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Rebuilding a Rewaco RF1-GT
This is the story of my trike, a beautiful Rewaco RF1 GT.
From a very early age I realised I like motorcycles. I like speed, I like the wind in the face and I like the sense of freedom. But that's just theory. In practice, with an experience of 20 years in a cage, along with all these, comes crazy drivers, accidents, injuries and death. And that's something I do not like. For this reason, I will probably never put my ass onto a 2 wheeled vehicle. Of course, every person decides for him/herself, but for me that's a risk I am not willing to take. Cages are also risky, there are people which dies in big trucks. But on 2 wheels, it's just too much risk.
Until last year I never realized I had a choice. Somewhere at the beginning of 2015, purely by chance I saw on the net for the first time some trikes.
It was like a faint scent for a hunting dog. Enough to hook on the trail. They were interesting and I begun to think of them, to read about them and to analyze their presumed safety. I am fortunate enough to have a good understanding of physics and mechanics. This helped me a lot and I quickly realised that this is what I was looking for and this is something I am willing to accept as a risk. At this point, I wanted one badly.
Following some long lectures all over the internet, mostly on trikes dedicated forums, I quickly realised that they are not all the same. I learned about motorcycle based trikes and trikes designed from the ground up as trikes (like mine). I learned about various engine options. I am somehow an efficency oriented guy and for this reason, I do not like carburator engines. I learned about all details which makes one trike safer than other (weigth distribution, tires, suspensions, etc).
But then bang!
A big problem. The price. I had no idea how much they cost but when I saw the price of what I wanted, all my enthusiasm went to drain. For the time being, the idea was put into a 'to do' list somewhere in the future. Far future. But there was a small curiosity in me which remained active, and from time to time I browsed this subject. Forums, sale annouces, etc. In august 2015 I saw a sale annoucement at a dealer of crashed vehicles in France. It was a crashed trike, frontal impact with a car (I learned that much later thanks to an article about the accident). It was the exact model I wanted, and the price was (with some streches) within my possibilities.
The trike was sold as total damage, due to high costs of repair. I had to get an accurate estimation of the components required to repair it. From the beginning it was clear to me that the only chance to make this project cost effective was to repair it all by myself. Luckily I have at my disposal a mechanical workshop full with everything needed for repair. TIG welder, tools, hydraulic press, drilling benches, lathe. And the knowledge to use them.
So, following a quick negotiation with the seller and some waiting time for an economical enough transportation method from France to Romania, somewhere in september the trike was laid down in my garage, waiting for the tips of my screwdrivers. I begun to disassemble it and to see what components were salvageable and which needed to be replaced. I realised that for trikes especially, frontal impacts are devastating. It destroys a lot of expensive stuff. The following were destroyed beyond repair: front tire, front wheel rims, wheel axle, forks, all frontal lights, half of chassis (the chassis is costructed from two halves linked together with screws), pedals, pedal holder, neck axle, accumulator, brake and clutch cylinders, every bearing from the front (and there are 16 of them), the fibreglass body, the fake tank, gear shifer, radiator and probably some more I can't remember now.
Some other remained in various state of damage, but salvageable: front suspension, some neck steering components, impact protection bars. On the other side, there where 2 other problems which required attention: the vehicle is manufacturated in 2006, and after 10 years, there are some things which needed to be touched. A lot of dust inside, electrical contacts with corrosion, old hydraulic lines, a lot of cracked hoses. The last issue was the engine which even with only 35.000 km on board, it was in a relatively unknown state. I had to change belts, filters, oil, spark plugs.
The journey begun. I prepared a list with everything I needed for repairs and forwarded it to Rewaco in Germany. From the beginning they were very helpful and very responsive to all my messages. But they instructed me to contact our local delaer, at that point we had one in our country. I did so and I forwarded him my parts list with price requests. Without entering in too much details, the dealer had little information about me and he thougth that I must be a very wealthy person to afford a rewaco and he gave me some really pumped up prices.
He did not knew that I knew the original acquisition prices from factory, thus his pumped offer was in violation with his distribution ageement. I did notified the incident to the factory and he lost his delaership instantly. It was not a very happy moment for him but it was not me the one trying to go around a commercial agreement. From here I continued my relation directly with the factory. I ordered the most important parts from factory but some of them I had to deal with in other ways. The budget allocated was tigth so I could not afford to buy everything from factory. Following some long days in the front of the lathe, welding torch and other tools, some items were reconstructed after the original ones, such as forks and pedals. Others were standard car parts and purchased from various dealers. Of course, extensive research was required, because it is quite hard to identify a certain component from what car is it. Jeep, Fiat, VW and Ford parts are used.
All safety critical components were purchased as new (brake and cluch master cylinders, hydraulic hoses, front brake disk, parking brake lines).
With all the parts in hand I begun the assembly process. Countless hours were spent with the towel and cleaning agents, to remove all the dirt gathered in 10 years and sticked inside. All mechanical parts were assembled, what could be repaired was repaired. In february 2016 everything was put together, ready for road test. However, not all was finished. The fibreglass body was still in its original state and all repairs to the stainless steel pipes (protection bars, forks, etc) were in raw state, visible weld joints, unpolished surfaces, etc. But the urge to see it moving was bigger than desire for perfect look. Fortunately, at my home I have access to a piece of road which is not opened for regular road traffic and I could go and make road tests without the vehicle being registered. I performed more than 20km going around that piece of road. This was necessary because I had to get used with the trike, after all it was my first trike, never touched another before. Secondly, endurance tests were required to see all systems works as they should, especially safety critical ones.
After some more kilometers, thankfully I was unable to find anything wrong with it.
All systems seem to be in good order. It was the time to start working at the fibreglass body. For a period of time I was uncertain about how to proceed. Should I make all the repairs by myself or should I find a guy with experience in fibreglass work and pay him to do the repairs? I chosed to do all by myself and after a time I congratulated myself for this decision. The required amount of patience and attention to details when doing fibreglass repairs is absolutely insane. It would have costed me a fortune if I had not done this job by myself. It is a bit difficult because I have never worked with fibreglass before and the learning process takes some time and is prone to mistakes, but all is in acceptable margins. Other thing which is slowing me down is the temperature. It is at the lower allowable limit for epoxy resin to cure, approx 15*celsius, but that's something I cannot change.
At the same time I installed the lights bar and connected it to electrical system. No sweat here, all worked from the beginning. Since the old lamps were destroyed in the crash, everything here was brand new. I also learned the hard way that it is not a good idea to touch the front glass when the high beam is on from some time. The body. That was hard work and it did not went well. There were some huge missing chunks as a result of the crash. Somehow I did managed to fix that but the finished surfaces are nowhere near the quality of the original surfaces, which were constructed in a mold. It is my first encounter with the fibreglass world and I surely need more experience in order to get good results. To make things worse, the season begun from quite some time (it is already april) and my patience with this project decreased dramatically.
So I decided to finish it however I can, as quicly as I can, even if the result is not perfect. Some details will be fixed in the near future and some in the next winter (rebulding the body with better surface finsihing and maybe complete repainting).
Finally, few days ago, I went with it on the road for the first time and just one day later, I took it to our authorities responsible with all the registration process. No sweat there, I obtained all the papers and now I can use it legally on the streets. It was the end of 7 months since I begun work to it. And in the day I obtained the registration papers I felt quite satisfied of what I achieved. It was also my birthday.
However, I could not achieved that all by myself. I should thank to my wife and my little boy for their patience, my business partner (he knows why), to rewaco team and to several other friends which suppported me with their advice or enthusiasm.
Originally Posted by consitter
