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Thread: Louis's trx400ex to atc400ex conversion build

  1. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by fabiodriven View Post
    Oh I'm not building a tank Gregory, but with Louis also owning an XR650L I'd bet the oil is going in the down tube. :-)
    No not you, I was talking about swinehart. See post #6
    my feedback thread http://www.3wheelerworld.com/showthr...-hoosierlogger


    TRIKEFEST 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

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    Quote Originally Posted by fabiodriven View Post
    Ya'll are the biggest bunch of whining b!tches I've seen in my entire life.
    You might be strong as an ox, but without a cart you are just a big dumb animal.

  2. #17
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    Oct 2003
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    Quote Originally Posted by C.J View Post
    Going 350X style with an oil cooler?
    I'm guessing dual oil coolers. After all you gotta put something up behind those big ass radiator shrouds on an air-cooled bike.
    Red Rider's Sand Machine Updated 07/23/14

  3. #18
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    Oct 2010
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    United States
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    maybe one oil cooler on one side and oil tank on the other side

  4. #19
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    Oct 2004
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    Maryland
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    :-) Someone's pretty warm.

    Quote Originally Posted by SUPERBEAST View Post
    maybe one oil cooler on one side and oil tank on the other side
    And that's the rest of the story. ~ Paul Harvey

    "Yes its broken, but does that really surprise you?."
    "What happened? What does it look like happened?!?!"

  5. #20
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
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    I know this thread has been quiet but that's because I have been quietly working on this build in the back ground piece by piece. Not quite done yet but I've made some pretty good progress.

    i believe this is where I had left this build last in this thread:



    Well from hat point it was a month or so and I finaly was able to purchase a welder of my very own. No more relying on other people to get my welding done and boy I'm extremely happy about it. I'd fairly confident putting steal together but I certainly wouldn't say I've mastered it. My welds might not be pretty but they'll hold no question.

    I pulled the trigger on this miller Dynasty 200dx and I love it! Built a welding cart for it as well but I don't go into that in this thread.





    So after that I built a welding table and finally I got around to getting my jig setup. Took some time but I got it squared up and then proceeded to build another jig that mounts into the frame jig. This new jig mounts to the footpeg bolt holes on the donor frame and keeps it square to the rest of the jig. Put a lot of effort into measuring and getting everything square so the headtube will be square to the rest of the frame. Part of building the lower jig insert was getting the donor section of frame square to the jig and held solid. Kind of a chicken or the egg situation.





    Next I spent some time doing some measuring and math to make a paterrn for my head tube angle. I had to remake this several times as I kept screwing it up but finally I got the desired pattern. I need to buy a magnetic angle finder for future builds.


    I felt I need to get a rough idea of how the lower frame rails and down tube where going to come togther so I focused on them first. I formed the bends in my frame by cutting up several pieces of tubing I had a freind bend for me until I had the correct bends I wanted for my front frame rails. I assembled them out of two different peices and internal plugs. It would be ncie if they where all one nice bent piece of tubing but alas I'm relying on someone else to bend tube for me at this time so until I buy my own bender this is my method.




    Here are the bends loosly fit into the lower frame.
    Last edited by Louis Mielke; 12-08-2014 at 01:20 AM.
    And that's the rest of the story. ~ Paul Harvey

    "Yes its broken, but does that really surprise you?."
    "What happened? What does it look like happened?!?!"

  6. #21
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
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    Maryland
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    After finding the angle of the dangle I wanted and building jigs and what not it was time to set my head tube height. I had a general idea of where I wanted my head tube in relation to the height of the engine and the dimensions of my tank. I also took many comparison measurements from my 85 atc250r and my prior atc450r build. I settled on a happy medium between the two. The height of the 400ex engine dwarfs the 250r and is even a couple inches taller than the trx450r engine. It's a challenge to find a happy medium of seat height, head tube height and peg location.

    I made a rough estimate of how long I needed my down tube to be and added two inches. I wanted to be too long instead of short if need be. Went a head with my hole saw and shaped up the top of the down tube. The down tube is 1.5" by 1.5" 1/8" wall square tubing. Pretty heavy stuff.






    I've found between my experience and gleaning information from friends and other builders there's a magic triangle for motorcycles/atvs/threewheelers that greatly effects the comfort and handling of the machine. In general the atc250r has this triangle close to perfect. The triangle is made of three points, the hand location on the handle bars, the center of the foot pegs and the rider seating position on the seat. Getting this triangle correct is important. Now mind you, I'm not expert nor do I claim to be. I'm merely sharing the information I've gleaned from else where over the years. I learned from my 450 build that I wanted to shorten the wheelbase over that previous build. Wheel base on my 450 is 53". When we think about a triangle, which that's what our three wheelers are, a triangle, the stablest triangle is one that has equal sides. So in general I like to try to shoot for my wheel base to be as close to the width of my axle as possible.

