After a rocky start from sniffles and sneezes and other such symptoms on Friday, we hit the road for Oklahoma, namely the Turner Falls area.

It’s very nice up there, nice riding, yada yada…

Sunday morning, I noticed a bit of oil on the ground under the yellow trike. This oil was in a rather irregular patch, as opposed to a nice round spot. I found some fresh oily wetness near the oil cooler hoses, so I presumed that was where the problem was. It wasn’t a whole lot of oil and the dipstick reported plenty of oil, so I decided we’d just keep an eye on it for now.

We took off down the meandering path to home. Twenty some-odd miles into the trek, we had cause to stop. It was a little chillier than expected when we left, but not quite so chilly once we were underway, so Gabby needed to shed a layer of clothing. Whilst we were stopped, I checked the leak.

Ummm, there was a LOT of oil all over the engine and exhaust and everything back there.

With a little testing and looking and revving the engine, etc, I determined that the lower tubing on the oil cooler was leaking. I first thought it was leaking from the hose, but then I saw that the cooler tubing itself was bent and leaking from a crack in the tubing.

It was a simple enough matter to remove the cooler and bypass it with one of the hoses. The weather was mild and these engines tend to run cooler in trikes than cars anyway. I didn’t even get very dirty doing it.

Fast forward a bit to our late lunch in Ardmore. I noticed as we were approaching Ardmore than there was as strange kind of “flex” feeling to the seat. I knew that it is mounted on 2″ X 1/4″ flat steel rails and thus had some springiness to it, but this sensation was different and had developed recently just during the ride. When we stopped at a restaurant, I discovered that the “body” of the trike, the blocky structure covering the engine and surrounding the rear seat, would bounce independent of the suspension. I started bouncing it gently and observing where the flex was, fearing that some bump in the road had broken a weld or something equally nasty. I also observed that an existing crack in the left fender had worsened and during this bouncing, I could see why. Once I saw what the problem was, I got that sinking feeling, the one you get when you know what’s wrong and that it’s your own fault.

Remember back on October 7th, when I was working on replacing the throwout bearing, I said “Then there was the extraneous piece of metal that used to hold up something long gone by bolting it to the engine, but now served only to keep the engine and transaxle loosely connected to one another once all the bolts were removed”?

It turns out that a sloppy weld on a piece that *looks* like its supported elsewhere doesn’t necessarily mean the piece is unused. Turns out that it was an only slightly extraneous piece of metal supporting much of the weight of the body of the trike. Add to that a full gas tank, fill up the side boxes and strap on some luggage, and the now-known-to-be-cantilevered body puts too much stress on the 3/4″ square tubing frame that is welded here and there somewhat randomly.

Also now apparent was that the bottom of the oil cooler, having been mounted on said bouncy body, was damaged by slamming down on to the relatively immovable engine. Ah, I see said the truly blind man….

So, while munching and playing with Gabby’s new Nuvi, I formed a plan to brace the thing up so that the trip home would not result in any permanent damage. It took less than $8 worth of hardware from Lowes and the borrowing of cordless drill services from a Lowes employee who had been putting on some kind of cabinetry demonstration.

I took two 12″ long perforated angle pieces and braced between the top engine-transaxle bolts and the cross piece in the body. It’s probably more solid now than it’s ever been, and these are removable.

We got home without further incident, at least if you don’t count our headset batteries going dead and timing that took us by Texas Motor Speedway shortly after the races let out. We lost about an hour in that traffic.

I haven’t done an update in a while. Several things to report…

Intermittent rain and other issues kept me from picking up the body until last Thursday. I used a purpose built trailer (the trike itself) to tow the body home. We took some pictures of it before I left Joe’s. Since it was still threatening more rain and possible hail, I took it directly to the BTW clubhouse.

There was a BTW Halloween party Saturday night at the clubhouse and everyone was just gushing over the trike. Not without plenty of suggestions, but nobody hated the paint 🙂

Before I continue with the Dragon Trike, I have a brief Yellow Trike update.

