37' Stude tadpole 3-wheeler

same here. love the front of 37's

 

This engine makes 240+ horsepower, 290 ft-lbs torque and has 17psi boost. That driveshaft would last as long as a piece of black licorice.....

 

Love that engine!!!!! I can see it spinning donuts!!!

 

Totally radical! Love this thing and I'll be looking for it next time i 'm in MN!

BTW Why not bypass the title issue and just title it as the car it was originally?

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My uncle built a 6-carb aluminum intake for his hemi. Many guys in the car club said it would never run. I was like WTF why would it not run?! It might not be 100% ideal, have some vacuum leak or whatever but why would it not run? Some folks will immediately dismiss anything that is more than 3 inches off the beaten path. Don't let that discourage you.

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Glad to see you are still at it - there's a great deal to be said for trikes.

I finished a rebuild of my O/T trike late last Summer. It had been on the road for 12 years in all weathers, driven to Rome, South of France, above the Arctic Circle, all over Europe. it was time to freshen it up a little;

 

Love the trike! Looks like you are doing a great job of it, even though it's somewhat out of the ordinary.(!)
Anybody that has an IHC Scout in the background can't be all bad!

 

Love the Blackjack! Scouts are another passion....My first car was a 66' "800" with a truck cab. Used to plow with it and start cars during high school. Made enough to pay for gas and Saturday nights! (gas was 24.9 cents/gal).

 

What's new here??????

 

Where there's a Wheel, There's a Way !!! Go for it !!! Jeff

 

Been land speed racing in Ohio and Bonneville this summer.....
Since the last chapter (23) I have made the windscreens, added an overflow tank made from a Binks type paint sprayer, added horns, a tail light and have had the propane system inspected. I'm redoing the brake plumbing and will maybe need to modify the leverage on the clutch mechanism. Stay tuned for Chapter 24!

 

Here is chapter 24

 

Chapter 25 is fresh out of the oven. Tribaker starts and moves under its own power, though the votes are not in as to whether the chain drive can handle the big torque....

 

I like it. Sure would be a dull world if noone thought outside of the box. Please post more pictures as you make progress.

 

What I love best about “Rat Rods”, “Traditional Rods” is the ingenuity and thinking out of the box that goes into many projects I have seen. This one is no exception, get it done and we will see how it is and judge at that time, not before.

 

Turbostude, this is my first glimpse of your project, and I do think that such far-out-of-the-box thinking is what real hot rodding and customizing is all about. It's not about us all copying each other, or Boyd/Barris/Brizzo/blahblahblah. I know the HAMB has a more "traditional" focus, but it often just seems another form of copying what's been done over and over.

While this isn't a project I would take on myself, I've often dreamed about building a cyclecar trike of more modern components, and have drawn sketches, but that's as far as it went. I didn't have the time & money for kids, a house, a car, a pickup, a boat, a motorcycle, a collector car, two computer networks, and yes, a Scout, plus build the trike too. The trike lost out.

But I think your project has more Kool Factor than any ten Ford roadsters put together., and I KNOW you'll feel that fully the first time you place it in a real Kemp or Jalopy show. This will draw a BIG crowd. They won't all like it, but then lots of them seem to have prefab opinions anyhow.

Personally, I'd think about using dual 3" wide cog belts to drive the wheel (maybe already suggested, but I haven't read everything about the tadpole yet) but it wouldn't be traditional.

If you want to run diamond chain, I'd think about two chains on each side of the wheel. When I think about how my KZ900 used to stretch chains, with just a fraction of the power, torque, weight, and traction of the Tribaker, you'll probably be changing chains and sprockets like underwear.

EDIT: I just looked at chapter 25 & see you're figuring this out already.
Even with good alignment and heavy tension, it'll still toss/snap the chain under real pressure IMO.

 

Ulu,
Thanks for taking the time to write a thoughtful, lucid letter! I do feel that this thing is truly in the spirit of hot rodding. I agree about the final drive. Thought I would tip-toe thru the summer this way and then decide whether to stay with the tadpole configuration or stick a regular diff out back. I designed the whole thing so that it would be possible to simply bolt one to the swing-arms, remove the IRS diff and use a longer driveshaft. Not quite as novel I know, but if you read more of the blog, you will see that virtually everything on the vehicle is either modified or made from scratch, So there's still plenty to see!

 

It was the very least I could do sir, considering how much enjoyment I got just from the latest photos. Thanks for posting it all up on the web.

I did get to read through several chapters tonight, and it's thoroughly interesting.
I love the little rocket lights, and the dash is glorious.

Good luck getting to the show, and to reduce chain stretch you might try to fit much larger sprockets, front and rear. The bigger the sprockets, the longer they and chain will last.

 

A reverse Reliant Robin from the UK, it had a single front wheel and was EASY to flip over if you went into a corner too quickly.

 

I'm thinking perhaps dual 530 superbike chains and sprockets might do it.....

 

Using a calculated CG height of 21" and given the 63" track (same as an old Caddy), anti-roll bar in front, the calculations say I'm good cornering to over 1 G.

 

Remember...there are a few different grades of chain. Get the "gold" link chain, they are the tuffest.
The better (3) brands use pretty much the same I.D. as far as the gold outer and-or, gold inner and outer links to show off their top-o-the line chains.

Also remember, that the Sport bikes of today...while having fairly high power ratings (my 1000RR BMW is rated at 193hp at the crank !), it's all way up high in the rpm range (above 5000rpm). These engines don't have much torque in the lower rpm ranges, so the chains work fine. If 193 hp was rated like a car engine...it would probably snap the (even 2) chain fairly easilly.

Have fun.

Mike

 

LOL, yeah, there's some fun circle track videos of these racing on youtube.
If they roll over, just roll them back & keep racing. ;D

 

It'll probably get you around gently & without engine braking from speed.

I didn't study your drive geometry yet, but is your swingarm pivot at the ring gear centerline?

If not, that chain will loosen and tighten as the arm moves, and no spring tension idler of reasonable size will solve this. The forces are huge, once the chain gets just a tiny displacement at the idler.

When the chain is straight, that idler has basically infinite mechanical advantage against the chain. As it bends the advantage is lost in a rapidly accelerating way.

I've used this effect to move large objects by myself. You stretch a long cable from an anchor to an object and make it tight, then step in the middle of the cable. Untill the cable deflects an inch or two, my 165 lbs can drag tons across a concrete pad, a couple inches. The you lose advantage & it stops. Tighten the cable and step again, and it moves again.