Sunday, May 1, 2011

Trident Front End Alignment Part 2. I goofed in part 1:)

After Tom’s (of Trident) generous offer to make it right on my TS2 pulling left I decided I needed to be damn sure of myself before wasting his time. So I needed to have a halfway accurate way to measure the toe-in. Toe was supposed to be set at the bike dealer. I checked it myself at the dealer with the tech. So what went wrong?
Today I cleaned out the back of the garage where there is a regularly spaced white tiles on the floor. Then I put the TS2 on the tile, lined up the right tire and rolled forward while keeping a straight line. Next I look and can tell at first glance the front wheels are toed out not in! So here is what I think happened, we had not made a rigorous check that the trike was actually tracking straight when we checked toe. This trike is supposed to have Ackerman steering, i.e. the wheel on the inside of a turn, turns sharper than the outside one. This keeps the tires from scrubbing in the turn. Now with the trike tracking straight I set the toe in to 1/8”  and took it out. Still a very very slight left pull, but this could be completely  due to cable routing. Both brake cables loop 180 degs and the rear gear cable comes from the right and does a 90 deg turn. Net there is slight cable push to the left.  So I think all is well and I wrote back to Tom, no worries and thanks!

1 comment:

  1. My TS1 came from a different retailer' left-over stock with the radius rods' inboard joints attached to the wrong holes, completely throwing both the Ackerman compensation and the alignment out of whack. After I corrected the attachment issue I made an alignment tool out of a rod w/ a wooden pencil zip-tied to it so the eraser was at the end. My alignment is now near zero toe-in and steers neutrally, with little brake steer. At full steering lock the outside tire still scrubs, but as I rarely go more than a mile or so at full lock the tire wear doesn't bother me;)

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