Well I've had numerous threads on this thing and I still have my website, www.atc500r.com, but I'm busy waiting for parts to finish putting the thing back together for trikefest so I've decided to work on an official thread to try and consolidate everything. This conversion has been going on for several years now, and as everyone knows this kinda thing is never done. I've also had a lot of setbacks and lessons learned the hard way so a lot of this info is old news.
Current Progress Pic as of 4/17/2007
So, here's the bumpy story on my conversion.
The money pit....err..saga begins!!
Well it all started back when I was a freshman in college. I had a few different dirt bikes and atvs, I loved to ride. I had just gotten hooked on three wheelers and had started paying attention to anything in the magazines I could find about them.
It just so happened I had bought an issue of dirtwheels that had an article on an awesome CR500 trike conversion a guy named Tony Wyatt had done. This guys bike got a whole two pages in the mag and a good bit of it was interview, it was freakin awsome! Right then and there I knew I was going to build one.
Tony's bike was so sweet! He had leagers build him a new (this was year 2000) CR500 trike swinger just like from the 80s and had custom subframe and triples made. His 500 used various 400ex part and turned out totally sweet. Wish I could find that magazine.
So that was my inspiration and irrational spending was to follow. Obviously I didn't want an exact copy of Tony's bike, how un-cool would that be? So I set a few goals.
The main goal was to build a Honda ATC500R. Obviously since this is a bike conversion many trike enthusiasts consider this a ATCR500R but labels matter not to me.
My original intentions have changed somewhat since my website days so some of that has gone out the window. One of my biggest goals was to use as many available off the shelf parts as possible for the sake of maintenance and parts availability.
Next goal was for this bike to look as factory as possible, very professional and high quality. I think I’ve met that goal somewhat.
Another goal has always been that this was to be an all purpose trike. I’m not really a drag racer and I ride all kinds of terrain so this bike was meant to handle them all. Once again I think so far so good on that goal. Lol
Well with some general goals set its on to the beginning of this lofty project. My build started off as a bare 1987 Honda CR500R frame purchased from eBay. Along with the frame came the stock triples and forks all for $100, score! Around that same time I had spotted an ATC250R front wheel, hub, and triple clamp also on eBay and snatched them up as soon as I could.
Already you can see the general idea forming. The last major decision was the rear swing arm. The leagers arm was rumoured to cost upwards of $500 and at the time I was a poor college boy, that was not an option. I toyed with the idea of cutting down a 250R swing arm to fit the CR500 frame but being that the arm was steal, it looked like it would be too much work, with very poor results. Finally after strolling through the local ATV dealership I came upon the perfect swing arm, the 400ex rear swing arm! This swinger was cast aluminium with a proven rear axle and break set-up. After taking some measurements and eye balling some options the decision was made and I set my heart on combining a 400ex ATV swing arm with a stock CR500R arm.
Anyway from here on the thread will be broken up into chronological sections of how the build progressed until I get to current date.