I should have made this update a long time ago ago but I got tied up with other projects.
I got the five speed hub in and it's nearly tuned. I've only got 20-ish miles on the tricycle and the hub itself seems to be breaking in and shifting smoother. It still doesn't seem to shift 100% right. I've tried all sorts of adjustments, there seems to be plenty of "this is how it's done" video's on youtube and I think I've tried most of them. So, for now at least - I'm going with the assumption that it needs to broken in more.
I thought having reverse on the tricycle would be a novelty but it sure is handy. Every tricycle made should have reverse! Reverse isn't a separate gear, each gear has a reverse function. So... Let's say your riding a long a road and you want to stop. You just put backward pressure on the pedals like any coaster brake bicycle until you come to a stop. Once you're stopped, you keep putting backward pressure on the pedals and the tricycle backs up and you keep pedaling backwards. You can do that in any gear, 1-5 gears. When I ride the tricycle around, once I'm in the saddle, my feet never touch the ground. Go, stop, reverse = it's like parking a car.
Getting the chain figured out was brutal. There's two chains, one from the fixed bottom bracket and one from the fixed axle. The carrier that my transmission hub sits in moves up and down slightly and back and forth a bit. The new five speed hub had a larger sprocket so I needed a longer chain. After I added one set of links, I could not get the chain tighted because of adjustability issue mentioned above (the carrier only moves a bit each direction). I really wanted that larger sprocket for the lower gearing so I took the tricycle to several local bike shops. One bike shop suggested a "half link" and the other idea was to keep trying sprocket and chain combo's until the issue was fixed. My local bike shops didn't have many sprockets to try, so I'd be on the hook for ordering (buying) multiple sprockets until the right one is found. I didn't feel like fooling with this process myself so I took the easy route = I pirated the sprocket from the old hub, removed the link that I had added... and the chain is now tight. I'd really like the lower gearing of the larger sprocket for steep hills but that isn't going to happen for a while (if ever).
Here's some pictures - you can see some of the oil/grease working it's way out of the hub.
This is how I decided to work out the coaster brake arm on the hub. The hub didn't have and doesn't come with one. After talking with the local bike store I bought the hub from (and they talked to the importer they bought the hub from) I found out that the hub is supposed to be installed in a carrier. The carrier should have a small slot that the existing coaster brake bracket would fit into. Since I didn't have the carrier it should fit into, I was on my own. I wanted to take the hub apart, remove the existing brake bracket and fabricate an arm. I don't have the tools to take the hub apart so I took the hub to two bike shops - nobody could take it apart (without the risk of scratching the hub). I considered welding a brake arm on the brake bracket while the hub was assembled - but that sounded like a bad idea. At a minimum I could roast the grease inside the hub. My motorcycle has a simple arm from the swing arm to the brake carrier so I decided to mimic that design.
