The SB Cruiser : Amberwolf's 2WD Heavy Cargo Trike & Dog Carrier

[amberwolf]

WW was probably already closed by then, though I guess I could've had you bring my own stuff to me rather than my brother. I definitely appreciate the offer of future assistance if it's ever needed.



FWIW, these moped tires and tubes have been so much more reliable than bicycle versions that even without slime or protector strips, etc., I've run them for more than a year now (long enough to forget when I started) with no issues except that caused by a huge piece of debris across a lane (probably the big beam behind a truck or big car bumper, couldn't really tell at the time). I guess it's made me complacent.


Bicycle tires have been problematic pretty much the entire time I've been doing the cargo bike thing, requiring slime, protector strips, double tires and/or tubes (old ones sliced and placed as "liners" between tube and tire)--at least one of those and sometimes all of them, just for my regular commutes.

Back in my regular bicycle days I still needed at least the slime and strips.

And regardless of what I used, I'd still have to carry extra tubes, because stem failure or seam failure due to crappy tube manufacturing has always been an even worse problem than the actual road-debris-caused flats.

Since my goal is to ride without stopping to fix flats, because it sucks having to always head out up to an hour early anywhere I go just to ensure I am not late in the event of a failure. I tend to always allow a little extra time for whatever traffic delays/etc might come up, but that extra time every day adds up to a lot of time wasted for no good reason, if a preventive measure would negate the need for it.


Hence, the moped stuff. Still bicycle tire/tube on the front, but it's not usually the front that gets a flat, even on this monster. Had a few on CrazyBIke2, all stem failures IIRC, though there was one where the stop I had to make due to a car doing a stupid maneuver skidded the already-worn front tire enough to rip thru it and down to the tube; I think the tube survived but was damaged. Been a long while since then, so would have to dig up the post about it for details.


Anyway, the moped stuff, 16" types (20" bicycle equivalent), has been way better quality even with the cheap tubes. I do need to find and get some more tubes for spares, just for this eventuality, and I also need to get a new patch kit (I cannot find the one I presumably took out of the seatbox; it's not in pieces in the doggie-poo areas either, so Kirin and Yogi didn't eat it. :lol: )



I was thinking about the air pump and stuff, and am considering mounting it's guts underneath the trike's cargo deck, between the controllers, wiring into the lighting system directly, and then just keeping an extension air hose from it's kinda short one to reach the rear tires. I'd ahve to take the front wheel off to reach it, but that's not a big deal compared to the rear.

Most of the time to fix the rears I'd have to roll the trike on it's side anyway (assuming no dog or cargo in the back), so easy enough to reach the pump there, too. Then I'll ahve the "good" pump on the trike without using up cargo space in the seatbox.

 

[wturber]

WW was probably already closed by then, though I guess I could've had you bring my own stuff to me rather than my brother. I definitely appreciate the offer of future assistance if it's ever needed.

Nope. The one at Christown Spectrum mall is definitely open. I've stopped there a few times after Table Tennis.

And yeah, I get it that this was unusual. It'll probably never come up again on a Monday or Wednesday. ;^)

 

[amberwolf]

Probably not. Or if it does it'll be the one night you're doing something else instead. :lol:


I finally got time to closely inspect and test the failed tube, and it had (at least) two punctures--both of them on the *inner* circumference, not the sides or the tread area.

The smallest is just a pinhole, the largest looks almost like a fingernail "pinch". Neither matches the size or shape of anything on the rim itself, including the spoke nipple holes (which are taped over wtih two layers of electrical tape wrapped around the whole rim's circumference).

I even peeled off the tape to either side of the valve stem hole (one hole is on each side of the stem, a couple of inches away in one case and about three in the other), and found no sign that the tape was compromised or allowed the tube to be damaged by anything under it.


So I patched up teh holes, but not the usual way, as I don't know where the patch kit relocated itself to, nor can I find the jar of rubber cement I had. But I do have trashed tubes, and some spray-sealant that contains naptha and other things that should do the job of adhesive.

Roughed up the patches cut from old tube, and the areas around the holes, sprayed sealant on both, let it dry tacky, then stuck them together. Let it dry further, then I sprayed more sealant around the whole patch and tube area, and I'll let it cure overnight before I install it on a rim in a tire and test it. (has to go on a rim cuz otherwise the patches have nothing pressing on them, and are more likely to leak if they are going to.


While I had the tire and bicycle tube off anyway, I slipped the remains of the tube I'd cut the patches from over the bicycle tube as "extra armor" on it's outer circumference. Then reassembled, reinflated, and tested ok.

And I added Slime to both this tube and the patched tube, just in case.


I also did some repairs to the seatbox; it's been squeaking, apparently from the styrofoam inside it rubbing as the box flexes a bit. There's a tiny gap at the bottom edge of teh front, presumably from glue and wood drying out over the last year or so. I filled that with glue and shims, then added screws thru holes in the square tubing, going up a couple of inches into the wood frong panel. Will let that also cure overnight and see if it helps by tomorrow.


While I was at it, I also moved the controls cabling that has always run to the side of the IGH frame and main "keel", which I had intended to run along the top of the keel but kept forgetting to move whenever I was working on the area. Only remembered this time because I had to move it in order to redo the wood on the right front of the seatbox bottom edge. Looks better and is better protected now.

 

[amberwolf]

Remember that annoying squeak I just "fixed"? Well, I had thought it was just the upper horizontal tube of the "keel" passing thru the wood front of the seatbox rubbing against the wood causing it. And it might be.

But it wasn't wear/compression of the wood allowing it to happen--it was that stress fracture on the interior end of that horizontal tube, finally broken all the way thru, so the entire front end of the trike was supported only by the main keel tube, and was flexing enough to bash repeatedly against the broken-away section of upper tube and it's old seatpost support tube, breaking that away from the main keel tube just above it's welds. (so the welds held fine, but the metal itself sheared off).




Note the red tube on the right isn't a structural tube, it's just a part of teh chain guard (open-bottom tube). The one on the left is the upper keel tube stub.




Since it wasn't really a good design anyway, and was a leftover compromise from the pre-seatbox redesign, I removed the remaining bits of that, to replace it with a new diagonal/vertical tube reconnecting the remainder of the upper keel horizontal tube to the main keel tube, this time at the opposite angle, so it is less stressful for it to push against, and better transfers the load into the keel.







So it wouldn't be damaged by the welding, and so I could seal up the whole upper tube, I pulled the 12V lighting supply wiring out of the upper tube where it's resided since SBC was built, and now it runs with all the other control/etc cables down on the top of the main keel tube.

While I had the left (bolt-on) triangle cover off, I also took off some of the rivets of the rightside panel and welded the cracked righthand vertical tube (next to the old "ignition" key, above the gearshifter).
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=67833&start=600#p1324277

I actually was about to find a way to fit the whole lighting battery inside the front triangle, both to free up space in the seatbox and to remove the wire length entirely, when I got distracted by the dogs barking at people wandering thru the alley, who walked from the street to just past the end of my fence, peered around the edge of my fence, then walked back and forth along my fence in the alley, acting weird, keeping the dogs barking at them. By the time that was over I'd forgotten I was going to do that, until I was typing this stuff up. :/ So maybe next time I work on the trike (if there's even room in there, which I don't remember).


What I wanted to do when I made the seatbox was to put a vertical tube between the to and bottom rails of the front of the seatbox, so that the load would all be passed to both fo those tubes and down to the main keel tube. I didn't do it at the time for reasons I don't recall. I would've done it today, except it'd require removing the entire wood front panel (itself requiring removal of the IGH and teh chain to the rear end), and I'd have to relocate the circuit breaker and cutoff switch (both centered in the front of the seatbox right where the tube would have to go). That was just way more work than I could get done in the one day (along with the other household stuff I always have to get done on my days off), so I compromised again.



