Drift Trikes

Last spring my friend and I started making drift trikes. If you dont know what drift trikes are, there pretty much just "big wheels" for foolish teenagers. Instead of me typing a bunch of stuff to describe it completley and making us all go to sleep, heres a link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8UGk6TP0Lg

Anyways, we built some! the first started with a cut up bike that was pulled out of a trash pile, with some 3 inch abs pipe wheels mounted on cut up lawnmower rims.

notice how the frame is kinked, we thought we should change the rake for better drifting, but it ended up dropping the entire bike too low and the frame scraped when the wheel was turned too far. eventually, a second kink was added.

one run, the bearings in the rear wheels got hot enough to melt the plastic hubs. cannibalized skateboard to the rescue!

the skate wheels worked till we started loosing bearings.. so we moved on! the next wheels are covered in acetal, a hard brittle plastic. the wheels were actually mass produced for a FIRST robotics challenge, so they didn't take too big of a bite out of my wallet.

                                                                       On the first run we hit some gravel roads doing 30+ mph and totally destroyed the new wheels. big rocks just hit the brittle plastic and took big chunks out of it. conveniently, they have an outside diameter of 6 inches so I just sleeved them with 6" Pvc pipe. the Pipe is attached with countersunk drywall screws.
                                                                          After all this, it was decided it was time for a version #2! this one is much smaller and made from a bmx bike rather than a mountain bike. a fundamental difference between the first and second trike was that the first had independley spinning wheels while the second had a live axle. The live axle was made of a peice of 5/8 inch rebar spun down to size on a improvised lathe. (drill and angle grinder)

                                            the second trike is in the back. the rear portion is made of a bent pair of forks from a crashed three wheeler with a split rim from a scooter acting as the bearing blocks. the rear tires are 6" pvc mounted on lawnmower rims.

here it is in action! The front wheel is changed out because the first one had a bent rim. the new one is from a minibike.