a bad name ("Don't those things flip over?").

Got my plans. Yikes there's a lot of work to do! I'm looking forward to it. readers of my other threads will know that money's tight right now, so I will be unable to start right away. I've also noticed that I am lacking many necessary tools. I knew I would need a welder, but figured I should wait until I've completed my first welding class - welders are completely unknown to me, I'd hate to buy one then find out on my first day of class that I bought the wrong one or a crappy one. I've learned I will also most definitely need a drill press, a bench grinder (already have a decent hand-held grinder) and a bench vise. Oy! Just more money to spend...

When you get your welder make sure you get one of them fancy shmancy Auto Darkening Welding Helmets. It is SOOOOO much easier to weld with one of those.

Yeah, I'm not going to cheap-out on the PPE. I guess that's the Air Force in me, but I've had the importance of quality PPE drilled into me.

After discussing my design changes with my brother (who will be helping me throughout this project) we've decided to build according to the original plans as a proof-of-concept model first. Once I've cut my teeth on a regular Sportcycle and have the concept down, I can use my existing Sportcycle as a mockup for any changes I want to make.

Still on track.

Had Jury duty last week then lost my job Thursday so things are a bit hectic 'round these parts but I'm about ready to start to collecting parts and tools.

I have officially decided to bench my design changes and build the Sportcycle as designed (minus the silly looking body). As previously stated I still think my ideas have merit, but I'd rather have a successful build under my belt before I start changing things.

Tool-wise, I need to buy a welder, drill press and chop saw.

Then I'm going to buy the needed steel plus a bit extra to play with. There's no welding classes available right now, but my brother's a decent welder and has convinced me that with his guidance I could pick up MIG quickly enough on my own and probably don't need a class.

There are several expensive parts needed, the steering knuckles are about $500 for the pair, the Wilwood brakes and hubs are about another $500 and of course there's the donor bike which will be a grand minimum so there's going to be a lot of saving between buying each of the major parts...

In 2003 Car and Driver wrote a review about the Sportcycle (back when they were selling kits, and calling it the Indycycle. Now they sell plans and a few parts, but no longer kits.)

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/all/2...dycycle_feature

This has become my new motivational poster:

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Its the wallpaper on both my computers, Its on my walls and in my car and in my backpack I took to work with me...

I'm now as obsessed with this thing as I was with my Lumenlab projector while I was building it. Only difference is this thing is going to take a lot more money to build.

Not that interesting to anyone else huh?

I guess its just me...

"¿ʞɐǝɹɟ ɐ ǝɹ,noʎ uǝɥʍ 'ʇı ʇ,usı 'ʎlǝuol s,ʇı" uɐɯ ǝlqısıʌuı uɐ ɟo sɹıoɯǝɯ ɯoɹɟ ǝʇonb ɐ ɟo pǝpuıɯǝɹ ɯ,ı

Naw man I dig. I dig big.
I just got my first bike last year and never rode before. This thing seems WAY cool.
I do prefer the more bike than car version tho. You have done custom mechanixing before right?
I will be looking at your other posts and such to gauge your craftsmanship but yeah welding is a HUGE BITC#.
Ill take a few pics of my DREISYCLE and show you how to weld badly. Its a bike with a snowblower engine on it. never finished it but the prototype worked pretty well untill the spindle fell apart every time I rode it. couple blocks is all I got out of the thing at once and the centrifugal clutch got really hot but it is cool. Oh and I'll snap a couple of the long fork I was gonna put on it.

I know the welder I was using was shite but a pro happened across the yard when I was working on it one day and "showed me how its done" and while he made great welds I still couldnt get it pretty. Its all in the instruction. I only have like 30-50 hours welding time in and thats not at regular intervals. Basic auto welding class 1 hr 1 semester and a bunch of scrooin around in my buddys garage. with this mostrous(ugly) cycle project as well as a couple other long forks.

BTW what is that quote?

I cut my DIY-fabricating teeth with my LL projector, but became much more proficient at it when I got a job building custom Home Theaters last year (A job I got, in part, thanks to my LL projector!). There's a lot more fabricating in Home Theater than I would have thought, as we try to cater to a customers exact demands (especially when what they want has no "off the shelf" part to use). So far, though, that's been mainly wood. I've never welded before, but my brother is a decent welder and is going to be looking over my shoulder for a good portion of the build.



LOL. sounds cool!



Like I said, my brother will be "showing me how its done" till he thinks I've got the hang of it.



Just a bit of fun...

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Oh yeah I meant what is that quote from?
I'll go snap some shots right now. They'll be on by evening.

I never understood why people dont ride 4wheelers in the street. I know theres a high CG but why dont we let em kill themselves. Thats the only reason motorcycles were allowed to continue in the street. Id ride an atv in the street or on the hiway. I only ask because I saw someone ask about a 4wheeler front on a bikes back. You dont have to have the CG high, you could strech it out and down. The steerin components are pretty small and low other than the bars and if you made the ass end of the bike lean as it turns youll be great. I saw it somewhere. think it had to do with the caster of the back end keeping it straight otherwise.

anyway Im gonna go photog.
Later,
Dreis

oops. all the pics are all effed up gotta retake em in the right mode on the camera. I recorded them to the film not the memory.
I = dumbfacehead.