    Now I know there's many ways to widen a bike, spacers, aftermarket axles but you can only go so wide. 50" is race legal in most events. This 400 build is definitely not meant to be a race machines so I want to build it around a stock width axle. For sake of simplicity I'm labeling my stock width as 46". 53" compared to 46" is a huge difference. Once again, I could change my wheel base in various ways. Custom swing arms, shortened forks, leading vs trailer axle, rake and trail angle. etc. I'm limiting these things out of preference. I like leading axle on my inverted front ends because that's the easiest way to assemble them. I'm pretty happy with my head tube angle at 26* based on prior experience with my 500 and 450 builds. I don't want to build a custom swing arm, i want to use stock components. That leaves me with the overall length of the frame with in my control. Well sort of anyway. Based on the fuel tank I'm using and the location I want to put my oil tank and oil cooler I can only make my frame so short and still have room for things like the exhaust and engine mounts. I did a lot of measuring, and fitting and adjusting but I could only happily reduce the length of my frame by 2"

    As best I can tell it will translate to a wheelbase of 51". I'm no engineer or mathematician though so we'll see how it turns out. so my wheel base to width is 51/46. The lesser apparent result of the wheelbase to width is how the machine turns. You may recall the old school racers would run a shorter swing arm to make their machine turn sharper/quicker. Well what I'm discussing here is in the same vane. I wish I could make a the frame shorter, and maybe next time I'll figure out how to do it. I think on the next 450 I build I'll be able to shorten it a bit more as there's not as much engine mass to deal with on the 450 a there is on the 400.





    At this point I threw the sub frame and other items on to get a better idea of how it would come together.



    That tank position definitely needed adjustment. I played with the head tube position a bit. At the point of that last picture I had the head tube pretty low. After spending some time taking some measurements from the 250r and my 450r I decided to raise the head tube up some more. I think I found a happy medium.

    It's late. I need to sac out. Maybe I'll get some more posted up tomorrow night. As usual I have a good bit more done than shown. It's almost ready to get set on 3 wheels actually.
    Last edited by Louis Mielke; 12-08-2014 at 01:41 AM.
    And that's the rest of the story. ~ Paul Harvey

    "Yes its broken, but does that really surprise you?."
    "What happened? What does it look like happened?!?!"

  7. #22
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
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    Maryland
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    I did end up raising the head tube a good couple of inches but I didn't really take any good pictures of that step so I'll jump to what I'm calling the mid upper frame rails. My desire in building this frame (whether its 'right' or not) was the trying to maintain the top line of the quad frame in a similar position and then add "spars" or upper frame rails much like the new perimeter style dirt bike frames are. On my 450 sheet metal was brake formed into two 1" thick spars to mimic the crf450r dirt bike frames but with this particular build I really felt round tube for the upper and middle rails was more appropriate. I don't have a tubing bender yet so I relied on a good friend to pre-bend some tubing for me which I then cut at the desired lengths.



    This is what I had originally started with for the mid frame rails but they went through much cutting and shaping to get to where currently am. First the back portion of the stock 400 frame needed to be dissected and cleaned up a bit to get a good idea of how the rear of the mid rails would need notched to tie everything together.





    You can see I tried to preserve the stock sub frame mounts so that I could reference them later. Both sides of the frame where dissected and cleaned like this and some measurements were taken to get a rough idea of lengths and notch positions.

    Notching the ends of these tubes correctly was pretty important to get a strong weld. A larger gap here that would need filled might have been okay but I'm sure would not be as strong as a tightly fit joint. Keep in mind as you're looking at these pics once the mid and upper tubes are in place a piece of sheet metal with get shaped with 'fingers' that fit in between the tubes and welded in place as a gusset similar to how the oem frame was assembled.






    Most of this notching was accomplished with a hole saw and them some careful shaping with a die grinder.


    And that's the rest of the story. ~ Paul Harvey

    "Yes its broken, but does that really surprise you?."
    "What happened? What does it look like happened?!?!"

  8. #23
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    Maryland
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    Next I needed to build the front of the mid tubes "wish bone" so I cut a piece of square tubing to size and did a little shaping with a right angle grinder. The triangle magnets you see are really awesome for placing things and taking time to eye ball position of different pieces.



    Sorry for the blurry pics. With the rounded protrusion held in place I was able to hold up my pre shaped piece of tubing a get a better idea of where I wanted it.






    Obviously this was repeated for the other side.



    Some tack welds and I took a bit to check things out.

    And that's the rest of the story. ~ Paul Harvey

    "Yes its broken, but does that really surprise you?."
    "What happened? What does it look like happened?!?!"

  9. #24
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    Maryland
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    I've found one of the biggest aspects of building a frame in this manner is trial and error. It's easy to have a vision of something you'd like to build, almost as easy to get started cutting and shaping but it's the un-expected difficulties that are both frustrating and satisfying.

    Someone paying close attention may have already guessed the problem I faced from the last picture. Now mind you I didn't run into this problem un-awares. In fact I was trying to keep this very point in mind when piecing this portion together so I would avoid the problem I face. I thought I had left enough room but in fact I did not and it was very very tight. Can anyone guess what my problem was?
    Last edited by Louis Mielke; 03-01-2016 at 01:22 AM.
    And that's the rest of the story. ~ Paul Harvey

    "Yes its broken, but does that really surprise you?."
    "What happened? What does it look like happened?!?!"

