Campground Buggy Trike

[Starnger]

Your lights are from АЗЛК Москвич 407.

Their next model is my favorite though, stunningly beautiful design.

Sadly the cabrio version never left the prototype stage, as it often happened in soviet times.

 

[GeePig]

Mmmnn... cardboard - I use it a lot, either to make some art with it or to light the wood-burning stove, and I am planning on using some either on my present build or my next, or both. That buggy is a little beauty, though!

 

[OddJob]

@SwissGuy , I see some fleece fabric and fiberglass resin in your future!
Just make sure it's not raining and 43 degrees F outside while you are doing it. But seriously, I think some fiberglass added to that buggy would give it strength and more water resistance.

 

[SwissGuy]

Your lights are from АЗЛК Москвич 407.

That's what I really like in these build offs: knowledge tends to pop up in unexpected places! Thanks for the stroll down russian history lane!
And with knowledge comes inspiration, especially in this case. It is really nice to know, to what car these taillights once belonged to. Especially if it's such a beauty as this one. It made me rethink ma plans for the paint job and now I might go down the two tone road with a ruby red and egg white, but maybe with a shabbby chic rusty touch. We will see...

Mmmnn... cardboard - I use it a lot, either to make some art with it or to light the wood-burning stove, and I am planning on using some either on my present build or my next, or both. That buggy is a little beauty, though!

I think the cardboard has been damp pressed into it's final form and shape. Kind of the ancestor of all that fiberglas forming stuff we use nowadays. I already thought of taking a fiberglassed negative form of the buggys sidewalls for future use....

 

[SwissGuy]

@SwissGuy , I see some fleece fabric and fiberglass resin in your future!
Just make sure it's not raining and 43 degrees F outside while you are doing it. But seriously, I think some fiberglass added to that buggy would give it strength and more water resistance.

You just beat me to it...

 

[SwissGuy]

@SwissGuy , I see some fleece fabric and fiberglass resin in your future!
Just make sure it's not raining and 43 degrees F outside while you are doing it. But seriously, I think some fiberglass added to that buggy would give it strength and more water resistance.

I did a lot of resin casting during my study time for becoming a handicrafts teacher and later on while working as a propsmaster we did a lot of vacuum forming with heated plastic sheets. I just like that kind of techniques!

 

[GeePig]

I think the cardboard has been damp pressed into it's final form and shape. Kind of the ancestor of all that fiberglas forming stuff we use nowadays. I already thought of taking a fiberglassed negative form of the buggys sidewalls for future use....

I think you might be right. I left a carboard box on a garden bench the other day, and then it rained for several days and the cardboard sagged over the edge of the bench. Now that it has dried out it is nicely curved and surprisingly stiff. I might be using the technique deliberately in the future, to get the curves to fit a frame tube for example.

 

[SwissGuy]

I'm trying to wrap my mind about how to attach the buggy to the rear of the trike. As the stool from two years ago got already stripped from it's saddle, I might also use the rest of it...

I'm thinking along the lines of using the rear triangle as a support for a frame carrying the buggy. Here is another rough sketch from my mobile:

Next trip to the campground will be next weekend, so there is enough time to think about it...

 

[SwissGuy]

The mailman brought me this just 15 minutes ago:

 

[OddJob]

Those lights are awesome!

 

[SwissGuy]

Those lights are awesome!

Oh yes, they are indeed. And from the first look at them, they will probably clean up nice. I just have to check if the curve of the cover fits the curve of the buggys rear end...
(If not, I will have to fabricate some sort of socket)

 

[SwissGuy]

Back home I took a quick check with my CAD file, if the lights match. Let's put it like this: Some minor adjustments might be necessary....
But see for yourself:
Here's the intended rear:

And here the front:

Those things are huge!

 

[SwissGuy]

A possible way to go:
Taking only the side panels from the buggy and building something new out of it with fin taillights and a proper trunk cover. Fiberglassed cardboard maybe?
Here are two sketches I made tonight (this time made on paper...)
This one would mean a lot of additional bodywork (fins, trunk cover, ...)

With this variation I could stick to my idea of a textil cover (buttoned on) and it would involve less extra bodywork (only custommade sockets):

Let's see, where my "Cad" designing process will get me next weekend....

 

[SwissGuy]

Almost forgot. The crankset arrived last week and I also bought a whitewall tyre for the front wheel.

 

[Funkme]

I have one of those saddles never used it in my last build. Will have to do something about that.
Great lights.

 

[SwissGuy]

Back at the campground.
First I needed to try if my idea with the parts of the spare rear triangle would work, so i propped up the trike in the workstand.

Then I took of the rear axle and held the triangle to where I thought it should go. It looked doable, so I chopped it...
...and it seems, that this should give me a good base to mount my buggy on:

But I also need some longer bolts to mount rear axle and buggy base to the dropouts. So I probably need to do some bolt shopping tomorrow....
Besides that I changed the rear sprocket from 23 to 19 teeth to get a bit more speed, while this thing still is single speed and changed the front tyre to white wall (pics will come tomorrow, as it was dark outside, when I was done...)

 

[SwissGuy]

New shoes, new seat, new bell and a speedy sprocket...

 

[SwissGuy]

Decided to leave the actual cranks on the bike for now and only swap pedals to some sturdier BMX pedals I had on my folding bike. All in the hope that they don't mind some ground scratching...

 

[SwissGuy]

Today I managed to work on the base for the buggy. After a trip to the hardware store to buy some nuts and bolts, I tried to fix the triangles to the outside of the dropouts, just to realize that they would interfere with the axle bolts.

So next try on the inside, .... works...

Then I bent the stays with some really crude tools: a beat up and unfixed vice and a left over fork as lever...

First half done:

After some sweating and swearing I finally got here:

And it's even halfway level....

 

[SwissGuy]

Now it was time for some CAD work. The template I took at home was transferred on a piece of cardboard an mounted on some slats.
First try would clear the heels for pedaling but is to far back.

This will be the way to go:

But somehow I will have to work around the problem of pedaling without bumping into the front of the buggy. So maybe I will let the sidewalls of the buggy stay and move the frontwall back, so that it will follow the seatstays. This will also give me some stable attachment points.

As I will have to take the buggy apart anyway, I will also make it wider. It's probably going to get a width of 50cm....

That will probably it for this weekend....