So I’m starting a new project now that the hovercraft is done and operational. My goal is to design and build a 3 wheeled trike (like Billy Connelly drives around on) using a engine from an old wrecked car i have in my paddock that no longer gets used. This portion of the website is the journey i take in building this beast.
NOTE: Website dates are all wrong nowadays because i had to rebuild the original website due to technical glitches, so although the pages say 2024 the trike project itself was back in 2007-2008 time frame.
I have started the ball rolling and bought a used 1991 Honda Inspire which i have just taken the 5cyl, 2.0litre motor and auto out of it along with all the front and rear suspension and wiring loom. Below are some pictures of the motor and box i decided to go with.
Here’s the motor still in the car. It’s a longitude mounted motor but yet its still front wheel drive.
Only 5 bolts support the front subframe to the body of the vehicle (plus suspension parts etc) so the whole front end of the vehicle comes out as one unit.
Heres a shot of the front subframe and suspension without the motor. Before removing the motor from the vehicle i had full intentions of making my own suspension parts and all sorts of ideas but now that i have the whole lot sitting on the floor i’m very tempted to bolt the motor back into this subframe and build the chassis around it, that way i get to use the original strong subframe and all the original suspension and brakes.
This picture clearly shows what i was talking about before in regards to the axles. The diff on this model vehicle sits right under the sump therefore the axles are right under the mid point of the engine which as far as i’m concerned will place a large portion of the weight right over the axles rather than having the motor hanging past the axles like the VW and Subaru trikes do. I pulled the side of the diff housing off to see if i could somehow reverse the diff head so that going forward would make me go backwards and in return allow me to mount the motor backwards but sadly it can’t be done easily.
It’s a all alloy engine and as you can see once all the crap like AC and power steer is removed its not very wide and it’s just over 700mm in height
There is a couple of downsides i see so far on a “cosmetic” point of view, even though its a small transmission hanging off the back of it the trans will be poking out the back of the trike which may look a bit funny but hopefully when i design the body of it i will be able to hide it somehow. The other cosmetic issue i will mention later
