PAGE 3 OF THE JAGUAR TRIKE
You may have noticed that the 2nd page about the jaguar trike took longer and longer to load, so I made this 3rd page.
I couldn't get the handthrottle to work properly, so I dug up some old drawings and pictures of the forward controls on my Honda 750 chop " Bitch", adapted the drawings to make it work on the trike as a footthrottle.
Top pictures show all the components laid out in the way they are taken apart. One piece of Stainless Steel, 30 mm round and 150 mm long, cut down to 18 mm over 50 mm, then cut down and cut with M14 thread. On the 50 mm of 18mm is a piece of SS of the same 30 mm bar with a 24 mm hole, which is lined with a 3mm thick Messing bushing with a 2 mm sleeve on each side, and tabs ( SS 8mm ) welded to them to attach the footpedal too. It also has a greasenipple on the underside. The next piece of 30 mm bar has a hole with M14 thread inside, "bolting" to the M14 axle, securing the "footpedal-bar". The threaded bar has a securing bolt underneath as well. The last piece of the M14 bar sticks through a tab on the trikeframe.
Here you can see it on the trike. I'm not sure whether I'm going to make an actual pedal as this set-up seems to work pretty well. Top circle is the joint on the carburator/ kickdown mechanism, top line is the modified linkage from the carbs - for which I have to make a neat bracket once everything is allright, this one consisting of 3 brackets welded and bolted together everytime something changed or didn't work out the way I thought it would :( -, second circle is a U-joint bolted to said bracket with a 8mm bar going down to a second U-joint ( 3rd circle ) bolting to a threaded hole just underneath the "pedal". I've found a round spring which fits over the step and seems to work to retract the pedal after pushing in the throttle. I've drilled a small hole in the lower "pedal" to hook it up too. Once everything is in place and working properly I'll have to make a small bracket to attach the other end of the spring too ( where the small triangle is ). Do you get it now, Niels? :)
In the picture above the last things that needed to be added to make it work. Top U-joint is bolted to the bottom of the top "tab" of the pedal. Spring is kept tight against a small triangle of Stainless Steel welded to the threaded bar. A M8 hole in each "tab" provides the possibility to bolt a real pedal too it later on. For now there's a 8mm bolt in the lower one to provide grip.
Picture below is the whole contraption on the trike.
And this is the way it looks now, with a big aluminium foot on it. Small brackets and a pikenut ( right ) prevent my foot from sliding off.
And this is from the bottom
I also made a bracket for the automatic gearchangearm to run through ( and the arm itself topped with a MOON 8-ball ). Bracket and arm will be made in Stainless Steel when all the dimensions are correct. I'm still working on that.
Exhaust with Supertrapps are on the trike, only needing a small supportbracket through the endcap.
Funny detail on the gearboxdipstick
For registration I needed to lose the wide twin rearwheels and fenders, so I bought 2 standard Jagwheels ( blasted and powdercoated by VRM ), which were shod with Snow and Mud tires ( 195/70/15 ) , which enhance the MadMax feel :-). On top a fender from a trailer. I'm thinking of replacing the low race tires ( 195/50/15 ) on the twinwheels for the higher, tough looking tires after registration.
OOH MY, BRING OUT THE TISSUES !!!
Dutch registration also requires that the outerrim of the headlights are no further then 35 cm from the widest part of the vehicle. In this case that are the rearwheels, which are now suddenly "nice and small" ;-)
I've made a bracket that holds the headlights and the indicators. Wiring runs on the headlightbar, no need to make it too tidy, I'll take them off after registration ( No I will not nice sir from the registration office !! )
Gerber Magendans ( link to his impressive site on my "Links" page ) of the 3Wheels Trike Club Holland made some pictures of my trike when we were trying to get it on a trailer to put it on the Speed 2002 show in Rosmalen. We didn't succeed in getting the trike on the trailer, the trike was way to low and wide for it.
While riding the trike to the trailer, the exhausts ( which are now a lot bigger then the ones the trike came with ) scraped the speedbumps in a big way, so I decided to go for the higher, tough looking tires ( 195/70/15 ) in the rear right now. No use in waiting 'till after registration, it will have the single wheels for that anyway!
Looks good, I can still use the fenders VRM made for the lower ( 195/50/15 ) tires, I only have to make the bottommount about 3 cm higher. Glad they still fit, would have hated to go to Herman and Floor and ask them to change the fenders they'd just made again.