I also moved the lighting battery from the front of the seatbox to the back, shifting the traction battery forward that distance, and made a vertical "pocket" next to the lighting battery for the three wrenches I carry that are too large for the toolbag. Mostly it's moved so the little breaker on top of the pack doesn't get hit by the toolbag/etc bouncing on the many bumpy areas of the road, which can cause the breaker to be partially-off, taking out the entire lighting system. Usually this is only during the bumpiness, but sometimes it hits the last bump just right and holds the lights off, so I have to stop and get off the trike, and move the stuff off the breaker. :/



I removed a couple layers of the styrofoam on top of the traction pack, so there is now a bit more room in that side for the toolbag, so it isn't quite as tight a fit.



Rode around the yard (which is very uneven, especially since Kirin got here :lol: ) and the whole front end is way stiffer than it has been for a while; I don't recall exactly when it began because it was a slow process, but it's been since the summer sometime. But it's fixed now.

We'll see how it works on teh roads in my commute tomorrow.

 

[amberwolf]

So far it's been nice and stiff after the repair.

Since it's been colder for longer at night, the battery performance is a little degraded--acceleration from a stop to 20MPh at full charge had been almost down to 3 seconds back in October when a night in the low 70s or high 60s F was cold; now halfway thru December it's getting down to the low 40s or high 30s, and the highs are where the lows were.

So I've been parking the trike in the shed with the air circulation fan at the cieling on, and a 40w incandescent lamp under the seatbox to let the heat keep the battery warmer.

Without that, the battery gets down to about 50F at it's core and it's outer edges are ambient (about 40F at dawn). Acceleration is sluggish, takes about 5+ seconds to get to 20MPH from zero.

With that, it's staying in the 60s for the outer edges and the core a few degrees warmer, and accleration is about 4 seconds.

It's roughly the same on my way home, after the trike sits for 8-10 hours in the non-climate-controlled breakroom (which is in the high to mid 60sF ATM for most of the day, being on the uninsulated north wall of the building).

The pack doesn't self-heat enough to register on the modified BBQ sensor used to test with, for the 2.5 mile commute.


A separate issue is that sometime after I redid the wiring in October, but before it got colder, the electric braking power degraded; I don't recall if it was sudden change or not but it probably was. I suspect that the "three speed" select button on the controller toggled the mode to a lower-power one, and teh controller probably bases all of it's power monitoring on that, so both braking and acceleration are lowered by it. However--acceleration didnt' seem to be affected, only braking, so perhaps something else is wrong. :/

Braking is still sufficient with the unloaded trike, but I suspect carrying a heavier load or Yogi or Kirin, or pulling the trailer, I'd have a significantly longer braking distance. The front wheel I can still skid if I apply both brakes on it at full, but skidding means I'm not really braking much with it anymore.

Been working on some ways to move weight forward, such as putting the lighting pack in the triangle, possibly moving the built-in charger up there (but I don't think there's room). It's only a few pounds either way, but it might be enough to allow the front wheel to retain traction under hard braking.


I also ran across some of the parts for the hydraulic motorcycle brakes off the old 80's Suzuki dirtbike frame Mdd0127 had given me a while before the fire. If I find the rest of the parts I could potentially make adapters to mount the discs on the inboard side of the rear wheels, and the calipers on the frame, and I'm pretty sure THAT would be able to stop the trike PDQ.

Either that or rip the recycled-materials frame apart from the torque transfer.



Now I just have to stop puking my guts up (the head cold I've had for days appears to have moved down), so I can sleep enough to work tomorrow. (it's taken some time to write this post between bouts). Wish there were enough people left at my workplace to allow me to stay home instead. Bleh.

 

[amberwolf]

New issue: The decades-old toggle switch I used for my turn signals began malfunctioning now that it's gotten colder.

I have to take the control/housing unit off the handlebars and get the swtich out to see what's actually wrong inside, but what I suspect is the very old plastic base of it got brittle enough in the cold that it's cracked, so sometimes things work and sometimes tehy don't, dpeneding on exactly how I toggle it and any pressure applied downwards on teh toggle (which happens mostly due to the bumps of the road as my thumb is on the switch changing it left or off or right).

I've got a number of these switches; I'll probably swithc it out for a different type to see if it lasts longer (but they're all really old). Is too cold out there right now to do it (unless I heat up the shed a lot more, so my hands will work right), so it'll have to be tomorrow; it's supposed to be sunny though only mid-60s F for a high.

 

[amberwolf]

I accomplished four things on the trike today:

--Fixed (replaced) the turn signal switch

--Eliminated the blinker's occasional clicking when it was not actually engaged

--Fixed the "reverse gear" function

--Made *both* motors do reverse (only left did before)


It only took till about 8pm to do it. THen I've spent the last few hours writing and dozing in turns, and then when almost done writing, hobbling quickly to the bathroom (apparently I'm not as over being sick as I thought when I started writing this).


First up was the turn signal switch. That involved taking the grip off, then the throttle, then the brakelight lever, then the control unit.

I thought I would just replace the switch, but when I opened up the unit


I dropped bits of the downlighting switch (which is several separate parts held together only by the control unit's housing) and couldn't find them on the ground, though Kirin did try to help (promptly covering them up with dirt and dog hair and bits of chewed sticks), and Yogi came over to assist when we still couldn't find them. Then they ran off to see what the ice cream van was bringing....



So...I could've modified the housing to use yet another regular toggle switch to control the downlighting, or just wired it "on", but I really just wanted it fixed quick (I still feel weak and exhausted, though not feeling really sick anymore). So I grabbed the very similar control unit (also from a Fusin, by WuXing) I'd set aside to use on Raine's trike (once the lighting wiring gets done), and outright replaced the whole control unit.



This one only had six (two cables of three) wires for the light (2), horn button (2), and turn signal (3), so I opened it up and found the light and horn had a common wire, which if I was going to use it for a horn would be great. But it's my reverse-gear engage button, which I hold while backing up, and isn't connectd to the lighting system power, but just to the controller / motor system.

So I had to add a pair of wires for the horn switch, and disconnect the common between the light/horn switches. Since there was about four feet of wire on each set of three wires, I cut one of them off at about 9 inches, enough to reach the splice points on the main handlebar harness for the turn signals, and then another 9 inch set, which I connected to the horn button (2 wires, leaving third unused).

Somewhere in this process I dropped the horn button itself...thankfully the one off the old unit fits exactly the same.... :/

I was going to cut the final cable (light switch) down too, but I found the wire pair in the main harness that were for the downlighting slightly melted together. This happened back several weeks, when I shorted the lighting power out (I forget exactly what happened but it's posted somewhere back there). So rather than cut the cable I just ran it parallel to the main harness (which while it has plenty of extra wires I don't want to risk mleting control cables if I somehow short the lighting power again. ), and spliced it in down at the connection points in the enclosed triangle area.

Then I reassembled the stuff on the handlebars and readjusted it.



That took care of fixing the turn signals, and because the wireing is also replaced, the blinker activating when not in use.

Kirin and Yogi were pretty bored with the whole thing, just waiting for me to pay attention to them and play:





Next up, fixing the reverse function.

I was pretty sure the problem was down at the controller, because it stopped working when I was redoing stuff down there, the power wiring I think. So most likely I pulled a wire and broke it, either the brake input or hte ground to it.

