Tryke this on for size

[Jeffery A. Hunt]

Well, the hubs are bent, the hoops themselves are damaged beyond any help I could give to them, as well as bent. Now I need to locate 2 hoops @24" and 28 spokehole, for a price I can afford. I suppose somewhere around $50 for both hoops would be about good, I hope. I guess I could start a LOOKING TO BUY post here in the classifieds. If I can't massage the hubs into a useful state, I need to find a method to fab a new set and if that happens I can reset just how many spokes the wheels will utilize, but 24"does seem like the size I should stick to, strengthwise. The hubs seem pretty basic and simple, but I bet that's what BRAIN SURGEONS say about the next surgery they'll do, and with the large amount of skill they have, simple would describe it. In contrast, I will be wading into the water of PRE-MED almost blindly, but I believe in me, so eventually I will come out on top. Enough talk, time to start this ball rollin'.

 

[Jeffery A. Hunt]

OK!! Tore the wheels apart and tossed all but the hubs, which are bent and lopsided and poorly made overall.
BUT... they are really basic design-wise, so, being the re-up-use-ologist-mech-nician that you've all seen on the radio, I decided that a couple of wheels in my shed were gonna give their lives so that my Tryke would live on!
I grabbed a pair of front wheels with disc brake hubs and began the disassembly of same. Unlaced, unspoked, undisc-ed (more on those later!), and ultimately un-hubbed the two of them to get the spoke flanges, with their little holes all around and the big hole in the middle, all by themselves.
Now I am seeking the pipe or tube for the axle-sleevey, hub-center, holding the flangey spoke thingies part of these new creations. I am confident that I can find something that has the I.D. of the axle O.D. and the O.D. of the flangey-thingies's former hub-hole's I.D., you with me?
Weight is no issue so any & all materials are fair game, as long as it is ferrous, I'm thinking. The hubs I .......ized for this were oh-so-close to being the same, and though not, they are within about a millimeter & 1/2 of being the same, and I think that once they are laced into the new hoops, which WILL be the exact same size, that mm&1/2 won't even be a factor in any way.
I don't know yet if I will do 24" or 26" hoops, but I do know the spoke-count will be @36.
I have pics coming of the carnage shortly, and then I can begin the search for the middles of these friggin' things.
Hope your day is going at least as good as mine seems to be!
Peace!

 

[Jeffery A. Hunt]

 

[twojs.bike]

I admire your perseverance here!!!

Looks to me like you need a buddy with a machine shop. The next step is likely not complicated if you could find someone with a lathe. But not my area of expertise.

 

[Jeffery A. Hunt]

Right. Lathe would be SO lux at this point, I'll be happy to find a decent welder. Don't think epoxy has not crossed the mind, JB Weld is great stuff!! LOL!!

 

[Jeffery A. Hunt]

So I have gone to Lowe's and made a propper mess in the plumbing and electrical conduit sections diddling with the parts that will make these hubs.

In my head: "I need a small hole at blah the hub-center to go blah over the axle (.645" ID)
and blah the hub flanges do have a center hole of (1.250" ID) blah
so if an end of blah the hub itself was made of 1" and actually has an OD blah of 1.250", it should be close. blah... blah..."

Also in my head: "Man! This place should have everything I... blah... blah... blah..."

I messed around with Black Iron parts, Steel parts, EMT parts and Rigid parts.
I teamed up EMT 1/2" to 3/4" adapters, paired them with EMT 3/4" to 1" adapters, added those to Rigid 1/2" x 1" nipples with a 1/2" Rigid coupling- maybe, but....
swap the short nipples and coupling for longer 1/2"x 2 1/2" nipples and no coupling- Not bad, but... Swap the 1/2" rigid nipples for 1/2" Black Iron nipples, closer...
A bit of file... some sanding... Lather, Rinse and repeat.... Close, but....

In my head: "If I could just find a welder or machine shop....."
Just a simple rod, with a .645" ID OC core hole
and an OD of 1.250" and a total length of 5.5", or [email protected]", WAY easy, right?!?
And yet...

 

[Jeffery A. Hunt]

OK, at the last update, I had fully realized 2 things were true: One was that a machinist with a lathe could solve my issue in less than an hour, and the other was that I know no such person. The thing that doesn't suck about that is that I did manage to get these hubs built without "such person", but it almost made my head explode figuring it out.

A few pieces of electrical conduit hardware and a small piece of cyclone/chain-link fence pole, combined with a dab of clear 2-part epoxy and "Viola'!" A new set of very simple hubs for this ridiculously overcomplicated tri-wheel project have been created. The total number of wheels sacrificed in the quest for a pair of hubs, from which to build 2 rear Tryke wheels? 5, yes 5 wheels.

5 wheels destroyed so that 2 may Phoenix out of the pile of hoops and spokes and flanges, and nipples-we must be mindful of the nipples for they do most of the heavy lifting here, but I digress....
So the 2- 24" OG rears were disected for all the right reasons and, alas! No flippin' help, like I expected. Everything bent and what was not bent was still bent. The other 3 wheels were perfectly good wheels caught in the wrong place at the most opportune time(for me). Did I mention that the other 3 were(are) 26" and have 36 spokes? Well I have now.

I will post a few pics soon, ran out of light. Oh, yeah! I nearly forgot to mention the new front wheel I installed. "Installed"? Yeah, with the extra cable-ing and the battery pack, this wheel was definitely an install. So now, with the 24 gears and the electric motor-wheel, this Tryke is very likely the single most dangerous vehicle I have ever owned! But... that would be just as true about it if it had no gears, a regular wheel and was about to descend a good, steep hill. So sketchy! At speed it feels kinda like what I think a tall Unicycle with training wheels would feel like, LOL!!
Good thing that DANGER = FUN , huh?