Almost Done

A few things left to have a complete rolling chassis. The front of the chassis is almost complete. For the front end we have to have the suspension, steering rack and column mounted which would be completed this morning. Another thing that is currently in progress is the pedal assembly which has already been powder coated and assembled, it only needs to be installed. The only things left after today is the rear triangulation for the mounting of the engine, after that only mounting the engine would be left.

Almost There

The steering column and steering wheel have been mounted. The next thing in our agenda is to mount on the steering rack. Before mounting it, we have to delete the power steering from the rack, this would be done today. Also we would be working on building the pick up points for the suspension.

Mounted Steering column

 

Depowering Steering Rack

Engine on blocks and more welding

This week, we've done most of the cutting and notching. With regards to any bending, since the design was modified, most bends have been done and the load of work have been reduced quite a lot. The work for this week consist putting of the bike's engine on blocks and weld the pipes that have been prepared.

Final Frame Concept

After laying out all of our components and taking into consideration DOT size regulations we came up with our final concept.

Welding, Cutting, and Bending

The main hoop, the part of the trike's chassis which is consider to be the most crucial, has been welded. Small changes to the rest of the frame have been considered(but not finalized) to lessen the amount of time welding, cutting and bending as well as notching.

Frame Update

Based on the pieces of the main hoop constructed with the imprecise bender in the machine shop, the middle and front modules of the frame were modeled to match the preexisting dimensions. This will allow us to know exactly how long to cut each pipe and how to apply the fish mouth end treatment to prepare the main body of the frame for tack welding and mock-up.

Tools and Equipment Woes

The bending has been more or less resolved, pipe cutting has been done, however; when it came to mouth-fishing the end of the pipes for welding, the tools and equipment were not in working condition and some were missing, but that has been fixed. We bought what needed and now were getting the pipes ready for welding. The main tool that we needed, was the hole saw, and after checking out a few hardware stores we finally found the one we need in the shop that is compatible to the drill that Joe will let us borrow as is part of his personal tools.