Greetings all
I hope to chronicle the purchase, renovation / restoration of my trike on these pages. I have wanted one of these things every since I first saw one in Wenatchee Washington in 1975. My girlfriend (now wife) and I were driving past a RV dealership and saw them in the parking lot and I was hooked. Being 19 and poor there was not one in my immediate future though.
Fast forward 35 years and I'm looking on Craig's list for a good deal on a used bike so I can ride with the 20 somethings I work with, and lo and behold on the Yakima Craig's list I see a 1974 tri sport, and it looks fairly complete!!. So I called the owner and after some haggling (he wanted $1500.00 for it I got it for 700 and a 9mm pistol that i traded a used laptop for so my total cost was $756.00). After I picked it up I took it to work to store it and the children I worked with have never seen anything like it, and they immediately were bugging me to ride it but it had no working back brakes and no kill swithces or lights but the former owner did say it ran. so after cleaning a suitable spot out in my garage It was time to take it home So I told the guys to bring it to the maintnance shop and we would take it out for a spin. Well we adjusted the front brake so it had some stopping power and put some 40:1 in it and off we went.Now as you will see in the photos this vehicle has had the origional rupp 390 replaced my a yamaha 440 and the previous owner installed streight pipes with some kind of megaphone / muffler so this thing was loud!!. as the engine sprang to life it was cutting in and out on 1 cylinder so it got off to a slow start then after about 20 seconds at 30 mph or so the second cylinder came back and I decided to drop the hammer and holy s**t that thing really flies having very little brakes i backed off of the throttle came back to the shop gave my co workers a try at it and then loaded it on the truck.
As we were loading it up I noticed a fuel leak and discovered that I was missing a gas tank support and the secondary clutch had rubben into my one of a kind irreplacable fuel tank. a trip to napa yeilded a rv water tank patching kit that had the fuel tank fixed in no time. So of course another test drive was called for but alad we found that the clutch was not releasing complete so we could not get the engine started with out the vehicle moving so I just took it home.
The first order of buisness was to fix the clutch and find out what other parts I needed I discovered I wqs missing the seat cover and headrest and a speedometer So I am off to find some leads on these parts. below are the before pix of my project
I hope to chronicle the purchase, renovation / restoration of my trike on these pages. I have wanted one of these things every since I first saw one in Wenatchee Washington in 1975. My girlfriend (now wife) and I were driving past a RV dealership and saw them in the parking lot and I was hooked. Being 19 and poor there was not one in my immediate future though.
Fast forward 35 years and I'm looking on Craig's list for a good deal on a used bike so I can ride with the 20 somethings I work with, and lo and behold on the Yakima Craig's list I see a 1974 tri sport, and it looks fairly complete!!. So I called the owner and after some haggling (he wanted $1500.00 for it I got it for 700 and a 9mm pistol that i traded a used laptop for so my total cost was $756.00). After I picked it up I took it to work to store it and the children I worked with have never seen anything like it, and they immediately were bugging me to ride it but it had no working back brakes and no kill swithces or lights but the former owner did say it ran. so after cleaning a suitable spot out in my garage It was time to take it home So I told the guys to bring it to the maintnance shop and we would take it out for a spin. Well we adjusted the front brake so it had some stopping power and put some 40:1 in it and off we went.Now as you will see in the photos this vehicle has had the origional rupp 390 replaced my a yamaha 440 and the previous owner installed streight pipes with some kind of megaphone / muffler so this thing was loud!!. as the engine sprang to life it was cutting in and out on 1 cylinder so it got off to a slow start then after about 20 seconds at 30 mph or so the second cylinder came back and I decided to drop the hammer and holy s**t that thing really flies having very little brakes i backed off of the throttle came back to the shop gave my co workers a try at it and then loaded it on the truck.
As we were loading it up I noticed a fuel leak and discovered that I was missing a gas tank support and the secondary clutch had rubben into my one of a kind irreplacable fuel tank. a trip to napa yeilded a rv water tank patching kit that had the fuel tank fixed in no time. So of course another test drive was called for but alad we found that the clutch was not releasing complete so we could not get the engine started with out the vehicle moving so I just took it home.
The first order of buisness was to fix the clutch and find out what other parts I needed I discovered I wqs missing the seat cover and headrest and a speedometer So I am off to find some leads on these parts. below are the before pix of my project
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