I rolled the trike over on it's side, and quickly found the brake input wire was pulled out of the controller itself--not completley because it has a diode on ti's end that's bigger than the hole the wire comes thru.

Took contrller off, and opened it up, verifying the problem. My legs were already numb from sitting on them, so I didn't bother getting up to go find a new diode (lead broken off at it's base, so cant' be reused). I just cut it off the wire, then resoldered it back on the E4 pad inside the controller (was guessing that I remembered that correctly, only beause a tiny bit of diode lead was still sticking out the bottom of the pad). Thankfully I was right, as I didn't wanna come in to check this thread
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=68501&hilit=controller#p1037209
Before reassembling it, I tested the controller and reverse function ok, by shorting the wires (didnt' want to get up to push the button or use the throttle, so I wet my fingers and put them on the sthrottle signal and 5v wires for that part).




It was getting dark and cold at this point, and I could neither see well enough to continue, nor move my hands well enough to keep working. But I couldn't just leave it at this point, as I have to work tomorrow and need it for transportation. There's not enough room in any of the sheds to lay it on the side to work on the bottom, though, without moving a whole bunch of stuff I simply don't have the energy (or time) to move out of the shed, and there's nowhere lese I can actually get the trike into that I can light and warm up (it's just too wide to fit thru the front door after having to widen the rightside frame to fit the HSR3548).

I remembered I have a 1000w halogen work light, from before the fire, that the cord was cut from by thieves after the fire, that i never did get around to putting a cord on. I'd dug it out to do that earlier this year, and forgot after having no time to do it for months. So I did that, but I didn't have any normal 110vac plugs I could use...just twistlock 220vac types in a couple sizes, and some other odd stuff, and a few 3prong plugs that have horizontal rather than vertical blades. At this point I was about ready to just shove the wries into a socket bare, so I grabbed some pliers and twisted the blades vertical, then bent them a bit to get them closer to gether so they'd fit in a socket. then took an unused bare outlet and shoved the plug in hard to force-form the blades to it, pried it out, and wired it to teh cord from the work light.

Set up teh work likght near the trike, and plugged it in, and now had myself a heater and a light sufficient to keep working (but it took at least 30-40 minutes to do all this, I think).




Then I reassembled and reinstalled the controller, and then I remembered teh other controller also has a reverse function. but I'm using that function to make it go forward, because I had some sort of problem that I can't recall in making it go forward with the right hall/phase combination, but doing it in reverse worked fine, then using the reverse function to make it go the right way.

So I can't just parallel the two reverse wire sets and run off the siwtch. But I *can* use a relay, if it has two poles, and NC and NO contacts for each.

I pried myself up off the ground, and wnet in search of a relay, and foun don e in only a few minutes. But it's a 24v coil, so i also spent a few more minutes looking for a resistor that'd reduce the current thru the relay coil from my traction pack (which is between 50 and 58v most of the time. don't want to burn out the coil. it's a big 5ohm 50w resistor. I screwed both of them to the underside of the cargo deck like the controllers. Now the current thru the coil is only 15mA, and it switches fine.

So I wired up the Grin controller (which needs revers to go forward) to the NC contacts of one pole, and the C-SMD controller to the NO contacts of the other pole. Powered the system on, and tested but the left motor runs reverse. :?

Powered off and tested continuity, and found both the NO and NC contacts were shorted. I closely examined the relay, and found tha tdesptite the diagram on the side, it is NOT isolated from one side to the other--even though there are two separate sets of contacts, they are all joined as pairs.

It'll still work, but it means I ahve to use the grounds as the common (if they wer isolated it wouldn't matter). and the signals on the NC and NO contacts. So I did that, and retested, and now they both go forward (relay unpowered). I powered the relay by hand with some temporary wires to the charging port, and it correctly switches both motors direction.


Since that worked, I needed a permanent power source for the relay, and chose the unused B+/B- wires off teh CA shunts. Ran a pair of conductors from there, one to the relay's coil, the other to one wire from teh switch up on the bars. The other wrie from the switch to the relay's resistor.





Tested, and...nothing--reverse doesn't work. :?

Since I know the relay works (verified by shorting across the switch wires, which does engage the relay), it means eitehr the switch is bad (cuz I guess that's not been tested in my previous stuff above, and its' a differen switch from when this was working weeks ago), or my wiring is bad between teh swtich and here.

I tested it startinga t the eastiest place, teh wiring inside the triangel (cuz it just had to be unbloted, instead of having to unwrap all the stuff on the bars and dig into it htere. I took the insulation off the two wires where they connect from the main harness to the four-wire (two used) cable that goes to the back end, and touched them togehter, and no cange. So probably not the buttonswitch. continuity tested the wires from there to the back, and they're ok...then I realized:

I had a different pair of wires connected tan the ones actually used on the button. When I cut the wires off the controller so I could do the relay thing, I somehow missed notign which ones were the right ones, and got one of the ones I'd used, and one of the unused ones. Fixed that, and poof--it works now.



So that makes the button control the relay to switch both of the motors into reverse mode (and then the independent throttles can be used to reverse slowly, or quickly, or turning while reversing, etc.).

The bottom wiring mess as it is now:



I tested it and it works around the yard, though it'll take some doing to get used to handling the throttles to backup slowly and precisely.

 

[amberwolf]

Nothing failed on the commute today.


I had an idea while posting something else, to make the old CrazyBike2 more like the trike
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12500&p=1341783#p1341783
and while I was thinking about *that*, I had an idea for building a new trike frame from scratch, too, that would extend the box frame of teh seatbox and cargodeck downward using a trellis-like edge, just enough to stiffen the whole structure and to give a space for a "tray" of batteries under the deck and seatbox, though I'm too tired to sketch it up now (i might forget completley so i'm posting this note more to myself than other readers).

Kinda based on the long "ice trailer" in a recently-reopeend thread here:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=46183&start=25#p1341767

 

[amberwolf]

Was leaving for work today when I came out to find the right rear tire completely flat. It'd been fine the night before when parked, and even more than an hour later when I remembered to go back out and plug in the charger and warming-lamp, so I don't know what caused it.

I aired it back up and it appeared to be fine, but just in case I put more slime in it. Before doing that, I pulled the wheel off, and the tire/tube off, and examined the tube (no holes) and the tire (nothing sticking in or out of it) and then reassembled it, and then reinflated it, and ran it off-ground at full speed for a minute to spread the slime around.

It held the air for hte ride to work, but it did drop during the ~10 hours I was there, by about 3-4psi.

I reaired it to teh full 35psi just before I left work, so we'll see where it's at in the morning.



Since I now have reverse-gear working, I've been considering putting a "back up light" on the lighting bar, activated only while the button is held down. I have a number of white LED lights that'd work for that, some of which run on 5v, some on 12v, and some on "48v". I could probably use any of the 12v ligths in series with the 5ohm 50w resistor that's part of the switch circuit; that restricts the current flow to about 15mA. Not sure if it'll be very bright, though. Would be nice if it was bright enough to light up the area behind me if I ahve to back up in teh dark.

 

[amberwolf]

Still aired up so far.

Forgot to post the power usage from yesterday, when it was very windy from various directions
57.8vstart
55.4vrest
51.4vmin
4.456miles
20.1mph max
14.7mph avg
18m06s triptime
3347miles total odo
70.4wh/mile (was 86wh/mile for the trip to work in the wind, which had calmed to normal by the time I left).
5.731Ah
315.15wh
5.7723Ah fwd
0.0411Ah regen
0.7%regen
109.2Amax
-25.1Amin

 

[amberwolf]

Has stayed aired up fine since the above.