August 2002:
I decided to make a longer testride then I had done untill now. I only had made some rounds around the block ( didn't want to go too far from home without registration ), so I asked a friend of mine for his "green"plates ( for garages and testrides only ). I went to show the trike to some friends some 5 kilometers away and set of to Floor and Herman's metalshop for some alterations.....................never made it, the trike blew the headgasket only 8 kilometers down the road, which is also 8 kilometers after the rebuild !!!! It had to be towed back to ERAS by the ANWB. I must agree I pretty much had had enough of the trike this way. We had to take the engine out ( with gearbox and all ) again to take the topend off of the engine ( no space to take it off with the engine in the frame ) and take the head off. Luckily there was no further damage to the head, it was only a blown headgasket due to the radiator being clogged, possibly with oil and coolant from the former blown engine. I had a new radiator made up, with S-cores and 2 highspec fans ( which had to be mounted to the rear of the radiator, due to space problems ), which suck the air through the radiator, replace all the hoses and, after some carefull consulting with some Jaguarexperts, I decide to add a thermostat as well. I found a thermostat housing in a local Britishcar scrapjard but found that all the different types of outlets to the radiator were in the front of said housing and touched the front framerail even without the hose attached. Time to go to Floor and Herman again and fabricate my own thermostathousing with the outlet off centre to clear the framepipe. It's in the picture below, it's on the trike now and works pretty well.
In the bottom right hole we've pressed a small pipe for the overflow hose. I've made a longer testride now, stopping at trafficlights and at the side of the road for some time with the engine running, temperature going up to reasonable height and cooling down when riding again, so I guess it's okay now.
June 2003
Still problems, not with the cooling system but with the automatic gearbox. It does not work properly. When I put in gear it will not go before I pour in several liters of oil and then when I ride, the oil will come out of the gearbox all over my shoes and the exhausts. I called the company that rebuilt the gearbox ( ATR in Montfoort ) and they said it could only be a small problem as long as it would be possible to pull the bottom of the gearbox with the gearbox in the trike. I took the trike to them ( special transport, thanks to my little brother ) and just have to wait for them to start work on it.
July 2003
They finally decided to start to work on the trike and found out it was not just a small problem !!! It appears the cranckshaft in the engine was for a manual gearbox instead of the autobox I use, making it just a couple of millimiters longer. This put axial pressure on the converter, that put axial pressure on the oilpump, that eat itself into the housing !!! This means a new oilpump and -housing and the converter had to be re-adjusted. Not only that, but the axial pressure also put strain on the crankshaft which gave damage to the axial bearings, meaning they had to be replaced too ( after only about 50 kilometers ). This was easy, just lift the trike in the front, pull the bellypan, losen the distribution and change them, done by ERAS, Utrecht of course, a very friendly and quick rebuildershop, a company I'm very satified with !!
June 2004
Well, finally an update on the trike. As you may understand I was pretty fed up with it, costing me over 750,- Euro's for the 50 kilometers I made on my last trip in June last year. Everybody kept telling me that everything should be alright now ( like we thought it would be the last 2 times we took the engine out and put it back in ). I moved to a different garage where I can work on the trike again and with the Rat- and Survivalbike meeting in a town nearby, which was also attracting members of the Hardly Ridables Club from England ( from which Budgie, the former owner of the trike, is a member ) I finally had motivation again to work on it. With the help of my good friend Arjan aka Mustang Sally we started to reconnect all the lose ends, start it ( which it did after only 2 attempts ) and see what needed to be done. After working on it 2 Friday afternoons and 2 Sundays we had it running again, with no oilleaks from engine or gearbox, running very smooth and sweet, only a little noise from the engien, which disappeared after a few short testruns.
I did not fall asleep on the picture above, I am very concentrated on the watertemperature and oilpressure gauges ;-)
Backing up after the first testrun ( note the other toy in the back )
Posing in from of some more old metal ;-)
On the morning of the Saturday of the RatBikeMeeting we went to the garage, me feeling a little nervous about driving the trike again, most important thing in my wallet being the AA card. It all worked fine, still loosing some coolant throught the top radiatorcap, but it is impossible to see how much it really needs, so it may have been too much. Temperature stayed okay, getting just a bit hotter at trafficlights and cooling down when driving. No problem there. No leaks from the engine and gearbox either, another plus. Then at a trafficlight ( just after I told my mate everything worked allright ) I tried to pull away and only heard a loud, shreeking sound, coming from under me. After pushing the trike to the roadside we tried to find out what it was, hoping it wasn't the gearbox again. We found out that the axle from the gearbox was turning, but the flange of the U-joint had broken it's welds so there was no connection to the rearaxle ?????? After calling the AA and asking for a car with a welding machine we were told that that car was too far away and we had to wait for a towtruck that came along after only 20 minutes, not bad. We had the trike home after 20 minutes and the flange welded back on in about 10 minutes. It ran like it should, but it was already too late for the show ( you can only use the "green" plates during shophours ) so we just sat there trying different things on the trike. I was glad everything went smooth, with only this little setback. Look forward to working on it again and making it ready to have it tested for a Dutch license !!
Best thing were all the heads turning when I was approaching, we went for fuel and 2 of the 3 employees came out to see what pulled in, and from the Opel dealership next door all 4 salesmen came to have a look. Sound is terrific !
Still need to work on the footthrottle, it just doesn't work right with the pivotpoint being in the middle of my foot, needs to be more like in a car, will work on that this week.