I thought you'd ditched the idea so I haven't been following along. I have to agree with you that the SportCycle looks absolutely ridiculous, until you take the body work off. I'm a sports bike rider, and can't say that I have too much desire to build a trike, although I've always thought the kind that you're looking at are cool and would be fun to ride. Personally I'd be very wary about not having a floor pan sitting that close to the road. Any kind of junk you might not be able to avoid is likely to rip your legs open.

Wish you the best of luck with it!

LOL, that's alright. I'll wait... I'm unemployed right now, so I've got the time...



Naw, didn't give up on the whole thing, just on the modifications I had talked about. Want to build a regular Sportcycle first. Call it a "proof of concept". When the time comes to modify it for the "Trirod" style, I may have to rethink weather I have a floorboard or not.

Actually, because of your original post I thought about doing this myself. However, I want it to go the more car route. I decided that if I was going to get one chance to build a car, I would go for my dream car. I have learned a lot about RT design, and am still learning. By the way, I created a spreadsheet that will calculate the max front and side G force that your design can handle. You can play with track, length, and CG height. Let me know if that would be useful.

I decided that instead of going with a kit, I'm going to build from the ground up. It's harder, but I think it'll be worth it. There are no kits for what I want to do anyway. By the way, where are you getting the knuckles from? I've been trying to find a place to get a custom knuckle from and haven't found much. Good luck with the project!

David

Yeah, I'm excited at the prospect of building from the ground up. Much like my LL projector, when I'm done I'll be able to say "I made this!"



The plans have drawings for knuckles that could be fabricated, but it would be far too much work for the average DIYer. Fortunately Sport Vehicles, Jim Musser's (the designer of the Sportcycle) company sells ready made knuckles.

Here they are. Finally figured out how to use this POS camera.

LINK

And the snowblower motor is just mounted by the mounting bolts to a pice of diamond plate that is welded(horribly) directly to the bike frame.

LOL, looks fun, in a dangerous sort of way! (My kind of fun!)

Kinda looks like what this guy did -

http://hawkfan4life.com/trike2/trike2.html

Blah. Forever plagued with awesome projects and not enough money to pull them off...

Waiting for my "stimulus" check. Sadly, I had hoped to start buying materials for the Sportcycle but we've fallen behind on our bills over the last month, so I will not be stimulating anything (or anyone). Just paying bills... blah (again).

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check out my google sketch up design. Its a cockpit style 2 seater

Nice!

Project is stalled again. A career change forced some financial decisions I wasn't looking forward to. Like my other projects of recent years, this one has stalled out... I do hope to get back on it when school picks up in the fall (I'm still trying to get into that welding class. We'll see...)

I was suprpised to see someone else building the sportcycle in here. I'm going to build it from scratch except for a few parts I'll have to buy from sportcycle. I plan on keeping the fiberglass body but will extend it out and over the back of the motorcycle to cover most of it and improve aerodynamics (along with adding some steel tubing to connect to the back). I'll add some nice detailing in the rear as well probably give it a look like the t-rex's backside.


I think I'm going to build two. One as a gas powered model and one I'll convert to EV (so the motorcycle in it will have either no engine or a non working one. I figure I can build the gas model for about 3 to 5K and the EV could be about 10K due how freaking much good lithium batteries cost.

Also I thought this was a decent design using a touring model bike
xzilarator You could really make it look sweet using a fiberglass body attached to the frame

I'm leaning more now toward blending the indycycle design in. It's a much smoother design in my opinion but I'm getting the plans for both the indycycle and the sportcycle so I can mix and match the best design elements of each. I'm making mine a two-seater so it's more useful and a guy has already built one with the indycycle plans and some modifications. I'm try to get in touch with him to see how it went and to get more info about the changes he made

Indycycle.net

I've been thinking about the body of the sportcycle (and how much I really don't like it) lately. I found a Concept vehicle from Peugeot called LiIon. As far as I know, it was never built, even in prototype. If you look at it next to the pic of the Naked Sportcycle, I could easily see something similar being adapted. Check it out:

First, the Sportcycle with its intended body (yuk! I get it, its supposed to look like an Indy car. IMHO it looks silly, and the fact that it just stops at the front of the 'bike' is just dumb...):
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Then the Naked Sportcycle:
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Peugeot LiIon:
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Obviously, for the DIYer, the curves (especially the curved canopy) would be difficult if not next to impossible to duplicate, but I could see a more blocky and less elegant version of the LiIon body being adapted out of fiberglass and plexiglass.

I'm familiar with Jamison Durette, the designer of the 'other' Indycycle. He seems like a cool guy. I chose Jim Musser's Sportcycle plans mainly because Jamison states on his site that he intentionally left his plans vague to limit liability. Given that i know nothing of this sort of thing, I wanted more comprehensive instructions then Durette's Indycycle plans sound like they would be.