But I still went ahead and got a couple of replacment tubes, that arrived yesterday afternoon. Haven't installed them, but am now carrying them with me on teh trike if I need them.




That good stuff aside, I was too worn out from too little sleep to be safe to operate power tools today, so I didn't get anything I'd planned to do on this or the other trike done.



Bad night with lots of huge-scale fireworks (like the ones in professional huge displays, like cannons, not just little strings of firecrackers, or even stuff like M80s or similar; this is serious stuff you're not supposed to be able to buy on your own here) in the area, terrifying the dogs and making it impossible to stay asleep more than a few minutes at a time. Whenever the fireworks stopped for long enough to calm down the dogs (which for Yogi usually takes over an hour till he stops shaking and panting and finally is able to doze off, and the time gets longer the longer the fireworks keep going on), I'd be able to doze off afterward. But then another one would go off, usually a series of them, waking us all and panicking Yogi again.


Kirin isn't as scared as Yogi, but when he panics, she gets more scared, cuz she doesn't know what to do on her own and follows his lead. When she does get scared she gets up and prances around which then gets Yogi more panicked, so I have to keep her laying down while I try to calm Yogi down.


Tonight there were no fireworks at all, which seems strange since usually when people get hold of these things they go on for days blowing htem up late at night, usually starting around 10-11pm and going on until dawn. I'm guessing they only do it late because it's more likely to piss everyone around them off and cause them grief, because the people that do it are just hateful and stupid, and don't give a damn about anyone else in the world but themselves, and can't be bothered to think at all about what they are doing to everyone else.

Same thing with all those people that drive around in cars with booming bass, shaking all the people, houses, animals, etc., within blocks of wherever they are, as if the person was standing there kicking them in the head, beating on their doors and walls, etc.

Assholes that just don't give a flying frock about anyone but themselves, every single one of them.

 

[amberwolf]

Since there's little likelihood I'll be able to get any vacation from work for at least another couple of months at the rate things are going, I decided to use my day off today to change out the headset and do a small part of the tiller/steering stuff I had planned to wait for vacation to do (since there isn't time to do all of it in one day).

I got the FSA "the pig" headset new, based on recommendations over here:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=92001#p1342147
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=92001#p1342254
as a holiday present, because the existing headset is getting looser and looser, and tightening it via the stem clamp and cap bolt doesn't really help, but the headtube isn't deformed or cracked, so it's probably the bearings or races, and I don't have any other used stuff that's any better to fit a threadless steerer.

It's a heavy headset, all-steel except for the "cone" portions to center it on the steerer at the top, which are aluminum and very tall (lots of surface area to spread load). Big 1/4" bearings on the bottom, which is good for this kind of load.

The headset part actually took about 3x as long as I expected, because either I'm a lot weaker than I should be, or it was just a lot harder to do than expected.

Taking everything apart was about as easy as I figured, though I had trouble with the long bolts clamping the headlight assembly to the tiller sides, because I loosened those *after* I cut the welds securing the 1/2" square tube "temporary braces" (from like a year ago :lol across the broken tiller to the back of the headlight assembly tubes, so the weight was all shifted and bound up the threads of the bolts.

The problem with the old headset was fairly apparent once I got it apart--it's mostly the crown race, which not only has a bite out of it, it's very worn. I wouldn't have expected that, especially with a steel race. I probably have other races, but if this one's this bad off, it's probably chewed up some of the bearing surfaces too, even if I can't see the damage, and that may just damage the new race (or eat into the cup race, etc).

This is the whole headset, then pics of the crown race, then crown bearing, crown cup, top race. top bearign, top cup










I'll save this headset to put back on CrazyBike2 (with a different crown race) if I ever get the chance to recommision that bike.

And I already have The Pig headset, so no reason not to use it.


I knocked out the old cups using a piece of old junk fork tube cut in quarters partway along it's length, as suggested by Buk__ in the same thread:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=92001#p1342635

I couldn't use that fork's threaded steerer as the cup installer, though, because it's too short. So I used a whole fork/steerer off an old Schwinn Traveller that has a super-long headtube/steerer (probalby a frame for someone nearly 7 feet tall!), and then some stacked old cups and races out of the bin to fill the unthreaded space between it and the washers pressing onto the lips of the new cups. (forgot to get a pic of that, but here's one of the fork itself, plus a bmx fork I used part of for another rpeiar later in this post)



This was almost the hardest part, because even with all the moving bits (and the headtube and cups) greased, it was very hard to turn the wrench holding the threaded cap pushing down on the stack; I kept slipping and losing grip of the wrench or the claw hammer I was using to hold the fork legs with (too little leverage to just hold the legs or crown myself), and having to let go of everything, get down on the ground (a process, sometimes), grab whatever I'd dropped, then get back up and setup a grip on everything again, then try wrenching again. I think this took over an hour to finally do. Most of the time this would take about ten minutes including setting up. :/



Getting the new crown race onto the steerer was about as hard, because even though I had a tube (the headtube of the Schwinn frame, since it was handy) that was exactly the right diameter to perfectly fit the steerer tube, and longer than the steerer by just enough, I couldn't tap the crown on beause they're suspension forks and they just absorb almost all of every tap (the wood block protecting the headtube would absorb the rest). So first I had to use a cargo strap between the wheel hub and the fork crown to crank down and compress the suspension fully. It only took me about 20 mnutes of fiddling around to figure out I needed to do this, which is dumb because I've done this exact thing almost every other time I've installed a new crown race on a suspension fork.

ONce that was done it was easier but still not as easy as it should've been, as again I kept dropping the hammer or the wood block....


Finally, I got the whole thing assembled, then I just needed to add teh tiller/stem clamp, and tighten it all down with the cap/bolt, etc.

Here's what it looks like installed:




But before that, since I'd had to cut the supports anyway, I wanted to do the *real* repair on the tiller I'd planned nearly a year ago and haven't done beause the temporary repair still worked, even if it was fugly.

So I cut away the entire temporary supports off the back of the headlight support arms, as well as the rear 3 inches or so of the arms (not needed).

Then I cutoff about 2" forward of the break in the tiller (at the bend where I"d also drilled a wire exit hole), and about 3" rearward of the break. This removes just the curved area, and leaves the straight parts.

Then I took a BMX U-fork, and cut one entire leg off the fork, icnluding the curve--this would become the replacement curved area, as I don't have a bender and we used Dogman's to bend the tiller originally while he was here helping me start this trike nearly three years ago. This is a steeper curve than the orignal, so the tiller is going to be higher at the bars end by at least a couple of inches, maybe 4+, so I might have to flip the bar-tiller clamp over the other way, and have the bars below the tiller rather than above. Will see after riding it once it's all done.

This fork's tubing is exactly the same ID as the OD of the old toptube (downtube? don't rmeember) of the old tenspeed that became the tiller, so it *just* slips onto it (with a little encouragement on the rough spots), after the paint was removed from the overlapping areas of the tiller tube.

I notched the forward (straight) end of hte fork tube so it would overlap the stem-end area of teh tiller tube welded to teh stem clamp, rather than simply replacing that whole end of the tube, for a bit of extra stiffness and strength by the doubled up tubing.

I cut the forward end of the old bars-end of the tiller at an angle so it would fit correctly down into the curved area of the fork tube, and still overlap as much as possible.

