I have been jumping on another guys thread with junk about my trike, and so I have decided to make my own post instead, rather than take over his excellent post.

So, at least here, I can throw a few pics on and not care about the space.

Well, so what is happening?

Ok, I have just bought a Trike, it is based on the K100 RS.

I am recovering from a massive accident and I am no longer able to ride a bike safely and so its a trike or nothing... Trike it is!

This trike however, has turned out to be the most awful pile of rubbish that I have ever wasted money on. The engine seems nice enough, but the seriously shoddy, and downright dangerous work that has been done to it, to turn it into a trike, is scary.

So much so, that even though the guy who sold it me, has promiosed me that the bike had just had its MOT, the day I bought it, the handbrake lever snapped because it was so rotten ( oh the magic of hiding things under layers of Hammerite eh? ) and so I have just taken it to get it MOTed myself and after a chat with the guys who were going to MOT it, we decided not to bother... In fact they said that if I was to actually try putting it through, they would condemn it.

The rust was ridiculous, the joints were nasty and it was, in their words.. "A death trap".

Oops!

Makes me wonder if the MOT was a genuine one, and if it is, then that garage should be closed down!

But anyway, I asked a couple of the local lads about sorting it out for me and a couple of days later, we are here, and the bike is now road safe, the bars have been replaced and new shocks added and the others thrown away.

So, here are some piccies BEFORE WORK:-

Firstly, check out this bit.
Loads of weld to get a coach bolt onto a bit of rusty metal, but its only actually holding into the bike frame by 3 small tack points...



And then on both sides where these awful bits of metal are suppored to be welded to the bike, check out the hole on each one right next to the join...



And if you look really really hard, you may even notice that the bolts that hold the shocks on, are not quite exactly spot on... You need the eye on an eagle mind you! LOL
Seriously, this is disgusting... Its also about an inch lower too!

Here we are using one of our Harley Shocks as a tester against the one BMW one in the same place as the BMW was was put... The Harley shock is too soft and so we decide to use both and have one either side.


But we set about cleaning it up, treating where it could be, weldign here and there to get the strength all back, and then we set about converting it to a 2 shock setup.







I will add more pictures, but for now, I think that will do.

Lowering the back end has taken a great deal of pressure off the front end, its still a tough bike to steer, but its way better than it was, plus, it now no longer tried to tank slap ... Something that it did all too often before.

I still need the handlebars replacing but I will be giving the RT stock bars and cables a check over first as that should be both cheaper and easier than whole new bits custom built for me.

You will need to brace the back of the frame to allow the shockies to take the load. I would recommend some 20mm tube where the red lines are and same or 16mm where the blue line is. As it sits there is a very good chance the back loop will crack up at the bend where the original shockie was attached.

Yes, I agree. We were looking at doing that very thing.

What we have done however, is used a couple of lengths of mild steel tubing, cut off the back end, stuffed the tubing into the original frame and then fit the frame back over the added tubing, and simply ground through a few places and welded it all into place. This will have kept everything looking the same, but will have strengthened up the original.

That was more of a "bugger it, we will have a laugh" thing to do more than anything else.

I myself am a competent welder, but I have NEVER done any bike work... Gates and Railings are my thing, but I am not ignorant to stress points etc.... The guys doing this with me, are fellow bikers and are very experienced at building bikes and trikes and I am absolutely putting my trust in their work.