moving along
Good morning to everyone, well did not get all the work time I wanted to spend on the trike this last week, but I did get to work on clean up of the neck and backbone area, and learned a few things, or have an idea about the tweak.
oh, the forks will take a little time, the shop I choose is a little backed up with work, but they are suppose to be the one that can do the job, or tell me they are crap to sell me a new pair ? We will see when they call me.
Now in this pic below this piece of angle iron was formed to the back bone 2 3/8" tube, giving it that center line look on the underside, this is what I was lining up the plum bob from, and so we see it could be off a little as it twist when bent to curvature of backbone. It also stops about 4.5" from the neck tube connection. Here we have brake master cylinder bracket attached to right side.
I can not play with chemicals much, so a lot of work is down with wire wheel and than sand paper, but almost done, main thing was to see the welds and metal as clean as possible.
Now in this pic we can see the chrome foot rest assy. was attached after trike was painted blue, no blue on the welds or the chrome at the weld point on the backbone.
Now the weld was not applied to the center area of the bracket, was it hard to reach or bad area, evidence shows me they did not remove the chrome from the foot rest bracket before welding it into place. There was a exhaust U bolt used to hold it in place as it was welded.
The next pick is the underside view.
I having trouble getting up in there for a good cleaning, but it looks a little rusty, old master cylinder leakage. So the foot rest is not centered to the line on the floor, looks to be centered to foot pedals mostly, and that foot pedal bracket looks to be perpendicular to the neck and main tube, so now I wonder about this next pic.
This area is cleaned, yet you can see a line where the U bolt set, no not a rusted eaten groove by the U bolt, front edge has a higher lip than the back edge near that up right piece, a grounding post is what it is. So looking at this I feel one over heated the metal in the backbone tube trying to weld the foot rest into place, if forks were on the trike the weight could have caused the bend as all cooled, or the foot rest bracket was off and so one heated more and gave a push to one side causing the neck to go off perpendicular.
I could remove the welds and drop the foot rest bracket, now reattaching it one could cut a slot in the center and slide it onto the pedal bracket and weld it, but alignment to pedal location becomes off.
I say there is a bit of a upward swing in the backbone. A straight edge shows that there is some .
All welds look solid, a bit ugly, but solid, so as I study this I do wonder if the neck tube was welded off center on the back bone because it was off a 1/16th, but when one welded in the foot rest bracket things got tweaked at the tube as it bent upward increasing rake a few degrees maybe, but if one moved foot rest trying to align it while still hot, could have put the twist in the neck tube.
Cut line for a new neck tube assy. I have looked at some options, of course all have to be tailored to this trike, but if I cut just be hind the current neck weld on the backbone tube, clean all up, and find inner dia. of BB tube so I can find the stock needed for the insert. IF not exactly a tight fit, mill down the material to slide into the existing tube, it would be nice to get 6 inch's deep, but if tube has a bend in it, going to hard to do unless all is milled down to allow it.
Once the insert piece is good, we take and attach the new neck at the desired rake to the insert tube.
Now we slide the insert tube down inside the trikes backbone tube, align neck tube perpendicular with center line and tack weld in place, than finish weld.
This would also mean a new pedal bracket if I can not remove the old one and reuse it.
Now when we talk about heating up the back bone and tweaking it back into alignment, well I do not think it will work with the Angle iron welded on the tube giving it strength. The weak area is, I think, at the end of the angle iron just past the master cylinder bracket, a half inch more forward is the foot rest bracket, here is where and when I think things got bent/tweaked.
I know that ideally we want all to be on center and line up, but we can adjust the rear tires a little to align, forward or backward, and this is what was done in the past to compensate for things, and part of why tire wear is so off from each other.
If the forks are off and they are unable to align them, damage just to much or wrong area, which means new forks than I say cut the neck and do it up that way.
If the forks have gotten aligned and good to use, well than I think just heating and tweaking the neck back into place should work, but we have a weak area we made weaker maybe, so I say a U strap going over the front of the neck and down the side of the backbone tube welded into position would give the extra strength needed, but that means taking off the M/C mounting flange so that the leg of the U straps can go down the backbone far enough past the weak point, at least a inch or two down over the angle iron.
any input, thoughts, or questions are all welcomed. I still have a few shops to go talk to, but so far not any takers for the work, might have to be a home job, " can we do it " ?