Amputee Sporty Springer Trike Conversion

[Sleeper]

Must be nice to be able to fab your own parts.
Nice ride!

[Graywolf]

Originally Posted by Sleeper

Must be nice to be able to fab your own parts.
Nice ride!

It is nice, but I don't have more than a couple of real old welding machines, side grinders, and torch. Just have the basic metal working tools. Don't have any machine tools at all. Takes a lot of time to fab parts without the right tools.

While I am on fabrication here is the passenger peg mounts I fabbed to get the pegs a little higher and keep them above the belt and the crutch holder on the other side.

[Wolf]

Trike is looking even better than last time I replied with you. Finally refabed ears on soft tail swing arm to fit Sporty. Found a lot of great ideas in your posting. Got a great idea for mounting my fenders from one of your pics. Being a DNA Axle it takes a lot of thinking out of the box to get the same results. Nice, nice work.

[Graywolf]

Originally Posted by Wolf

Trike is looking even better than last time I replied with you. Finally refabed ears on soft tail swing arm to fit Sporty. Found a lot of great ideas in your posting. Got a great idea for mounting my fenders from one of your pics. Being a DNA Axle it takes a lot of thinking out of the box to get the same results. Nice, nice work.

Thanks, still working on it when I get some time and parts.

If you mean the front fender, I had Paughco put some fender mount holes on the legs of the springer when they fabbed it up. They will do custom builds if you got the time to wait on it. Can't run without a front fender because of the two miles of dirt road to get to a highway from here. Front tire throws wet dirt up in the air and then you ride through it. With the front fender high mounted kinda like a dirt bike it looks almost like there ain't a fender on it from the front. The fender mounting brackets are chopped and re-drilled. Don't remember if I put pictures of that here or not.

[Graywolf]

Can't find a pic of the fender with the chopped tabs when it ain't mounted. Maybe didn't take any. Chopped enough off the tabs to get the fender up enough it don't hit the tire when the springer flexes. It is solid mounted on the legs. Didn't want all that moving arms and stuff to keep the fender above the tire when the front end dips.

[Wolf]

9:15 and, it is 65 in the sun. Measured with my raytek. Moved shed opening from north to south side a couple days ago. The door can wait. I am riding.

[big andy]

Nice work Graywolf. It is amazing what a lot of patients and basic tools can achieve in skilled hands .Keep up the good work.

[brianbbs67]

Originally Posted by big andy

Nice work Graywolf. It is amazing what a lot of patients and basic tools can achieve in skilled hands .Keep up the good work.

yep, you really put it together.

[Scar55]

Good job Greywolf. Lots of good information here. A good friend had his leg removed last Aug. We knew this was coming so he had me look into trike kits when I was at Bike week. The Frankenstein kit was one of the ones I looked at. One vender had a trike he let me ride. Didn't take too long to get used to it. Waiting for my friend to get through rehab and then we will press on with this project. I'm sure I will be picking your brain once we get balls deep into this.

Kelly

[Graywolf]

Thanks for the nice comments! Means a lot more coming from people with greasy fingers than it does from the ones that never get their hands dirty.

For Scar and anybody else that is looking at trikes;
Just a little info on riding them....... I rode 2 wheel bikes for 40 years before I had to switch to a trike. The feeling is totally different cornering a trike. There is no lean and you have to steer the front end around the turns with the bars. Wider bars help too. Always liked buckhorns, but they just won't force the front tire very easy. Wider bars give you more leverage. The first few times you turn a trike it feels just like you are going to turn the thing over. You are so used to leaning through the turns the feeling of going through without leaning scares hell out of you. It takes a good bit of riding to get the new feel of turning without leaning.

Trikes will turn over, take it real easy for a few thousand miles before you start looking for the limits in the turns. The front tire will skip over on sandy pavement or slick places in hard turns too. I don't advise this until you got plenty of riding on the new trike, but if you want to run the curves harder and look for the limits you do lean. The trike won't lean, but you need to keep the inside rear tire planted so you move your body weight as far to the inside of the turn as you can. Hang over to the inside like they do on the racing schooners or the side hacks. Don't make any hard, fast corrections in the turn. If the inside tire does leave the pavement you want it to come up slow so you can feel it and back off enough it goes back down. Riding the trike close to the limit can be as challenging as riding two wheels near the limit and just as about as much fun.

One other little piece of info here...... when the front wheel of the trike comes off the ground there ain't no steering it at all! It is nothing like a wheelie on a two wheel bike. A trike doing a wheelie is going to keep on in the direction it was pointed in when the front wheel came up. Don't ask me how I know that!

Also for somebody with a BK amputation or maybe at the knee the leg hanging and flopping around without a foot peg under it is very annoying plus it makes you hurt in the hip joint. I got a pad on the left side to rest what is left of the leg on. It helps with balance and keeps the leg from just hanging.

The pad is supported by a piece of cold roll that is bolted into the mid peg bracket with the peg removed. It is just a piece of board with some foam and leather over it. At the top the pad support is bolted to the upper motor mount bracket.

The trike dealers and kit suppliers will tell you you have to have a raked tree and a fork damper, but I been riding that one for 10 years or more with stock rake, stock length forks, and no damper. Maybe easier steering with a slight rake and a damper, but I got good arms.