Tweaking the separating frame

A few bolts I made for my bike, the one on the right is the production model, made from.......

these bits.  The thin nut works better

My current trike with rectangular aluminium frame. The seat cantilevers off the fframe and doesn't need extra support.

Bolts that keep the trike together shown at right and in front of the chain, centre.

To split the trike, take the wingbolts off, and separate the frame halves can be slightly.  In that position, the custom bolt screws into the frame and then the plain bolt screws into that.   

From there, the 2 frame halves slide apart.

Bolts are kept on the frame and out of the waywhile the trike is transported.  A new bit of bling, a Speedo mount is in the foreground.

Hi, I have been working on my bike switcheroo for a while, and in the process have been upgrading whatever I can on the bikes.  This includes fixing small problems with the trike.  On country trains, I separate the trike like this and when I do, the bolts which hold it together have to go somewhere, and previously there was no good spot for that and it got a bit awkward trying to wrangle the bike halves.  And the bolts. 

And then Ta Dah! I had an idea and slowly set about turning it into a thing made from an idea.  The photos show the results.  I brazed a nut onto one of the wing bolts with holds the trike together, and hey presto, that makes a spot for the extra wing bolt somewhere out of the way on the frame.

Even though these trikes are a long way from being in production, I did my best to make the tapped wing bolt as best I could.  At first I made it using a standard wing bolt and a tapped plate, then progressed to an m8 nut and a standard wing bolt before finally settling on a narrow m8 nut brazed nut and a standard wingbolt.  (Despite having enough parts in the shed to make a rocket to the moon,  I didn't have any of the narrow nuts in my shed and my friends at Metro Bolts gave me a few samples when I bought some other fasteners there).

And I'll get to test it out next week, I will be getting up early on Tuesday to take the train to Bendigo to promote the ozhpv challenge which will be held up there in December.  Will report, all for now.

Regards

Steve Nurse

 30 Nov 2017 update.

This is not the first tricky design I have had for a removable front wheel assembly on an HPV.  Several years ago, I made a bike and called it the X15 (after its paint colour) , and while riffling through my old SD cards came across some photos of it.  I sold it to Brett in the ACT, and as far as I know he still has it. Details of frame split on that bike are shown below.

X15 has a round tube as a frame, this means the seat assembly can't cantilever off it and be secure and not rotate around the frame. There is a small amount of seat adjustment though, a couple of bolts sticking out of the back of the seat clamp into a seat post and the clamping length is adjustable.

Front tube clamp mech.  The Cool Tool was made at home from an allen key and chromoly steel.  It has 2 uses, to tighten the clamp screw as shown here...... 

And to act as a pin securing the bike halves as shown here.