AZ inspired trike build starts!

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Thanks Brad, and Hugh! I already know what color. But I'm not telling :p

While those previous wheel mounts took me over 2 hours to knock out, I just built these in 1h20m. I'm not timing myself, I just happen to look at clocks. I AM interested in how long things take. Ask my wife. Drives her crazy! "Can I show you a video?" "How long is it?" "Does it matter?" Uh.... no comment...

Step 1 was to cut 3" lengths of angle iron.

Step 2: Trim those down in the shorter axis. They're just a bit too long.



Step 2: Make the cutout for the axle, using the previous version as a template.


Step 3: Make them no wider than the 3/4" square tube they're getting welded to:



And now they look done, sort of.



Except they aren't. NOW the look more done:



On to the next steps. That'll be next week though. Tomorrow I'm going to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Looking forward to that a LOT.
 
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My daughter and I are going to The Museum of Flight in Seattle today, and in fact we're on the road right now. And the only thing I can think about is how huge those brackets are!

I've decided that they shouldn't be any taller than they need to be to give the wheel room to mount. More cutting will happen. By the time I get done with these, I'll be an expert in wheel mounting brackets! LOL
 
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Hahaha I have the same. I was all day thinking about the front of my bike with the deraillar mount. Now it's solved, but I keep thinking about problems, thill I solved it.

Maybe you see some good ideas ad the museum. Have fun.
 
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.... and in fact we're on the road right now. And the only thing I can think about is how huge those brackets are!
.....I was all day thinking about the front of my bike with the deraillar mount. Now it's solved, but I keep thinking about problems, thill I solved it.
For me it go's like this......

When I lay me down to sleep at night, I'm thinking, planning, building, step by step, what I want/need to do in the morning.
In the morning, as I wake, I swing my feet to the ground, and I'm already, going over last nights thoughts, step by step.
So my day starts, before I get that first cup of coffee. (It's ready for me at 5 am)

Maybe this thing is taking me/us over ?
I hear, that admitting one has a problem, is the first step to fixing it.

(What a wonderful problem to have,....right?)

So please excuse me, it's bed time....zzzzzzzzzzz
I must plan for tomorrows build activity.
 
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It's funny Ed. I do the the exact same thing at night. And very often when i wake i've whatever problem sorted out. Sometimes it takes a couple sleeps but there is no hurry. One step at a time and then they all add up and you,ve gpt real progress.
 

Radical Brad

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If you lengthen those current dropouts to say twice their depth, the axle nuts (and washers) will be sitting no more than 1/4" above the radius, so there will be no strength issues at all. Having the extra slot depth would even become a "safety feature", letting your wheel flop around rather than coming right out in a "loose nut" scenario!

Brad

My concern is that they will put undue lateral load on the frame. Am I overthinking it?
 
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I find my most creative thinking time is in the shower of a morning, having gravitated there over the years. That which I think of during the night is usually hard to recall by morning. Sometimes when I can't get back to sleep I get up and commit my thoughts to a medium that is more permanent. Lying in bed thinking about not being able to sleep is wasted time. If you can't sleep, you may as well be up doing something. You'll fall asleep when you have to.

My main problem now is that a lot of the get up and go has got up and gone. Must be advancing years, but I still want to do it and now do it in many smaller bursts. Could be that there are many of those non-contributing distractions as well.
 
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I was once installing a new transmission in a Ford Ranger for a friend, and I could not figure one particular part out. Spent hours trying to get a single bellhousing bolt out, I think it was. Slept on it, dreamed about the solution, got up in the morning and it worked. The subconscious mind is an amazing thing!

This afternoon I went on a hike and when I got home, I got back to work on the trike. Because @Radical Brad suggested just making the slots longer, I did that. While doing that I also found out that not all slots were the same depth and that some of the brackets were about 1/16" longer than the others. I used an old axle to get things squared up.



Now that everything is the same shape and size and what not, it's time to get started with building the frame- but not tonight. Going to hang out with the family. But I can't stand a messy workshop, and building these brackets has been pretty messy!



I cleared the workbench and built a "magic wand" to help clean up metal shavings. Two hard drive magnets on a steel pipe from an old bike. It works fairly well:



Ahhh, much better:



Here are the completed brackets, their prototype, and the offcuts and failed attempts. They'll make for great welding practice!



