I’ve been looking on ebay for interesting things for the construction of the car. I found this gauge and decided I must have it. It has all types of terrain listed on the face. I won’t actually hook it up to the tires, but thought it would be an interesting feature for the dash.
I’ve gotten a few more parts for the car, I’ll detail those in the next post…
With this gauge I should be ready for anything.
I’ve been collecting parts from ebay for several weeks now. I keep looking on Craig’s List for more parts locally, but it seems that my fears are well founded, there are few Honda CX650 or CX500 in the islands. I feel lucky to have found my engine at all, and for a good price as well.
My latest purchase arrived yesterday: a pair of carbs complete with intake manifolds. The manifolds were missing from my bike, though the carbs were there. Only a few were listed on ebay and I think their owners considered them to be made of irreplaceabillium. Listed priced for each of the two manifolds needed was for around $175. Ouch. I think there may be issues with the rubber that makes up part of the manifold. Regardless, this pair of carbs had a buy-it-now price of $125. And they are in better shape than the ones I have. I’ll be able to clean them up and make them look great with the directions I found on the web.
I’m also measuring the frame from the donor Datsun truck that will hold the engine and front suspension all together. I’d like to have the engine placed back a bit from the stock Datsun location so it give the proper Morgan three wheeler look so I have to see if I can move the sway bar to the rear of the tires instead of the front. This will give the car a more authentic look.
The measurement tools in Photoshop are a help, but I’m still working on creating a CAD layout of the work to be done so I can visualize changes easily. Creating the plans in a CAD program hasn’t been easy however as the User Interface is not what I’m used to. So I’m also getting ready to put pen to paper…. a giant roll of butcher paper purchased at Costco. I did get an A in drafting after all.
Onwards.
I’ve got a good idea of what the end result should look like and I have a lot of inspiration from various web sites. The JZR Three Wheeler seems to be the closest to what I have in mind. I’d like to purchase a kit, but the purchase price and added shipping are out of my reach. And there’s a legal complication- the folks at the DMV gave me a call and told me that the final product of my labors would allowed on the road and would be classed as a motorcycle. That’s no surprise as most of the Morgan three wheelers seem to be classed as motorcycles.
One surprise is that in Hawaii, apparently motorcycles are not allowed to have seats side by side (Really? no side cars?). This means that my build must be a single seater. And I was told that if I were to buy a JZR frame, I wouldn’t be allowed to modify it at all. However, since I am building my own frame, I’m allowed to make changes to the design when building it. I’m not quite sure how that will work out as I don’t want to narrow the body drastically. The drive shaft will run down the center of the car, and if the width of the frame is narrowed by much, I’d need to straddle the drive shaft and shifter. That just doesn’t make any sense.
At this point, I’d like to develop some CAD plans for the frame and body so that I can do some test adjustments of the body size as well as determine the amount of needed materials. I’m using a Mac and the number of CAD packages available is less than a Windows box, but I’m sure I’ll find one that works. I’ve downloaded FreeCAD and will give it a whirl to see if it’s suitable. It’s also available for Windows and Linux boxes as well, so give it a try.
In the end, I may simply leave the body as close to the stock Morgan as possible and simply not put in a right hand seat. The drive shaft will actually be on the right of center and if I put in an electric reverse as planned, it will be on the drive shaft itself, taking up more room over there.
I’m moving forward with the collection of parts for the drivetrain. The bits between the engine and wheel are missing. Drive shaft, brakes, U-joint and other things need to be sourced. I’ve been checking both Craig’s List and Ebay but only Ebay has anything consistently. I’m hoping to find another non-running Honda to use for parts, but they seem to be quite scarce here. I’ve ordered the sections of the drive shaft (there are three parts), drive gear hub, shifter rod, brake plate, swing arm, tachometer and others. The mail man will be bringing a lot of this car, bit by bit.
Finding the bits will be almost as much fun as the actual construction. I’ll have to make, or have made, changes to some of the parts. The drive shaft will have to extended considerably and hopefully a reverse gear mechanism added. The rear brake will need to have an auxiliary slave cylinder added to it can participate in the hydraulic braking action of the car instead of relying on the two front wheels.
These and countless other things will have to be planned and created. I’m hoping it will take less than a year. We’ll see.
I traveled down to the DMV to see in person just what I needed to do about getting this project legal after it is finished. There were over 50 people in line waiting for the door to open when I arrived at 7:45. Ouch, apparently the last day of the month is not the best time to choose to visit the DMV. Still, I had told the folks at work I might be late, and I wanted to see how far I’d get in the hour I had before work.
Predictably, I used most of that hour queueing, and then didn’t want to bail on that time invested, so I persisted and got to speak with Dorothy who had more than the usual clerk’s understanding of the fine details of vehicle registration. But my out-of-the-box project had her scratching her head. We took a little walk and visited Jamie in the inspections department and had a talk about what the car would be like and what would be required to get it licensed.
The guys in the inspection department seemed a bit confounded about why I wanted to build a car with three wheels, but were open to the idea. James said that in reviewing this project they would look to Honolulu for guidance since they have more experience with Special Interest Vehicles. Jamie said he would call the head of the DOT, John and get his input on how the Morgan replica would be classified and what would be needed to get it legal. I thanked him and took my leave.
So, that’s as much progress as I had hoped to get in this visit to the DMV. Now to wait for the call from Jamie to tell me what the DOT had ruled on my particular build.