They look like they handled the ploughing with ease... Nice to see them being worked.. I bet when they were made no one thought they would still be going strong after 50+ years
That's great Ian, don't think I have ever seen Nigel smile that much or that often !!
Can't say I blame him though, that looked a right laugh...
Thanks Paul, yep it was a great laugh. Even though I had taken a "back seat" to driving I was smiling behind the camera
Just a tick windy! Who gets to clean it?
Yep the wind was getting up a bit.. I cleaned a bucket load of mud and grass off the outriggers alone today.. Need to borrow a pressure washer to clean the rest off!
I expect we have all been here at some point, having projects that you have started but never finished despite best intentions.
Sometimes other projects crop up, sometimes it's a lack of time... But we all must have a project or two we wished we had finished.
Here's a couple of mine.. Both quite mad builds..
Project Kartasaki..
Take one Wolf Garten Cart.
Pull out the engine..
Cut it in half lengthways!
And widen it enough..
To fit a Kawasaki Gpz305 engine with a stonking 34hp..
Like so
I wish I had of finished this project as it would of been great fun.. It was about this time that I bought my first Wheel Horse which I started to restore.. Project Kartasaki got pushed to the background while I indulged in the Wheel Horse side of life, and slowly the bike parts got sold off to finance my out of control Wheel Horse habit
I never got far enough into the next "wish I had finished it" project to give it a name..
Yep, it's (or would of been) a Wheel Horse fitted with a BMW 900cc 3 cylinder bike engine. I started collecting parts for this build but never could find the time to get really started on it..
So there you go chap's, please feel free to add your own "Projects you wish you had finished" to this thread
Thanks Koen, over the years I've become quite good at fitting square bit's of steel into round holes...... Of course a hammer helps
By "fun painting" I of course mean a flame job... No brush painting this time... I wanted better than that.. So a bit of internet shopping later I had an airbrush and paints on the way..
Before we get ahead of ourselves here, let's get the slightly more boring bit out the way..
Apart from the air brush paint, all the rest of the paint came out of rattle cans..
Loads of primer first which was flattened down once dry.
Then the black...
The black was very carefully flattened back to a smooth finish taking care not to sand through to the primer..
Before I started laying flames on the tank I thought I should have a play with the airbrush first.. A good move as I had never used one before..
A few test panels..
Happy I was starting to get the hang of the air brush, out came the fine line tape to lay the flames on.. No templates here, it was done free hand
Lot's of masking tape was used to cover the parts I didn't want to flame.
A light dusting of white went on first.
To help the blue stand out more.
De-masked..
The next part did require a custom template thingy..
Once again white went on first, followed by yellow.
I wasn't happy with how the front end looked, it needed a bit more rake and a bit more length..
Chop chop.
Gone!
Some box section was welded inside to put the strength back..
Plated and painted over.
Time to sort the bodywork out..
A Kawasaki Gpz305 fuel tank was fully washed out..
And sliced open so I could get it to sit low over the frame.
Fitted with the filler hole plated over..
The real fuel tank came from an old J.A.P engine that was attached to a water pump.
Rear wings were made from box skinned with ally sheet.
Fitted.
A cover for the battery was quickly folded up.
As the rev counter was now quite a way from the engine, I joined two rev counter cables together to make a rather long cable.. Don't ask me how I did it, I can't remember!
By rather long, I mean 81 inches long .. Despite the length it worked well with only a little "rev lag".
Joining two clutch cables was easy.
Some of the electric mounted.. This was all hidden under the seat.
The chassis stripped down for final welding and painting.
Reassembly begins after painting...
Coming up next the final part and some fun painting.. But first I need to pour myself a glass of red wine
This er.. Interesting set-up was made to get the power from the engine to the trans.. Yes that is a reinforced box spanner on the left side of the sprocket!
The box spanner bit slot's onto the nut that fit's on the bike gearboxes output shaft.
A couple of these chain adjusters were made..
One side bolted in place.
The complete chain adjuster from above..
To help the engine keep it's cool behind the driver seat, this cooling fan was installed.. It's a car heater fan but I've not idea what from..
With a bit of fiddling I managed to graft mini moto brake discs onto the trans axles..
A trimmed down Kawasaki Gpz305 caliper could just be fitted inside the rear wheels!!
Working on it mate.. It's hard to work through the folders... some are dated, some say things like bodywork or drive train.. None of the photo's have been renamed!! I was lazy with my photo's back in those days
A 6x6 and tiller built into one! I never tire of seeing that machine, it's just a masterpiece and I am envious of those who get to see it in person let alone drive it!
Yep she sure did chew the grass up a bit
If your ever in this part of the world your more than welcome to take it for a drive Karl
yes i had a great day, i wish you could see this in the flesh karl it is the best engineered project i have ever seen built in a garden shed,
(usa translation)- i had an awesome day its a pitty you cant sit your butt on it karl its the damdest best custom build ive seen coming out of a back yard shop
Thank you Nigel, very kind words there and I'm glad you enjoyed yourself.. How does it feel to be a YouTube star?
Your translation cracked me up
That's funny! But it's a "Totally Awesome day Dude!"
Now I don't know which I prefer. Nigels trike or that.