In fact, before I weld the rear frame, I'm going to take some time and do some reading about heat warping and also do some test welds with scraps. But that'll be another post :)

Thanks for everyone's input, by the way; It's been quite helpful :)
 
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You weren't wrong, @Emiel and in fact you were quite right! I grabbed some old steel siding at the scrap yard ($3) and tested out a bench protector for welding. tried to weld it together and think I damaged the bench even worse! Oh my. Oh well. Lesson learned. I need to buy some more and use wood to hold it together rather than try to weld it. It's just too thin. After experimenting with that for a bit, I left it down and did some test welding.



It... failed. I'm trying to weld two 3/16" pieces of steel together with a 50A welder with 1/16" 6013. It's not getting any penetration in the bottom piece.



I'm not sure, but it could be because my welds are almost COMICALLY HORRIBLE 🤣



They're very slaggy. I need to learn to weld again. I think I'll go do some youtubing to try to get my welding mojo back. More later!
 
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Hi
I also tried the 1/16 stick rods, but found them wery hard to use. They tend to bend when you try to stricke up. So I went up one size to 5/64 and suddenly I could weld again and I found them "easy" to weld with even on 1/16 thick steel . For 3/16 steel I would use a 3/32 rod. Different make of rods perform wery different. There is alot of cheap rods on the market and some are difficult to weld with. So investment in well established makes of rods, they will cost at least double the price of cheap ones but are worth it.
 
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An arc that is too long (stick too far from the metal) can get splattery. Lack of penetration can be caused by moving along too quickly. Too many amps and too long an arc can also burn holes. It comes down to how hot the pool of metal gets.

Making sure the metal is clean also helps.

It's all a matter of getting used to it.
 
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Best is to have a table from metal with a thick top plate.
Welding gives always a mess.

The thin electrodes. I got the same with my first welds.
It was terrible, but I made a few mistakes. First my amps where to low, so my electrode got stuck on the material. I raised the amps to high and then I got the same as you. I was feeding to slow for the amps. I switch to thicker electrodes, found a better welding amp that works with my feeding speed. Now the welds look a lot better.
I now only need an other welding helmet. That helps to know where to put the weld.

Thicker material needs more heat and therefore a higher amp. With a higher amp, you need thicker electrodes. The thicker steel makes that it takes longer to heat up the place where you weld and as you use thin electrodes with a low amp, your weld will lay on top of the material that you want to weld.
As your weld is rounded outwards, then your amp is to low.
As it is hollow, than it's to high.
You can see then that the weld is making cutouts in the material also.
A good weld is flat and you see it melted togheter with the material.

But just keep trying and practicing. It gets better and as you find the right setting, then you will notice that it will go a lot easier.
In most cases you can see on the electrodes box, what thickness material it works for and the amp range.
 

Radical Brad

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It's always difficult to advise without being there in person, but I would say... run hotter if you can, and control the arc, moving slightly up and then back in so you reduce the tendency of weld metal to only fill one side of the joint. Sometimes pulling away a bit, and then back in a half second "weaving" cycle can help. Try different motions just to see "what sticks" best!

Brad
 
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Thanks everyone. I'm going to keep practicing. I think there are several factors at work and it'll take practice to figure it out. My welder has one setting: On/off. It's 50A only, and I'm thinking about adding a few windings to the secondary on it to try to get some more amperage out of it. Getting it to strike an arc is pretty hard at first, but that might be just practice too. Seems that once the rod has been used it lights up a lot easier, but again- practice. I'm still pretty shaky! I'll post again when I've made some progress.
 
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You can use a small metal plate to start your electrode. Then it starts better when you start welding the part.

On this webside has Brad placed a hood instruction part on how to weld.

And yes, it's just practicing. After a while, you will notice that it gets easier.
Goodluck.
 

Radical Brad

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In the video I am making now (full bike build) I will go over my rig and some basics.

Later I will do an in depth series on working with thin tubing.
For that I will probably unbox my MIG unit as well (but just for the tutorial, I love my AC buzz box!).

Brad
 
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Welding problem... solved! Thanks, Google. This is after beating on the joint with a hammer:



And thanks to a google search about welding right angles, this is how I solved it:



I let gravity do the work and it welded up fine. My welds are still UGLY but I did this on my lunch break (I work from home) and will work on refining my methods later ;-)

Also, I'm looking forward to the video, @Radical Brad :) I am sure to learn a LOT!
 
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