I have mounted (uglyly [… is that a word?]) the VDO speedometer sensor and the speedo works wonderfully now.
It does only one thing that is slightly odd, and I fully understand why it does this. As you are rolling slowly up to a traffic light or other such stop, then suddenly stop, for about a second, it continues to indicate that you’re moving at 3mph or whatever. With only 5 magnets to count at 3mph, it expects 0.32 seconds between pulses and after you stop, it has to make sure you’re not still rolling before it recalculates your speed to zero.

In any case, speed and distance correlate very well with GPS measurements and I pronounce it done. Well, I will probably make a nice bracket for the sensor and the instrument itself has a springy mount that makes it move a lot on the road, but those are minor issues.

Back to the Dragon…. There are basically 3 things that need to happen for it to be on the road by my short term goal of December 12th.

1. The engine, which hasn’t run since I put all the bling on it, needs to run. That includes building and installing the throttle cable. It may also include troubleshooting an air leak, for it had symptoms that I now recognize before I took the engine apart for the afore mentioned blinging.

2. The wiring, which includes all lighting and the new “everything” speedo, needs to be done. Lighting includes finding some way have front signals without drilling the body.

3. The front wheel and especially the front tire are not very safe. The tire is aged and cracked, though it does seem to hold air pretty well. The rim is nearly rusted through in a couple of spots.

4. Yeah, I said three, but I forgot that it needs an inspection, too.

That’s what’s needed to merely get it ON the road. I really want to see if I can get it running EFI by then. Um, that’s 39 days. It’s not impossible. What it changes, however, is that EFI adds more engine and wiring work. See the EFI blog for more details on that.

There is a cubic buttload of stuff that also has to be done, preferably before December 12, but I doubt I can get it all that soon. Stuff like upholstery, fenders, footpegs or floorboard, baja cage and hitch, torpedos, navigational deflectors and other such goodies. A few more decorative bits like paint the inside of the wheel spokes and rechrome the handlebars. I suspect wheelie bars will be more of a requirement than an option at some point in the future.

The VDO speedometer sensor arrived today. Even though the dimensions are listed, it still looks bigger than I expected and just as ugly as expected. For reasons of expediency, I will still put it on the front wheel, but I may try to move it to a back wheel at some point to hide it.

The Acewell speedometer for the dragon trike also arrived today, and it is smaller than expected. It should mount well on the handlebar, though the cable may be too short to hide the connectors. There appears to be 14 conductors coming out of it; luckily they are small wires.

Finally, I go to Joe’s to pick up the dragon body today!

Rather than use the drill again, I wound this coil by hand. It’s not necessarily better. I was at home and didn’t want to go to the clubhouse that night. 🙂

Once wound and connectorized, I put the meter on it and it read 22 ohms. The other was 14 ohms, so this one really only has 57% more turns. I was hoping on doubling it.

I installed and tested it. It works *better* but still not right. Now I only have to get it to about 20 MPH before it indicates. I didn’t have my GPS with me to test for the actual speed, but it feels about right.

Consequently, I ordered the actual VDO pickup coil from eGauges. It should be here next week. I will need to make a bracket for it, but it should be pretty simple, little more than a flat with two holes in it.

Speaking of speedometers and things gaugey, I ordered the Acewell speedo that I want to use for the dragon trike. It has most, if not all, of the instrumentation I will need. It shows speed and mileage, engine RPM and fuel level in addition to indicator lights for left and right turn, oil, neutral, highbeam and “trouble”, though I will probably use the neutral light for the alternator and trouble light for MegaSquirt. It also has some other cool features like two trip odometers, average and max speed memory, a clock and ride timer. By having all that in one unit, I hope to mount it on the handlebars and avoid cutting any holes in the fiberglass, but I digress….

I replaced the transaxle nose cone on the yellow trike last Friday night.

Per Doug at Qualitat’s suggestion, I used high temp silicone to seal the nose cone and installed it on the transaxle with little trouble. As is often the case, things went downhill from there.

Long story short, we had the front transaxle mount for a ’66 to ’72 model and the frame is apparently a ’62 to ’65 model. The older mount has a smaller center post. I thought the old mount was completely trashed but when I looked closer, it was somewhat trashed, but was also the newer model that had been modified to fit the older frame. So, I did the same modification, else I would have to wait until the next day to buy another one.