Then I welded all that together, and it's pretty stiff. Not perfectly so, and it's not torsionally or laterally quite as stiff as it was when supported by the "temporary" braces off the headlight brackets. After I test ride it around a bit, if I find it's any handling issue, I'll use some thin rod (rather than tube) to triangulate the tiller with the headlight brackets--but I'll have to build a clamp (maybe weld the rods to a seatpost clamp to slip over the tiller tube) to allow the rods to be removable from the tiller with the headlight assembly, so I can easily take that off for servicing either the lights or the steerer/headset/etc area--when the stuff was welded together, it made for a number of difficult repairs that I couldn't do roadside during the various experiments and stuff as I've worked thru changes on the trike.


After I got all this welded together, I retied the cabling to the tiller tube, neatening it up a lot. Some of it used to run between the tiller and the headlight brackets and/or the "temporary" braces, and some was on one side of the tiller, some on the toher. Now it's all on the left side, except for the cable for the front-front brakes, which is on the right side. I was also able to shorten the speedo sensor wire by a couple of feet; the way I'd had it routed was crazy and wierd, and I dont' know why I ran it that way.

This is what the assembly looks like now:

View attachment 9







I did have to repair the lefthand throttle cable--somehow I cut partway thru ti while cutting the broken sections off the tiller, even though I'd had all the wires held away from the tiller at the time. Easy fix, just annoying to have to do.

I almost ran myself over with the trike though, because I'd had the trike powered on when I started the repair (becuase I found the problem due to that motor not repsonding to throttle after tying the wiring down). After Id' cut and stripped the wires, forgetting I stil had it powered on, I connected the signal first, then the 5v power wire, and without the ground connected that gave full throttle to the system, which without me on there is quite a bit more than with me (as I probably weigh about half what the trike does, at a guess). Since I was on my knees beside the trike, I was able to fall backwards out of the way (barely) as it shot forward, and since that pulled the wires apart it stopped accelerating, but it still moved a couple of trike lengths before it stopped.

I've read about that problem before with wiring issues, but I don't think I've ever done that to myself before. Definitely gotta remember never to do taht again.





I didn't have time to do any of hte headlight-housing/mounting changes I wanted to do, like bulding an adjsutable-aim frame/support for the Kia headlight, and a cover around it that makes it look like part of the trike, rather than a piece of junk found on the roadside and ziptied on (which is actually what it is, of course).









Someday I'd like to try building remote-steering setup for the trike, borrowing the necessary parts from CrazyBike2 for the test, and see how it works on teh trike since I've used the tiller steering since it was built almost 3 years ago, and am used to it. Teh tiller creates a couple of problems, such as having to swing the bars out really wide when turning very sharply, but this is really only an issue at low speeds like turning around inside a parking space (so I don't have to back out or back in), or similar situaitons. But when it does come up, it means basically letting go of the outboard grip or else leaning way out and forward on that side (uncomfortable at best, impossible sometimes), and being able to only easily use the throttle for the motor that's on the inboard side, which means turning under power is difficult.

On the road it's rarely an issue, as it doesn't take much steering input to change directions, and I can also use more power on the outboard side to push myself into the turn, since there's indpeendent left/right throttles.

I forget ATM what the other big issue was.

To setup remote steering, I'd need ot add a vertical pivot tube/bearing at the top of the front triangel, mounted at it's rear edge, but on a tube extending rearward and up a bit so the bars would end up in the same place they are now, with a "steerer" tube for the bars to clamp to, and build a steerer tube clamp for it and for the fork's steerer that have brackets on them for the tie rod bearings to bolt to. (I'd just unclamp the tiller from the bars and steerer to swap the existing bars over to the remote steering stuff).

One of these days, if I get to use my vacation time, I might get around to this (there's so *many* things I want to build, and never enough time for even a tenth of them--I forget about most of the ideas long before I get time to try them out).



But enough of that...even Kirin is tired of it and coming after me...

 

[amberwolf]

I test rode it today, and the steering feels much better than before; more "precise" at any speed.

The new headset bearings are so much smoother than the old that it "flops" around when parked, where before I could position the tiller and leave it, within a fairly large range of angles. Now it doesn't stay except at a sideways cant, which is fine, just different.

There's now no juddering of the headset/steerer/fork during braking, although the fork itself wiggles at the lowers (no surprise).

The new higher angle/position of the bars feels ok so far, and clears my knees much better when pedalling during a turn. I think this is probably closer to how I had it originally before the tiller broke; I know the temporary repair made it a little lower, and possibly the headset issues made it even lower.

But...braking power sucks again.

WHen I took stuff off to do the headset stuff, I also took the brake cables off, and to better reroute them and prevent binding during turns (a problem that causes brake squeal sometimes) I swapped them between the front/front (which now has the short cable with two pieces of housing in series) and front/rear brakes (which now has the long cable with a single run of housing)

I tried everything, including a different set of cables and housings, cleaning the pads and rim (I even tried very lightly sanding the rim's braking surfaces), readjusting pad angles, etc., and I can't get it back to the braking force I had before, which doesn't make any sense. Pads are not glazed; the front-back ones (the koolstop "ebike" gray pads) are barely even worn. The front-front ones (koolstop salmon) are worn a bit, but they were like that already.

I'm basically back to the same braking power I'd have with a single set of crappy brakes, but it takes both sets to do it, and is much less than it had been.

Now, if I use both hands on a single lever, I can squeeze hard enough to almost get the old braking back, with the lever almost down to the bars. If I use both hands on both levers at the same time, I get about the same as the old braking I got with one lever.

I thought maybe it was the angle at which I was able to grip the lever now, so I rearranged the bars/clamp to put them back down lower, and it made zero difference. So I put the bars back up again.

I tried different angles for the brake pads, too, so they'd engage the rim surface differently, but everything other than what I started with (parallel to the rim) was just worse.

So...I dunno. Just doesn't make sense to me, and I'm not sure what to try next.


I use the electric braking primarily, so the mechanical ones aren't necessary most of the time, but if anything goes wrong with the electric braking I *have* to be able to stop with the mechanical ones. Technically, I need to be able to skid the braked wheel on dry level pavement with them....

 

[amberwolf]

After I ran out of ideas to fix the braking, I had a bit of time, so I made a decision to make a completely different kind of headlight mounting bracket than I had planned, which would be really easy to fabricate and mount, so at least it wouldn't be held on by zipties.



It's also possible to aim / adjust the beam, by stacking washers or other shims between the bracket plate and the headlight mounts, different thicknesses of them on different bolts--but it turns out that it is aimed very well as-is, no shims needed yet. These are the mounts, two on the left side and one on the right (between the screws)




Basically I took a piece of 1/8" mild steel off a retail fixture, that's a little more than 6" wide with an L-shape almost 2" wide, and cut a section around 8" long off of it to start the bracket from. Cut a hole in the middle to clear the bulb mount.


Three bolts bolted thru the bracket so the headlight can be slipped onto them, then nuts threaded onto the bolts inside the hollow headlight mounts. Have to do it this way so I can mount hte bracket itself to the trike, as the headlight is large enough to block access to those mounting holes, so it has to be moutned to the trike first, then headlight atached. But cant run the bolts thru the brakcet after mounting cuz the trike's stuff is in teh way of that. So the bolts hae to be there to start with.


This bracket is just a bit taller than the original rectangular 1970s-tech car headlight bracket, so I can drill four holes in it, two at the top and two at the bottom edges, to match that bracket's old faceplate mounting holes (that held the old headlight in), to bolt this bracket to the trike.





This is what it looks like painted (so it doesn't rust) and mounted on the trike, before attaching the headlight.




I also cut away all the extraneous "trim" plastics of the headlight, so it would be a very flat front surface, so I could glue a flat clear plastic sheet (saved from some retail signage) to it to keep water off the hot bulb inside (is due to rain tonight, tomorrow, and tomorrow night, and if it rains during a ride it'll splatter on the bulb and possibly break it from thermal shock). YOu can see it in the pics of the headlight as mounted, below, but I forgot to take pics of the assembly stage.








