Yellow Trike Work

The rains came just as I got home.

I spent the time inside putting the end on the throttle cable and assembling the throttle, well, assembly. I have just about decided that building my own cables, especially custom cables, is just way less frustrating than trying to shop for one that will work, so long as you have all the parts.

I got all my cable parts online from Flanders Motorcycle Accessories. Knowing the size cable, sheath and ends you need will help a lot. Use your digital caliper a lot when or you will be destined to either not have the right parts or order a bunch of stuff you don’t need to get, hoping you get the right one. Even so, it takes a while to get good at remembering all the separate parts you really should order, like adjusters and boots and such. If I were doing full time building, I would try to stock a lot of parts to sort of standardize on, then I could build them as needed and just reorder stock instead of designing every element of a cable before ordering the parts for just that cable. I digress.

I’d hoped on being able to keep the foot throttle (easier for highway cruising) but I didn’t have a good way to attach both devices to the carburetor. I have a couple of ideas that I can try later, but for now I’ll just use a hand throttle only.

The throttle lever and spring on the carburetor is designed for foot-type forces and thus is hard to turn with the hand throttle. I will first try lightening the spring. If that doesn’t work, I will reconfigure the throttle for better leverage. There is more than enough travel in the cable to allow for some adjustment room there.

After the throttle, I did some electrical reconnaissance. The dashboard switch that we were lead to believe was the turn signals, is in fact the headlight switch. The headlight works! All we had to do was turn it on.

The turn signal switch is an after market affair kludged into place on the left hand control, where the stock one might have been many years ago. The baton for this switch is broken off, which is why I never noticed it before. By shorting the proper terminals together, I verified that the turn signals do indeed work.

We ordered a left hand control switch from Mid-Cities Cycle, which is due in this afternoon. Assuming the weather holds, I should be able to install the switch tonight then take the trike down for inspection tomorrow and it will be completely street legal!

I should probably bleed the clutch to make it easier to drive, though… 🙂

Well, there is one caveat. The seat is out for recovering, so for the inspection, I will probably need to attach a temporary seat, rather than just sit it there. Our inspector is as lenient as one could hope, but he’s not actually corrupt!

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