What have you done to your Trike today... (2023)

[1130cc]

Happy New Year.

A new year so a new thread.

[gorbee01279]

Treated Saucey Sue to a new cover, old one looking tatty & faded.

[ratwing]

We've an old pressed alloy GB plate on our trike but Boris said we're the UK now not GB so you can't use them if you want to go abroad. I haven't found a metal UK plate so made one, I cut out an oval of aluminium to fit a sticker I bought and finished making the fixings today.

[Skidmark]

starter.jpg

replaced my battery as when trying to start it was behaving as if it had no guts, found out it was the starter so replaced it with one from a Skoda, machined the thickness of the mounting flange and bolted straight on, no need to worry about the brass starter bush any more as same design as a heavy duty one

starter motor 2.jpg

[King Herald]

Started making a dummy fuel tank, to cover the distributor and carb, probably required for MSVA. It's 1mm steel, and I tried Tig welding it, which worked in places but i'm crap at Tig so lots of holes produced. and grinding required.

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[Deep Diver]

Looking good so far

[ratwing]

Today I fixed the charge warning light.
It doesn't go out until you blip the throttle, it's been like that since we've had it and presumably has been ever since the first owner wired it up. But the alternator works just fine, no charging problems so haven't worried about it.
I recently found out that on older non self-exciting alternators the warning light has to draw enough current to excite the windings on start up so just as an experiment I unplugged the old one, one of those cheap and nasty one piece things with a little non replaceable bulb and ran some wires to a different one with a 2 watt bulb and as soon as the engine fired up it went out. Result!
A bigger hole for the new one and some proper wiring connections and that's it, job done.

[Mal]

Well researched, good job.

[King Herald]

Today I fixed the charge warning light.
It doesn't go out until you blip the throttle.....

My Reliant trike was like that. It was the first of many little problems I tackled on it, cleaned wires, connections measures voltages etc etc, nothing worked.

Then I mentioned it to the previous owner and he said it needed a good blip of the throttle to kick it into action. I should have known that already, I'd had the same problem on a hot rod I built years ago.

Anyway, I decided to leave it as it was, as it acted a bit like a fast idle when the motor was fired up from cold, let it run at higher rpm as it warmed up, without the alternator loading the engine up. The choke lever would normally do that, but mine didn't work properly...

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[Twanny]

Stripped my trike's CV carburetor for a varnish degung, cleaned all the jets and recharged my K&N air filter. Good couple of hours work. Getting ready to MOT the trike hopefully in a couple of weeks