So it's very bare-looking from what it was, but it also looks a LOT better than it did, and it is MUCH more sturdy.

I would still like to make a housing/wrap for the back of the headlight to make it look more like part of the trike, more solid; and maybe a bit more streamlined (like that really matters on this behemoth :lol: ).

Top and side views; you can also see I got Tiny's avatar remounted, along with her collar (since this was really "her" trike).

 

[amberwolf]

Commute went fine for the new bits, but the really heavy rain on the way home (whcih had been going for nearly an hour in varying strengths, long enough to turn most of the road into "river" except at the crowns) caused a few problems.

The headlight stayed dry inside the new cover just fine, at least. (it would not have without it)


The river-lanes (up to the curbs at the edges and not really any road surface visible on parts of it) going thru the road to the first intersection were so deep and wide I couldn't avoid going thru it, and the splash from the rear wheels probably soaked the whole underside of the cargo deck. The controllers are mounted in a way that the boards are on top inside the cases, so any water that does get in won't settle on the electronics, at least. But nothing is completely waterproof (doesn't normally need to be, for 99.99% of my riding), and the most recent addition, the reversing-relay, caused the first problem--though it's possible it'd've been a problem regardless.

Up to and just beyond the intersection itself, everything worked fine, but as soon as I let off the left throttle (the MXUS) (normally I only use one motor for cruising, and both for acceleration--which motor I use as single depends on the situation and power needed), the MXUS's controller detected the "reverse" input was active, even though it wasn't, and when I tried to use it while still crusing, it wouldn't respond. That controller (unlike the Grinfineon running the HSR3548 on the right) requires the wheel to come to a complete stop before it can actually reverse, but if you activate reverse while it's moving forward, it basically shuts down the controller until the wheel stops. So now it wont' work in forward or reverse.

No problem, I still have the rightside, still cruising fine with that--it hasnt' received a reverse signal (if it did, it'd immediately reverse, even if cruising at 20MPH; I don't know what that would do but I'd rather not find out). But...as soon as I stop at the next intersection a few dozen feet away, the left motor tries to reverse when I hit the throttle (the right motor operates normally). So I'm stuck with acceleration that's a LOT less than usual; thankfully there's almost no one on the roads so I don't have to get out of their way like that.

THe problem isn't water in the reverse button module up on the bars, or it's wiring, or else both motors would try to reverse, so it has to be in the relay or in the left motor's controller wiring input from the relay. Couldn't stop to find out; the rain was too much to be able to stop and work on it anywhere (nothing sheltered).

Anyway, as I kept riding, there was a long stretch almost a quarter mile without a river in the road, and with no one else on the roads I was able to stay on the crown, and the stuff underneath dried out enough that the reverse problem went away (for a while--it happened again several times, anytime I went thru puddles, basically).



The next problem started during that quarter mile stretch. I noticed it first as "locking up" of the pedal chain (whiel I can't contribute power at cruising speed, I keep pedalling to keep my legs warm). If I pedalled backwards just a partial revolution and then forwards, it'd work again, but the next little bump in the road would lock them up again. I haven't had this problem since fixing the frame inside the seatbox, so being suspicious of a frame problem, I did pull into a drier (relatively--it wasn't a lake yet) parking lot and check inside the seatbox, and tilted the trike over sideways a little, taking a look with the flashlight at the chainline, frame, wheel, etc, and didn't see anything obvious, but the rain made it hard to see anything, so I continued on.

As I turned around in the parking lot, the left tire began to rub on the frame, which it shouldn't be able to do. I "jinked" my weight to the side and it fixed that temporarily (something I had to do back when I hadnt' gotten the wheel stuff worked out, and had this sort of problem, and after I broke the axle on the X5304, too). I had to do this several times on teh way home.


Eventually I got home, no further problems other than those two, though the yard was so wet and muddy in places where the dogs play/run/walk and keep the grass from growing (quite a bit of it, from the gate to the shed, unfortunately) that I had some rooster-tails of water/mud into the fender wells (which still don't have tops ) here and there. Woulda looked impressive in daylight if anyone had been aruond to see it.

Dogs didnt' greet me; even Kirin had the sense to stay inside (Yogi was probably hiding from the lightning/thunder on the bed until I came in).


It was still raining an hour after I got home, and by then I was just too wrn out to go back out and check the triek's problems (especially the wheel-shifting/rubbing problem, which could be something serious).

Have to check in the morning, and hope that if anything is wrong I can fix it before I have to go to work.

 

[amberwolf]

No pics yet, will get them when I do the real repair, but the problem with the wheel rub / chain issue is that the clamping dropout on the inboard left axle broke in half, with the rear half broken off the frame, hanging by the pinch bolt.

I can see what happened, though--the pinch bolt is loose, and the axle nut ont eh outboard side is loose, too (despite nordlocks)....almost certainly what happened is when I was doing all the controller reversing/etc repair stuff and/or having the tube problems a few weeks back, I didn't retighten the pinch bolt and the axle nut--the axle fits (or used to) pretty tightly in there, so until the problem last night with the reversing issue on left side happened, where at least twice I hit both throttles from a stop and one went reverse and the other forward, stressing teh dropout even more than usual, it didn't actually fail.

For now, with insufficient time before work to do a plan for disassembly and reweld, I just put bigger thicker washers (over 1/8" thick) on the pinchbolt's nut to better spread the clamping power across the surface of the dropout's axle clamp, and hopefully it'll hold at least thru today's commute to work and back home. Then I might have a plan by then to make a better permanent repair (( already have an idea, just have to work out the details), and maybe do the repair when I get home if I'm not too exhausted to handle power tools, or in the morning if I can get enough sleep (didn't last night).

 

[amberwolf]

This is the washer stack holding the broken-off clamping piece; you can see how thick a washer I had to use to get the system to clamp. But it did hold up for the whole ride just fine.







This is the broken off piece; the shiny areas are where I had to grind bent/cracked bits to get it all to fit tightly enough back together. I didn't get a pic of those areas before then, but they were clean breaks, bent and sheared from the forces on it.






It was late (around 1030pm) before I got home and started on the repair, so I wanted to avoid the grinder or other loud tools, so I used the piece of 1/8" thick steel I'd cut from the new headlight bracket's center (so the bulb/wiring could go thru the bracket), to "fill in" the space between the frame and the clamp, to brace it against this sort of failure in the future. (which shouldn't be able to happen anyway as long as I don't leave the axle nut and pinch bolt loose ).






I had a small problem with the clamp shifting as I welded it, and didn't notice till too late--at a later time I'll ahve to cut it and reweld it, because I left it spread just a bit mroe than a millimeter too far. I had to "shim" the axle to get it to clamp (the thin piece of metal sticking out of the top of the gap between the clamps), and then tighten the nut.




We'll see how it holds up.

 

[RTIII]

Amberwolf,

Sorry, buddy, but in my opinion as an engineer, that's not going to hold.

It's almost a 100% certainty that you didn't leave the fastener there loose, but rather the reason it came loose was that the metal plate that bolt tries to tighten wasn't flat against the axle shaft but angled. That will NEVER hold for any length of time. Further, trying to clamp a welded on part, especially in the thicknesses used here, just isn't going to work, either.