  10. #25
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
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    Slidell, LA
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    I am going with exhaust clearance or the ability to remove the engine for servicing.
    Feedback for yaegerb: Click Here

    Need something blasted or polished or both? Send me a PM

  11. #26
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    Oct 2004
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    Maryland
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    I'm not going to wait for responses I'm just going to throw it out there because I'm not ashamed of making mistakes.

    The engine wouldn't come out! Yes I knew it was going to be close and I really really thought I had left enough room to finagle the engine in and out of that wish bone but unfortunately it was just too tight. I struggled to take the engine out for 30 minutes then aggravated I gave up and ate dinner with my family. After a couple hours I had cleared my head enough and went back out to try again because I had myself convinced it would come out and that I had left enough room.

    Well after another 30 minutes of wrestling the engine I was able to get it out. It involved me climbing up on the welding table, lifting the engine vertically until the engine's cylinder head was fully above the mid rails, and then rotating the engine 90*. Then and only then was I able to tilt the engine and slide it out. That was crazy and even though I was succesful in removing the engine repeating that feat with the rest of the upper frame portion in place would have never happened. So...

    I cut the tack welds on the front portion of the wish bone and proceeded to rotate the mid rails upwards about 2 inches. This required a new front block in the wishbone which was a shame I had to redo that work but it had to be done. Below are before and after comparisons. The engine now comes out easily and can be accomplished without banging up the frame/powder coat when the frame finally gets coated.





    A few more pics.





    I'm actually pretty happy with the outcome of the work that was redone because it created more of a straight line in the profile of the wishbone instead of the mild angle that was barely noticeable but present previously.
    And that's the rest of the story. ~ Paul Harvey

    "Yes its broken, but does that really surprise you?."
    "What happened? What does it look like happened?!?!"

  12. #27
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
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    Maryland
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    Exhaust clearance was actually something I put even more focus on. Plenty of room for the exhaust. The down tube is going to have to have a small notch much like the 350x has a dimple in the downtube but mainly to allow for aftermarket exhausts. The stock exhaust fits up no problem and the small notch that will be put in place is for convenience only.

    Quote Originally Posted by yaegerb View Post
    I am going with exhaust clearance or the ability to remove the engine for servicing.
    And that's the rest of the story. ~ Paul Harvey

    "Yes its broken, but does that really surprise you?."
    "What happened? What does it look like happened?!?!"

  13. #28
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
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    Maryland
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    Some of these pictures are out of order. Looking closely you can see that I already had made more solid tacks on the front portion of the lower cradle and attached it to the down tube. I also was confident enough in the engines position that I drilled the holes for the front engine mounts. I just so happened to have some left over upper engine mounts from my trx450r conversion so I used them for the front mount on this build.



    You may also notice I attached the down tube to the lower jig in order to assure it's postion hadn't moved. This small attachment will be removed easily with a cut off wheel when the frame is ready to be removed from the jig.



    Also slightly out of order of when I worked on it but here you can see how the lower front engine mount is shaping up.



    The down tube and the head tube where tacked together pretty solidly yet I left the tacks small enough it wouldn't be a big deal to cut things loose again if needed. This is the small triangle piece I notched out and shaped to go under the down tube and head tube.




    And that's the rest of the story. ~ Paul Harvey

    "Yes its broken, but does that really surprise you?."
    "What happened? What does it look like happened?!?!"

  14. #29
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
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    Maryland
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    Here's where it was left after the mid rails where in place. This represents the final head tube position but the gas tank will shift a little bit from this picture.



    Here's some mock up of where the upper rails will run. The dirt bikes and many of the 450 conversion you will see around including my own run the "spars" all the way up to the front of the tank. I had initially wanted to to the same thing on this build but the more I though of it as long as the fuel tank is secure there's really no necessity for the spars to run that full length. I'm trying to form a straight line from the upper corner of the rear vertical and the head tube. It's hard to explain but I realy don't feel like making some convoluted drawings with multiple colored lines. Just take my word for it for now. lol





    I'm toying with the idea of a fiberglass nose piece for the tank for aesthetics but I'll get to that eventually.
    And that's the rest of the story. ~ Paul Harvey

    "Yes its broken, but does that really surprise you?."
    "What happened? What does it look like happened?!?!"

  15. #30
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    Oct 2004
    Location
    Maryland
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    This piece is subject to change because it is kind of bulky but it's the front tank mount. This gets bolted to the tank and then the tank sets down into/onto the frame. Still more work to do on this upper section protruding from the head tube.







    You can see above I shaped a peice of steel to fit into the plastic mount that comes stock on the crf dirtbikes. I wanted a peice of plastic or rubber between the tank and this metal mount I made. The thought was to have a sort of isolator. Maybe pointless but it was the thought at the time.




    Here it is attached to the tank.



    and here it is sitting on the frame somewhat. Like I said, work in progress. The rear mount really will dictate the front mount a bit more. It may end up getting cut apart and reworked.

    And that's the rest of the story. ~ Paul Harvey

    "Yes its broken, but does that really surprise you?."
    "What happened? What does it look like happened?!?!"

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