VW Trike

[bennelson]

Saw a neat old trike on my drive home today.

I turned around and went back to take a look at it. Nobody was home, but as I was getting ready to leave, the owner pulled up.

The cycle belonged to a friend of his, he traded it for some truck parts.

The Trike was originally an old VW Bug. The owner, "Joe" said his friend got 80 MPG out of it when it was running.

Joe is an amputee, missing a leg. The trike has a left hand stick shift from the original Bug for changing gears - I think the clutch is still hooked up to the motorcycle handlebar. Not sure how a person uses the handle clutch and stick shift at the same time! Looks like it should be a great cycle for him when it is all cleaned up and running again.

I told him what I was up to with my electric cycle and Electric Metro conversion. Turns out this guy has a forklift (gas NOT electric) and several diesel engines in his garage. He has been ecomodding his old diesel pickup for years!!!!

Couple other photos of it HERE

[WaxyChicken]

Sweet. Can you imagine that with a cheap zebra, ZENN, or tato nano body?

if you have the budget to spare then try and buy it from him for a future conversion. It looks like it's just wasting away there. you can reverse it to make it a 2 wheel front/ 1 wheel back (safer that way) slap on a customized bug body (just customized the mounts and aero mod it), make it electric and then you have bragging rights to a ''custom'' built electric car with no brand name. it might become the closest anyone on here has come so far for building one from scratch.

Great find!

[Ryland]

Wow, that is in poor shape! I've seen a number of VW trikes over the years, my favorite was just enough of a Karman ghia rear end that it still had a bit of the roof, side windows and rear seat, then a motorcycle seat up front, thing looked very classy, but was a big air scoop and was never very road worthy, that trike looks like it would need alot of work to be anything other then a few parts.

[Christopher Jordan]

Ebay has a lot of interesting custom trikes - VWs, Corvairs, V-6/V-8s, mini-woodies. Quite entertaining for me! Every once in a while they sell old Cushmans as"custom trikes" too!

countersTrike

[OfficeLinebacker]

[carousel]

Originally Posted by Christopher Jordan

Ebay has a lot of interesting custom trikes - VWs, Corvairs, magnefine V-6/V-8s, mini-woodies. Quite entertaining for me! Every once in a while they sell old Cushmans as"custom trikes" too!

countersTrike

Very cool looking trike! I've been seeing a lot of these over Ebay recently. I'm planning to get one for myself this Christmas.