You need a better design idea and here's it: Take this piece you have in your hand here:

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/download/file.php?id=226963

Remove it - cut it out again - and while at it, I'd cut off the part that's touching your thumb in that picture and use the moment to "clean it up" a bit. Paint it when done with the mods outlined here, and, why not the frame area now exposed, too! 8)

Then, take a piece of 1/8" thick flat bar stock, drill a hole in it just big enough for the large, smooth part of the axle shaft to fit through and convert the part you have in your hand in the above image into a specialized piece of angle iron. The new section with hole you just drilled should have the hole you drilled either be centered to the elongated slot, or wherever on that range you think it should be - centered would be my guess - then weld them together such that the bore of the hole is just at the perfect depth relative to the inside surface of the old part being welded to (see notes below about the flats when considering the exact depth). NOTE that the new plate with hole to be welded on is going to go inboard of all your previous framing here, so the bore of the hole supports the wheel on the smooth part, not the threaded area with flats.

Now, to improve it a little, this problem has to be solved, too, and we'll do it now:

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/download/file.php?id=226969

The problem to be fixed is that the plate on the right in this image must be parallel with the axle shaft. The angle here means it will never tighten properly - ever. So, to help it be parallel, take one or more slivers of thin flat bar and weld them to the new angle plate, probably at least two (avoiding the slotted hole of course) to make a shoulder for the flat of the axle to rest against so that the newly made angle iron will want to be both flat against and also perpendicular to the shaft, depending on which part of the 90 angle we're talking about. Its' hard to see from your images, but maybe the same on the other side would be helpful, too. ... Laying these strips perpendicular to the shaft axis puts your welds far away from the axle, and you can grind as necessary to keep the welds from interfering. ... NOW you have something that'll hold and yet be adjustable and won't come loose so easily, easy to make, and requires on the tinniest quantity of materials.

Best of luck!

 

[amberwolf]

Sorry, buddy, but in my opinion as an engineer, that's not going to hold.

Probably not, which is why I'd noted that it's temporary until I have time (hopefully my next days off) to redo it.

Thank you for chiming in on this; I've added some notes and details below, and some questions, if you have time to read thru it.

It's almost a 100% certainty that you didn't leave the fastener there loose, but rather the reason it came loose was that the metal plate that bolt tries to tighten wasn't flat against the axle shaft but angled.

It wasn't angled originally, before the failure, it was completely flat (as much as I could see, at least, without precision tools) against the axle flats--that's caused by something shifting while I welded it or as I positioned it prior to welding and not seeing that in time.

Now the metal is actually bent from the wheel prying at it, and needs to be resurfaced to flatten it, which I couldn't do that night because it was too late to use power tools and I didn't have hours to file it down.

THe first time I built this clamp, I C-clamped the axle in the plates to create the spacing to do the welding, after welding the pieces together. (and also used an axle to gauge the dropout spacing as I weld-filled and ground/filed it, on the outboard flat piece).

Didn't do that this time becuase I didn't have enough light to work with with the wheel in the way at night, or time to locate the tools and set things up properly, just had to get it fixed good enough to not worry about for the next few days to weeks (until I get time off work to do it right). It started out when built that I had to wiggle and/or tap the axle into the slot, and the pinch bolt was there to resist the sideloading that would tend to pull it out in left turns.

Just because this has never happened in all the previous mileage on the trike with the same setup, I'm pretty sure I did leave the fasteners loose both at axle nut and nylock on the clamp bolt, even if it was not floating-around loose, but just not fully tightened, after taking them off and on so many times with the tube issue and other stuff for those days a few weeks back. The rides since then would have loosened them more each time, from the braking/acceleration if nothing else, plus all the bumps/waves/holes (there's a lot less of those on the left side than the right but they're still there in the right half of the rightmost lane more than anywhere else on the roads).

Part of the reason for assuming the fasteners were left loose is because they were actually just rattling around on the threads, finger loose, and the pinch bolt nut was a number of threads away from the face of the clamp--but the threads werent' stripped so it wasn't broken and pushed down there by the forces involved. So it makes sense, to me at least, that they would have to have already been loose.

Of course, I can't be *certain* that's what happened.... :/

That will NEVER hold for any length of time. Further, trying to clamp a welded on part, especially in the thicknesses used here, just isn't going to work, either.

It actually did clamp just fine until (assumption) the fasteners were loose. When it isn't clamped it's easy to tell, becuase the wheel will move laterally in turns from the sideloading, even if I can't move it by hand. That problem is why I originally went with the clamp, though I couldn't build my original idea (whcih I don't remember exactly what it was anymore).

I know there are definitely better ways to do it, though I don't have the tools and/or materials to make some of them.

Ideally, I'd just take the thick dropout itself, drill it and tap it, and put the pinch bolt right there in the end of the dropout. But I haven't got the stuff to drill into it, or anyone around here locally that would do it in trade for something I have laying around.

I also thought about taking two thicknesses of that stuff, and grinding a slot, then round-filing it, then welding the halves together, then drilling that just for smoothing out the bore, then tapping it (would have to borrow taps if I can find anyone with the right size/thread/etc; AFAICT mine are gone). It'd make it possible to do the drilling without as much work for the bit/drill/etc, witha pre-existing shaft all the way thru,

You need a better design idea and here's it: Take this piece you have in your hand here:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/download/file.php?id=226963

Remove it - cut it out again - and while at it, I'd cut off the part that's touching your thumb in that picture and use the moment to "clean it up" a bit. Paint it when done with the mods outlined here, and, why not the frame area now exposed, too! 8)
I already removed that part by my thumb. It's replaced by the black 1/8" plate square that connects it to the 1/2" thickwall round frame tube.

When you say "cut it out again", exactly what do you mean? Do you mean just take it off the trike?

Then, take a piece of 1/8" thick flat bar stock, drill a hole in it just big enough for the large, smooth part of the axle shaft to fit through and convert the part you have in your hand in the above image into a specialized piece of angle iron. The new section with hole you just drilled should have the hole you drilled either be centered to the elongated slot, or wherever on that range you think it should be - centered would be my guess - then weld them together such that the bore of the hole is just at the perfect depth relative to the inside surface of the old part being welded to (see notes below about the flats when considering the exact depth). NOTE that the new plate with hole to be welded on is going to go inboard of all your previous framing here, so the bore of the hole supports the wheel on the smooth part, not the threaded area with flats.

I think I"m giong to need at least a napkin sketch to get across where things would be relative to each other for the above. When I get home from work if you havent' already replied I'll make a sketch of what I *think* you mean, and you can tell me if I'm right or not, and edit my sketch or make a new one.



The part below I'll have to reply to after I get home from work; I gotta leave to go there now.

Now, to improve it a little, this problem has to be solved, too, and we'll do it now:

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/download/file.php?id=226969

The problem to be fixed is that the plate on the right in this image must be parallel with the axle shaft. The angle here means it will never tighten properly - ever. So, to help it be parallel, take one or more slivers of thin flat bar and weld them to the new angle plate, probably at least two (avoiding the slotted hole of course) to make a shoulder for the flat of the axle to rest against so that the newly made angle iron will want to be both flat against and also perpendicular to the shaft, depending on which part of the 90 angle we're talking about. Its' hard to see from your images, but maybe the same on the other side would be helpful, too. ... Laying these strips perpendicular to the shaft axis puts your welds far away from the axle, and you can grind as necessary to keep the welds from interfering. ... NOW you have something that'll hold and yet be adjustable and won't come loose so easily, easy to make, and requires on the tinniest quantity of materials.

 

[amberwolf]

I haven't gotten back to the above stuff yet, though today I did get the front braking issue resolved.

Yesterday was a wash with some household work and having to go out to the stores to get some stuff for Raine and I, and getting too dark to work on stuff like the above by the time I got done.