Since the nose cone has the mounting hole for the back up light switch, I opted to install the switch and will at some point wire it up. Besides backup lights, I think a dashboard ‘reverse’ indicator would be neat.

So, the new nosecone tightened up the shifter even more. The only thing left that could do much more would be to replace the hockey stick. It’s a little worn where it goes through the nosecone, but the gearshift works better now than it did and it was already acceptable. I will say that, if the transaxle has to come out for something else *anyway*, maybe I’ll replace it then.

The new front mount tightened up the transaxle and stopped the disturbing and potentially damaging banging of the nose cone to the frame during rough shifts and on rough roads. Every little thing like this that we fix makes it rattle less and tightens up the feel and generally improves the driving experience.

Gabby was planning to take it to work tonight. I have not yet received an email verifying whether or not she did, but she most likely did. It will be her first time to do more than just run up and down the street or around a parking lot with it.

Speedometer:

I installed the VDO speedometer with a 4 pin weatherpack connector. I was concerned about having to splice into power and ground for it, but I just used the wiring for the old speedo’s lights. Power and ground right there. Internally, I wired the lights and speedo power together.

I wound my own pickup coil. Using a drill mounted in a vice to roll the form, I first used the entire 200 foot roll of 30ga magnet wire, but where I was originally going to place it, it was going to be too long. After I unrolled it (yes, as clumsy as it sounds), I wound a new coil with the same wire that was really a nicer coil, but smaller. I then essentially soaked it in black spray paint for both weather resistance and to stabilize it against vibration and spun it slowly in the drill under the heat of a 250W work light to dry.

Once I had it in hand, I discovered a much more elegant place to mount it, using one of the front brake caliper mounting holes. This hole is in near perfect alignment with the 5 bolts that hold the hub and spokes of the wheel together. I mounted 5 rare earth magnets to the bolt heads with 3M mounting tape and mounted the coil with about a 3/32″ gap between the bolt head on the coil and the magnets.

I put the meter on the coil. It reads 14 ohms. When I spin the wheel manually, I see the pulses, but they seem smaller than I would expect.

I did a little math to figure out how many pulses per mile this setup would provide. Divide the wheel and tire circumference (7 feet even in this case) into 5280 to get how many wheel rotations are in a mile, 754.3, then multiply that by 5 magnet pulses per rotation to get 3771. Following the directions for manual calibration of the speedometer, I set it to 3770. The speedo always forces the last digit to a zero. Shrug.

So, I had the front end up on the jack with the speedometer powered up and spun the front wheel.

Nothing. I spun it as hard I could and still nothing.

I wasn’t completely surprised, considering the small signal from the coil.

I did find accidentally, while testing the timing on the road, I looked down an the speedometer was indicating! Turns out my coil is too small and doesn’t provide a large enough signal to count at low speeds. Above about 40 mph and it works great. I tried using an audio transformer connected in reverse to boost the voltage a bit, but it doesn’t work at all then.

I have the stuff and dimensions to wind a new coil. I expect it to be about 25-30 ohms and probably double or more the signal.

If *that* doesn’t work, ok, I’ll *buy* a VDO pickup….

The entire speedometer assembly is fairly mobil in operation. I made a brace to help hold the dashboard still, but it turns out that much of the speedometer movement is in the speedo’s own mounting bracket. I’ll think of something.

More coil details tomorrow.

Starter:

The verdict is in. I’m pretty sure that the starter flakiness was due to overloading the starter button contacts and thus eventually burning the switch out. I got a grounding type button and rewired everything with a relay instead of direct and it did not fail in 30 start.

I know that the original starter needed replacing, but I’m not so sure the 2nd one did.

Yesterday, Bondo Joe called and told me that, while it wasn’t ready to pick up yet, the paint was done on my trike body.

Went there at lunch today and took a couple of cellphone pix. They didn’t come out great, but….

This pic does almost NOTHING to convey just how incredible it looks in person, and this is with it covered in dust from sanding and buffing….

Even with the dust, you can see my wife reflected in the surface of this pic where I was trying to see some of the details of the scales…