You ain't seen nothing yet
wow!!!!
another project I didn't know about, I can start to piece a few more of your crazy ideas together and see where some of the bits came from
I tend to use what I have kicking aboot the place and make it work
Awesome, if not impractical concept, trying to work out the ratio of speed - distance and emptying the
Grass Box . Thanks for resurrecting that one Ian...,......or is it Heath Robinson
Howdo Richard, I thought it might of been a sensible move to remove the cutting blades... So I did
I will answer to either name
I would imagine the cylinder running at 3x speed there would be no grass to collect... just smoke
Had the blade still of been on, they would of had a hard time reaching the grass anyway.. The Webb did like to bounce about a bit and not spend that much time still in contact with the ground
So onto the conclusion....
The "Webasaki" was used through out the summer and lot's of fun was had.. But as you would expect by putting too much power and speed through something running on steel rollers it did over time shake it's self apart!
Knowing it wouldn't hold together for much longer something had to be done... I did attempt to fit a Westwood trans and wheels to it, but the center of balance would of been way too high!
Then one day Garry walked into the Shack.. Had one look at the Webb and said, "Why not turn it into a rear engined trike?"....
Why not I thought, and the Webb was soon stripped down..
Pete turned up during the first mock-up, I think the grin says it all.
The plan was to use the Webb seating trailer thingy frame as the main chassis for the trike...
Out came the hacksaw and off came the rear suspension mounts..
And fresh steel added to widen the rear a little so I could bolt on the Westwood trans.
Westwood (Peerless) trans used to get it's power in from a pulley at the top.. The top pulley thingy was soon ripped out of the trans..
And a sprocket was bolted to the trans brake disc to get the engine power back in, in the direction I needed.
Rather than make new engine mount's I reused part of the Webb frame as it had the mounts already made, which the sharp eye'd of you will notice is actually part of the Z200 frame.. I like to recycle
I remember welding the extra bracing on at 3 in the morning when I used to have the energy to do all night Workshack sessions!! And yes I was single back in those days
The trike slowly coming together..
More to come later.. I need to sort out some more photo's.. And kick myself for not renaming them so they are in any kind of order!!!
With some chopping and changing a new slightly bigger engine was fitted into the Webb frame.. A Kawasaki Z200 engine with custom 1 into 2 exhaust that flowed into two Harley end cans which Garry turned up with one day
A view from the back, Atco fuel tank and a pedal to take care of gear shifting.. A Webb with a 5 speed box don't you know
As I had the rest of the bike the engine came from I thought I might as well fit the headlamp and indicators just for the laugh and to see the look on peoples faces
The Z200 dash installed..
The rebuild after painting the frame.
A new tow behind seat thingy was built. Here's the bare frame..
By this point in the build I had picked up a second Kawasaki Z200 for spares, which came in handy
Wanting driver comfort a custom independent suspension was built. Here's Garry with a Z200 swing arm that was turned into a wishbone thingy.
A view from underneath..
The nearly finished rear end... Independent suspension, Z200 front wheels with cable operated disc brakes, and a rear light cover I made from some computer case panels..
The Z200 speedo was relocated to next to the seat so I could connect it to the speedo drive on the right side wheel.
The rear brakes were operated by this lever just in front of the seat..
The grass box getting a flame job..
Ta Daa..... I never did get round to fitting a good seat to it
I still had hair back in those days
Top speed was about 30mph which is as about as fast as you would want to go down a gravel track still on the Webb's original steel roller!!
So how did it turn into a trike??
Your going to have to wait until later to see that part, got things I need to get done this morning..
To be Continued....
shame of the big hole in the block, what engine make was on it? engine looks familiar.
Koen
I'm sure the original engine was a Briggs of some sort.. All this happened a very long time ago, so the brain cell's are straining a bit to remember
The story starts many many years ago when I bought my first ride on, or should it be "ride behind" mower. This rather old Webb
After a quick oil change and a clean of the spark plug it was soon put to work creating stripes across the lawn..
At some point I decided to pull the Webb apart for a repaint.. Parts everywhere
At the time this was the size bench I had for "mower work"!!!
The seat/roller thingy had some extra pipe welded on..
Painted and plated
Engine work on a sunny day.
For some reason I never did take any photo's of the finished repaint, these are the best I have.
So once again the Webb was put back to work cutting the lawn, until I got a bit bored of it's slow speed and decided to do a bit of home tuning..
A more free flowing exhaust..
And a straight inlet manifold to replace the old "up draft" manifold which I thought was a very strange way of getting fuel into the engine!!
So with the new home made high performance bolted on the engine, she was fired up, warmed up and driven gently to the straightest and longest bit of lawn I had...
Full of hope of at least reaching 7mph I opened the throttle right up...
5 seconds later there was a loud bang from the engine and I saw something fly out the front!!
Yep that's a busted con rod gone through the block!!
I did replace the engine with a 4hp Briggs I had floating about, but it felt gutless with no power!!
Just some vintage motor cycle brochures
in Off-Topic Discussion
Posted
Vintage brochures! Thanks. Now I really feel young
A little before my time abut a friend did have a T140 that he started restoring at one point