Today I first had to fix a corroded leaky valve (see here
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=49550&p=1351315#p1351315
for that) before it got bad enough to rupture; that took at least a couple hours or more.

After that Yogi and Kirin insisted it was playtime; when they finally wore out I did too, and had to sit down and eat brunch and rest a bit; hitting late afternoon by then.

I was going to do the axle clamp stuff, but as I was moving the trike around the yard to change it's position to get it where I could roll it over on it's side, the mechanical front brakes kept squealing every little turn (cuz i had to have the pads so close to the rim that any sideloading of the wheel or cable shifting would cause the pads to rub the rim), and that reminded me of the fix I wanted to try, of replacing the two Avid levers with the single generic double-cable lever, and replace/grease/trim the cables/housings to optimize their lengths and positions to minimize the problem of pad-grab in turns.

So I pulled both cables and the levers off, and took the arms off and regreased the bosses and under the bolt caps/washers, reinstalled the arms.

I also greased the noodle inside, and I slightly recurved it to point a few degrees outward at the cable entrance; they usually point inward or are straight, on regular bike frames.

Installed the generic double-cable lever in place of the Avids, and moved the bell down a bit so I can more easily reach it with my thumb (had to be farther up the bars with the two Avids on there).

For the back-front brake, I kept the long cable with it's housing, but trimmed several inches off of it to fit the best routing with the widest curves and straightest lines with the "new" lever to the brake arms. Now it goes up in an arch from the lever basicaly in the middle of my view (couldn't avoid it, but don't like it), then down the steerer tube with the wires, then gentle curve down to the noodle on the brake arm.

For the front-front brake, I changed from the two-section housing and a shorter cable, to a cable and housing the same as the back-front one. It routes almost exactly teh same, except as it exits the tiller tube wire/cable bundle, it goes under the tiller to the right (instead of left) to curve gently around the fork to the front-front noodle/arm.


I didn't use the aluminum adjusters that came with the brake lever, because I've had those deform and spread apart from hard repeated braking, like what the trike can see. Instead, I used a couple of steel ones--but they are smaller diameter threaded area than the aluminum ones, so they don't fit solidly in the brake lever housing. I just use the lockring on them as the push-ring to adjust them with, rather than them pushing directly against the housing. This has worked fine when I've done this in the past on other bikes.


So here's how they look now:

 

[amberwolf]

Dual-pull lever setup worked great on the commute; much easier to use than the two Avid levers side by side, and pulls better (though half of that is probably the cable/housing changes).

Also no more brake squeal in turns due to having to have the pads so close to the rim, and due to cable routing.

 

[amberwolf]

Brakes are still working fine.

The kludgy repair of the clamping dropout on the left inboard side is also still holding up, but I'll be redoing it in the coming week or so (finally getting the time off I"ve been waiting more than a month for!).


I happened to stop at Goodwill on the way to work today (because I had a small returned-item credit there that had to be used soon or it expires), and happened to run across a suspended-mesh "bleacher chair" that is perfect for a seat for SB Cruiser. As soon as I saw it folded up on the shelf, I knew that was the design I'd been looking for for years.



Took about 40 minutes to install after I got home from work, most of that taking off the old one, making sure everything would line up and clear the lid lock, etc., and put me where I need to be for pedals and handlebars, etc., and rounding up the bolts/nuts/washers.



All I had to do to mount it was drill four holes in the seatbox bench top (none of the ones already there for the previous seats lined up), then four holes in the steel 1" square tube the base of the chair is made from to line up with those. THen four old bolts off a scrapped aquarium stand, with nuts and washers, to secure it tightly to the wooden seatbox bench top, and poof--there it is, the almost perfect seat.



Almost, only because there is a straight tension-creating rod at the very back of the seat, which my tailbone happens to rub against (and will probably bang against on bumps on the road). I can fix that by bending the rod down a bit into a curve, or adding a bit of padding across it, stuffed between the layers of the suspended mesh where it folds over the rod. We'll see how much of an issue it is first, on my commute tomorrow.

The mesh is laced together across the bottom, so it's much easier to take it off and modify the frame if necessary, or even just to wash it if required.

The back folds down, which makes it easier to open the seatbox lid without bashing the handlebars or "dashboard" (not yet built, but it'd be right in the way of the top edge of the seat back in the open-seatbox-lid-position).




Even though this is steel, it's no heavier than the lazyboy recliner padded footrest that I've been using as a temporary bench seat the last several months, and it is WAY more comfortable. It also looks much better, being already red (even if a different shade than the trike) and black, and not an old faded shade of blue (not matching anything on the trike at all).


I'd still like to make a full bench seat for it at some point, but I might not ever do that if this bleacher seat proves comfy and durable enough. The main reason for the bench seat would've been to have two poeple ride side-by-side on it, like my brother and I, but he's not interested in trying that (which is why I'm building him his own trike with a comfy powerchair seat instead). I've given coworkers short rides to get them closer to home after work so they wouldn't have to walk thru the bad areas around here, but that's it for bench seat passengers so far; it would've been more comfy with a complete bench seat instead of the partial blue one I've been using, but it's nto all taht practical. Would need to be about a foot wider, and that's more than I want to add to this trike--maybe the next one.


But the best thing is that I can easily make a modified version of this bleacher seat design for a number of different bikes or trikes that I'd like to build. I probably will make a new back for it that's taller to go up to my shoulders, so I don't have to ahve the padding on the front edge of the cargo rack. (or adapt the back of the old Ikea chair I used to use on SBC, to mount in place of this one--though I'd have to make a mesh for it since that's sunrotted away and gone).




FWIW, I've had and tried a few different beach and bleacher chairs as seats, and they never quite are what I'm after once I fit them (previously just on CrazyBike2), and I kept going back to my homemade suspended-mesh seat for CB2.

I tried out a couple of them on SB Cruiser both before and after I changed from the frame-mount chair to the seatbox "bench", and they didn't really do it either--mostly because the fronts of them were supported by a straight bar, which might work fine if your feet sit flat on a floor or beach and lift your knees just above your hips--but on the bike your legs are always in two different positions, angles changing as you pedal, and a bar like that is in the way--but the seats' designs wouldn't allow me to cut that out without first cutting off the mesh, then welding a new crossbar support underneath, then restitching the mesh on under tension. That was way more work than I wanted to do, cuz i could build one from scratch simpler than that.

 

[amberwolf]

Some better pics now that it's daylight out there:

 

[wturber]

Ha ha. Just realized your seat is a "Stadium Chair". That what I use as a bleacher seat at table tennis tournaments. Great idea for re-purposing. Those things are very durable and fairly comfortable (compared to a bench.)

 

[amberwolf]

I actually hadn't noticed the label until you said that, then looked and saw it. I guess that's the brand name (made in China like everything else, though).

The thing I like about suspended mesh seats of any kind is that you no longer feel all the little bumps and vibrations in your butt and back. Even some of the big ones are damped fairly well.

It's definitely better design than the other ones I've picked up for this type of use over the years, which is why I used my return-credit on it (was actually looking for shoes and pants for work; I'm very hard on everything so they rarely last me more than a few months before they're damaged in a way (holes) I can't use them for work anymore).

The best thing about the design is I could build one myself--the primary reason for not saving myself the few dollars by just taking pictures and copying it was so I could test it out right now, before I bother with all that (since I'd also have to cut out and sew up a mesh seat and back for anything I build).

I'll find out how good it is on the commute today. At worst, I expect to just have to unbolt it so I can retension the seat with it's underside lacing, and/or deal with that rear rod support.