A number of things have been fixed and upgraded on the trike since the first blog post as well as the beginnings of a Nitrous Oxide system because the trike wasn’t already dangerous enough…

Continuing from the last posts list of items here are the ones that have been sorted:

Front brakes:
Trike now has a set of bike front brakes which do assist somewhat in slowing it down. (They weren’t really designed for 70km/h+)

Exhaust has been mounted:

Previously the trike didn’t have an exhaust and just fired straight out of the engine which was very loud and obnoxious. To fix this issue the exhaust from a Pit Pro was slightly modified in order to fit. Both the seat and clutch had some clearance issues.

Shifter lever has been changed:

Previously the trike had the original shifter from the Atomik quad which required leaning over the seat to pull the shifter which was quite dangerous.

Shifter v2.0 worked alright but go in the way of things and with such a long throw made finding gears difficult.

Shifter 3.0 got a shorten, changed to near vertical and a new gear knob which so far has been much better.

Electric start:

After pricing up parts it was decided that an electric start was not worth the money or effort. In order to get around the issue of the kick starter we removed the kick starter and now just roll start the trike which has proven to be much easier and negates the need for electric start.

Fuel tank:

Fuel tank was moved from the rear of the bars to the front and a vent pipe added to stop excess fuel spraying back.

Wheelie Bar:

A wheelie bar was fitted for safety using a wheel form a kids scooter and a bit of scrap 2″ box. This allows for about 2″ of lift on the front wheel and saves flipping the trike which will becoming more important when the N2O system is fitted.

Nitrous Oxide:

After seeing several small nitrous kits available for pit pro’s/atomik bikes such as this one I became interested in adding N2O to the trike however was willing to shell out the money for the pre made kits.

At some point I had the thought of using a whipped cream dispenser which uses food grade N2O as the source and storage container for N2O.

I already had an electronic solenoid that I had purchased for a project that never got started so I set about building the custom N2O system.

A brass fitting was taped into the S bend after the carbie as the delivery point and the solenoid mounted/zip tied under the seat.

A small lead acid battery was added at the rear under the seat to fire the solenoid which is wired to the electric start switch on the handle bars as I’m not going to be using electric start any more. This allows easy access from the throttle.

The final piece of the puzzle was mounting the whipped cream dispenser which was accomplished with a large hose clamp and a few slits in the back of the seat.

While not the prettiest of solutions it is quite functional and allows easy access to crack the N2O bulbs into the tank.

I am currently awaiting delivery of some N2O canisters to do some real testing but early results have been quite promising. There was some concern about the motor leaning out when the N2O shot was triggered however the carbie seems to run quite rich so should allow for the extra available oxygen.

If not we will find out when the motor cooks 😛

Stay tuned for Part 3 with some high speed N2O runs…

I have been toying with the idea of making a motorised drift trike for sometime and after seeing Colinfurze’s build video I thought it was about time to get about making it a reality.

Spoke to a friend and we managed to get two 125cc Pit Pro’s and two Atomik quads in various states of disrepair for next to nothing.

Between the four bike we got a running Pit Pro which was later sold and two working motors (One from a Pit Pro and one from a quad)

After stripping off the motors and any other useful parts we took the 9″ grinder to the rear end of both quads and removed the rear axle assembly including axle, chain sprocket and rear disc brakes. Having a fully functional rear axle and drive train means a heap less fabrication for us.

The second part we needed to acquire was a front end for the trike which came in the form of a BMX bike which was donated to the cause and promptly met the 9″ grinder.

Some 2″ box tube we had lying around and we were ready to begin seeing how everything will (hopefully) fit together:

From the pictures you can get a rough idea of how it should come together.

After some cutting and welding we have ourselves a rolling frame. Both the BMX head and quad rear end directly welded to the 2″ box tube allowing enough room for motor and chain drive.

Once we were happy with this we set out to create some engine mounts on the 2″ box with slotting to allow chain  tension adjustment. After some fiddling to get everything to fit and tension up correctly this is what we ended up with:

At this point rear brakes were bled, clutch cable, accelerator cable and kill switch were all run to the handle bars.

Left side bar has rear brakes and clutch ~90° offset.

Right side bar has start/stop switch, throttle and front brakes (WIP).

A seat mount was welded up and bolted to the top of the motor then a plastic school seat fitted.

A small fuel tank was fitted in the bar forks and then it was time to see how it ran…

During the test I had forgotten to turn the fuel tap on hence it cutting out half way up the road. The carbie has since had a clean out and an exhaust fitted which cleared up a lot of the farting and carrying on that can be seen in the video.

The chase car showed a top speed of around 70km/h during testing. I think it has a fair bit more in it but I’m not sure it needs to go any faster given the stability of trike’s in general….

As many of you will have noticed it’s currently not truly a “Drift” trike given the current tires/wheels on the trike which will be addressed in part two of this. Finding 14″ PVC for a cheap price has proven difficult so different hubs may have to be fitted to allow for smaller wheels allowing for easier procurement of PVC for drifting.

The other things that need finalising include:

• Finishing mounting of exhaust system
• Front brakes
• Electric start (Kick start is in an awful spot under seat)
• 12v battery mount for electric start
• Changing of shifter location. (Currently lean over suicide shifter)
• Finding 14″ PVC or changing of wheel hubs for smaller diameter
• More permanent fuel tank mount
• Maybe a coat of paint

Continued in part 2 here.