Suspension on a atc 185s with electric start 200 motor

[HaggLE]

Well the suspension converstion was done back in the 80's by my dad, he saw it done in a magazine and copied it. He bought the 185 brand new, owned it a couple of months then did the mods mostly to suit flat track racing. Since then he sold it but in recent months he found it again and bought it back. It is a little more tired than it was 20 years ago but its all still there.

I was very blown away when he came home from work and said he found his old trike 20 years later. He sells tools to mechanics and was at a bike shop one day and saw it laying on its side and offered the owner of the shop $500 for it, some guys dropped it off to get it fixed and they couldnt afford to fix it so they left it there.

Need some fresh fork seals and a new rear shock as the current one is too soft and has no dampening. The original motor was in it but someone had stuffed the cam bearings big time.

So we are going to fit up a Zongshen 200 electric start motor (chinese) they are a direct honda copy.

I will post some pics shortly.

[HaggLE]

As i said previously this conversion was done in the 80's when this trike was nearly brand new, It was done and used for flat track racing and if you look at the triple clamp closely you can see the bolts still there for the front number plate.

I took some good pics so you can see how the conversion was done if anyone else was thinking of doing it.

Here are the pics.

[gizmo_22]

Thanks for posting up those pics, good high quality ones are hard to come by. I'll get some pics of mine up when i get around to doing the front end swap i'm planning on trying soon and of course setting up a rear end similiar to that one.

[HaggLE]

Are you going to make your own triple clamps?

If so here are some pointers:

Make sure that there is more offset on the bottom triple clamp than the top.
Triple clamp offset is how far forward a line between the two fork tube centers is from the center of the steering head, as viewed from the top. See the pic for offset.
[IMG]http://www.dirtrider.net/forums3/attachment.php?s=8a749ad21ddb7*Edited**Edited*167b 338ff8ac8de59&attachmentid=2653&stc=1[/IMG]
You can get an idea of this from one of the pics I posted.

Also try and get a set of trailing axle fork legs, i.e. the axle sits behind the centre line of the fork legs.

The last area that you may need to play with is the rake or angle of the forks, if you find that it understeers or you turn and you dont get much response from the steering you may need to lay down the forks further or make it so that the front wheel is further forward you could say. You can do this by cutting the frame and welding a piece in underneath the head stock or lowering the back.
If it just wants to throw the back around all the time and do 360's, then do the reverse.

A wider rear axle will make it want to keep going straight ahead too as will a longer swing arm so if this happens to your trike dont forget about these things.

Good luck and I hope you get into it soon.

[gizmo_22]

i wasn't planning on making the complete triple clamps, i have a 200x frontend here and what i was planing on doing was getting the a stem machined so I can use it in the 185s frame, or cutting up a junk set of 200m forks i have. Thats basically what i'm working with at the moment, once i dig the stuff out of the snowbank ill post some pics to show you guys what i mean.

[HaggLE]

You cant make a stem for the 200x triple clamps, you MUST use the 200x stem because of the different offset on the top and bottom triple clamps the forks will not go through both triple clamps if you move them closer or further apart. If the 200x stem fits the 185s frame then your in luck or if the 200m forks are the same diameter then you are also in luck. You have two other options after that, cut the 185s head stock off and weld on a 200x one or make your own triple clamps.

You can make stems for bike triple clamps because they run the same offset top and bottom but they wont steer very well in a trike.