Assembly day

UP and about bright and early on the Saturday in spite of a Guinness fuelled hangover. Amazingly it looked like it was going to be a gloriously sunny long weekend. I sat down with a good supply of tea and a printout of the assembly instructions; I felt vaguely guilty about ignoring Jim's directions about opening the box and resolved to follow everything else to the letter.

ONCE I was sure I'd managed to absorb the initial steps I collected my socket set and hat, and dragged the carton out on to the balcony; I figured Fiona wouldn't be too happy about me constructing the trike in the living room.


ANOTHER quick check of the instruction sheet, then I closed up the box and flipped it over and proceeded to extremely carefully cut around what was now the base with a serrated blade.


THIS took several minutes as I didn't want to scratch the paint or catch a tire with the knife. The whole process was a bit worrying, and afterwards it occurred to me that I could have opened the top (well bottom) of the box and would have had a much clearer idea of what I was doing.


















ANYWAY, all went well, and when I finished the cut I lifted away the bulk of the shipping carton to reveal the chrysalis that was hopefully going to shortly become my trike. I sliced this open equally carefully and soon had a pile of components and wheels.

JIM's next instruction was to find the two stub axles, slightly different lengths, and fix them in place.

A little side note here: one of the best purchases I ever made was a good quality, comprehensive socket set including hex as well as bihex sockets. I've used it countless times, and it always makes the job seem much easier if you'e using a decent tool.

THE next step was to assemble the the fork stem. At first glance I was worried that that not enough parts had been shipped as the exploded view in the instructions included far more components than were in the small bag attached to the alternate steering cable. After rereading the instructions though I realised that bearing cups were already installed, and all I had to add were the races and nuts.

ONCE I'd understood the assembly steps correctly the fork slotted together and fitted onto the frame without a problem.

THE steering rods that clip into each side of the bell crank were a little harder to align and resulted in some fiddling and choice language before they clicked into place with a very satisfying solidity.

AFTER the detailed instructions so far I was a little surprised to find just one more short paragraph simply saying to now put on the wheels and the differential cover. During my scan of the owners manual I remembered something slightly more detailed about installing the wheels, and I found it under the 'Unfolding' section. The rear wheel with it's quick release hub was installed in seconds, but the two front wheels were more troublesome.

THE wheel hub unscrewed easily, and I caught the pin as it dropped out of the axle; so far so good. I slipped the wheel into place and lined up the holes in the wheel and axle as described in the manual. The problem came when I tried to put in the pin; it would go in one side perfectly, but the alignment was so tight I couldn't get it to come out the other side. I tried swapping wheels to see if this was simply a left/right issue, but found the same problem. Now, I never try to force anything mechanical just in case I'm being stupid or not following instructions correctly, but try as I might I couldn't find a configuration that let the pin slip in easily. In the end I opted for some gentle persuasion; I placed a male hex drive with the same diameter as the pin, held it against the pin head and tapped with a hammer until the pin was securely in place. I then screwed on the hub cover and all seemed fine.

THE dérailleur seemed to have been fully set up and adjusted, then detached from it's frame mounting for shipping. There's wasn't anything I could see in the instruction manual about this so I simply fiddled about with able and chain routing until it could be manoeuvred into position and screwed into place using the larger of the two allen keys supplied with the trike.





AT last it was time to flip the trike the right way up. The trike is surprisingly light, and thankfully nothing seemed to fall off or go twang as a result of the process. I attached the extremely cool steering handles to the other end of the steering rods and tested the movement. Everything seemed fine, so I attached the differential cover plate and spent a frustrating ten minutes removing all the taped on bubble wrap from the seat frame. The mesh seat cover seemed very tight at first, but I assumed that this was to accommodate some stretching once my 100 kilos had been sitting in it for a while.

FINALLY I lined up the front and rear reflectors and I was done.

I don't know why I wasn't looking happier at this point. Possibly because I still had my hangover.