The guy that built the 2-seater Indycycle is Dick Kincheloe. Here's his myspace if you want to contact him:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea...endid=203092843

I've got some promising leads lately.

In addition to most of my new coworkers being very interested in the project itself, a few have offered to help. One is an accomplished welder and offered to coach me through it if my brother doesn't have the time. Another used to race dirtbikes professionally. He knows all the shops around the area and said when I'm ready to buy a bike he can use his contacts to get me exactly what I need (high-CC sportbike, wrecked in front, don't care about plastics, but still running well and able to be tagged, etc) for cheap.

Found a great interview with Jim Musser, where he discusses the Sportcycle:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Reverse-Trike...e-for-this-Show

Firefox users beware, I had to switch over to IE to make this work, didn't like Firefox at all...

Playing around in Paint I came up with this simple body. The sheetmetal shown is part of the original design and is meant to go under the fiberglass body to create the seat as well as ducting to direct air towards the bike's radiator. I will simply continue the sheetmetal forward to create a nose:

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While I have decided to make no major modifications to the structural details as laid out by Mr. Musser, I do not want to give up completely on my idea of keeping a bike, or hot rod theme. Also, there is one other concern screaming at me, budget. I've come to the realization that I cannot afford a nice bike, not even close.

To that end, I believe a Ratrod / Ratbike cross is in order.

[History Lesson]

Of course, the Ratrod started life as a way for the, shall we say, less well-off, carnuts to flex some automotive muscle.Basically, they dumped all their money, meager amount though it may be, into the drivetrain, then built a very minimalist machine around it. Flat black paint and steel rims were the preferred choice although many just let their machines take the weather as they may, rust and all.

(Now, many will argue and i tend to agree, that the modern Ratrod style has become laughable, as enthusiasts with, shall we say, way too much frakin' money now spend their way into a "Rat Rod" (and I use the term loosely). I'm sorry, but when you're spending $7K on a "patina" paint job so that your $60K car looks rusty, then your car is NOT a Rat Rod!!)

Simply put, Ratbikes are the Biker's answer to Rat Rods.

[/History Lesson]

How 'bout some Pictures:

Rat Rod:
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Rat Bike:
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Rat Rod:
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Rat Bike:
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Okay. So now that the pictures are out of the way, we can get to the meat of my idea. Basically, I want to take the best parts of both the Sportcycle and the Rat style.

1st, the Donor Bike:

Since I cannot afford a newer Superbike, I'm going to have to make do with something older, probably much older. What I'm finding locally in my price range (<$1K) are all late 70s early 80s bikes. There's a decent selection of high-cc "Needs Work" and "No Title" nightmares for me to choose from. From there it'll be a simple matter of getting it to run (I'm fairly mechanically inclined and, while I don't have a lot of motorcycle experience, I have a fair amount of automotive experience so I don't foresee much problem there), then Ratbiking it out. Lots of sanding and flat black primer seems to be the majority of the work there, maybe even a camouflage paint job, who knows? Since no one will actually ride the bike and I could expand into where the seat would have been if needed, I may remove the original motorcycle fuel tank and replace it with a larger fuel cell.

2nd, the Sportcycle:

So the basic Sportcycle structure will not change. Build-up will proceed as laid out in the plans, the only exception being that the body mounts will be unnecessary. Once basic construction is finished the Ratrodding begins, more flat black or cammo paint. Oklahoma law will require me to add fenders over the front wheels and keep the single Motorcycle headlight (although it says nothing about installing auxiliary driving lights, so I'll probably be going with a 3 light system for added visibility). I will add the simple sheet metal nose as pictured (poorly with MSPaint) above. The rims will be something simple, like steel Rallies (flat black, of course) with moon caps or maybe even some wirespoke wheels if I should hapen to get a bike with a wirespoke rear wheel. I'm slightly concerned with the vehicle sitting so low to the ground that the ability of other drivers to see me at night may be impaired. The only major departure away from the Rat style I intend to make will be to that end in the addition of Tireflies (those blinking LEDs that ricers put on their tire's valvestems)

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So, Comments, questions? Insults?

Found a new European turn-key Trike called the T-rod, which, as best as I can tell, is just a Sportcycle clone with a different body. I LOVE this body. Much like the Lilon, it appears to be beyond my fiberglassing skill level, but if I were able to make my own body, this would be ideal.

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Check out the Photoshopped clouds in the background of this one
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And finally, the naked Sportcycle and the 'clothed' T-rod side by side for comparison:

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question on the welds -

Do you have have the D.O.T inspect & ok the welds?

Perhaps if you were getting a SCV (Specially Constructed Vehicle) tag and a new VIN, not sure. But the Sportcycle is designed to retain the Donor Bike's original Registration and VIN, so no new inspections should be needed.

Simple wireframe of new structure to form the nose: