The original trike maker and model would be... me... mostly
Sorry for the confusion, I should have made it clearer that it's a completely custom build save for the repurposing of w/e commonly available parts I could manage, to facilitate maintenance & repair - such as the front A arms, which are chopped & lightened
Yerf-Dog gokart components (a touch overkill, but inexpensive). There's better A arms out there BTW, I used the Yerf-Dog's simply because they'd had a spindle recall and there was a glut on the market, the
entire front suspension assembly could be had for pennies on the dollar, perfect for experimentation.
While I initially planned on making my own frame as well, during the mockup stage I realized I could save quite a bit of headache time by utilizing a preexisting subframe, one already made to fit the motor's mounts etc. While heavier than optimum I took a destroyed 50cc four wheeler's chassis and chopped, dropped & raked it to fit my application and redid all the welds (they were really bad). With only an estimated 40% of just the original subframe remaining, it's far lighter than I feared it would be. If it all turns out well, I may just replicate it's frame with a lighter material, but if you're considering a scratch-build with a horizontal four stroke, I'd recommend just buying a new kiddie-sized ATV to start with as it costs almost the same as the engine alone - but comes with the harness, switches, motor mounts & more. Provided it's a recognizable/reputable engine brand (like Lifan), that's far more sensible then the hunt & scratch I did lol
The rear chainstays & the pedal tube are "recycled" steel mountain bike bits... I think the cheesy 'NEXT' brand TBH, but I really liked the dropout design & I've redone the welds on those too for safety concerns. I've built/rebuilt everything else I can think of, save the seat (didn't wanna bother w/fiberglass layups lol) and the wheelset - which I had custom made for this application by a wheelbuilder friend of mine...
While I would have greatly preferred just motorizing a preexisting taddy, when I started planning this build (daydream stage), there simply wasn't any commercial fully suspended tadpoles available that were even remotely suitable... actually at the time there was only one or two companies that even made them at all that I could find - ones that had true dual A arms anyway, like the
Berserker. Of the ones I could find they were... extremely cost prohibitive for the gawdawful abomineering & experimentation I had in mind.
While cost may be less a concern for others, I've found that recumbents & recumbent parts in general carry a substantial surcharge just for the sake that they're recumbents... brakes, spindles, wheelsets - w/e it may be it seems they want three or four times as much than their upright equivalents, regardless of application, quality or brand. Even unsuspended, unmotorized tadpole recumbents often cost almost as much or even more than I've got in this entire project, engines included - which is 2500 bucks or so, roughly... it's something I try to not think about too much lol
...so with some reluctance I realized if I really wanted to do this, I was gonna hafta do it all me dang self
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