How To Make A Tricycle Axle

My First Tricycle Build..

Posted: June 17, 2012 | Filed under: Uncategorized |

My uncle got in impact with me to ask if I'd build a tricycle for my auntie as a surprise birthday present. It would have to be able to cope with a gravelly farm track in Southward Wales, be a step-through frame design, and be 2-wheel bulldoze. Er, yes, no problem..

80mm rake gives this trike effectually 20mm of trail.

Bolt-on axle housing from an ebay donor trike. It's 1-bike-drive at this point.

I needed an alignment shaft to keep all bearings within a tolerance of 0.75mm of misalignment. Gulp..

Sandblasted axle housing with alignment shaft fitted. Begetting shells are right-threaded English language BB size.

I had some fun aligning this frame, I can tell you. Perhaps a petty ambitious for my 4th frame, just I got her fabricated on time, only.

I found a Rogers bolt-on cycle-to-trike beam housing, and had a 2 wheel drive cassette & axle fabricated for it by Geoff Booker at Trykit. The Trykit axle and custom cassette trunk is a lovely scrap of kit. I removed the commodities-on tabs from the axle housing, moved the derailleur hanger boss and brazed the housing onto the chainstays with 4 dummy bearings that my friend John Discombe made for me. A common cold-drawn 18mm rod was placed through the skid-fit dummy bearings to keep everything aligned during (and afterwards) brazing. The drive-side chainstay had to exist bent to articulate the cassette housing.

I used a flat surface with marked lines for centrelines, axle lines & BB lines (using some other round bar on 5 blocks & dummy BB cups), and I besides used a surface guess and engineers squares. A digital protractor kept the seat tube at the right angle, and these adaptable V blocks were handy for levelling the rear axle alignment bar and to go the right BB drop:

I've got assurance. Have you?

I used a ladies' lugset that couldn't actually give the angles I needed, so I ended up fillet brazing the hockey stick, and I ran into problem with seatstay heel strike (trikes ordinarily take mega-low BB drops every bit they can't lean and the lower C of G is benign to treatment, and I had unwisely opted for a lugged BB shell that limited my angles), so I built tabs off the rear axle housing to bring the seat stays style dorsum. I drilled the hell out of the tabs to try and relieve a little weight. For a lot of the build I kept the chainset, a pedal and a shoe cleated-in just to be safety with heel clearance on the bulldoze side.

It was fun to ride.

Trikes e'er tend to follow the camber of the road, and then depression trail is preferred to minimise the endeavor needed for constant steering input. Seat stays are regular cycle stays but used upside-downwardly (thin terminate at the top).

Cross tyres were called for the loose gravel surface it would be ridden on in Wales.

I used 700c rims because the rear hubs that I salvaged from the ebay junker donor trike wheels had very minor flanges with spokes that were already elbow-to caput (they came with 26 ten 1 1/4 rims – This is England!)

She's now in Pembrokeshire, Due south Wales, and I'm told that everyone wants a become..

Also, I'thousand getting well stuck-in to production brazing at the Brompton Wheel factory, and, way off-topic, but I was roped into playing bass in my mate's "music video" about a fictional darts-playing character. I'thousand sorry: