POISON APPLE: '79 Schwinn Fair Lady Trike

[Bike from the Dead]

Thought I'd share some of the inspiration and ideas I have in mind for my trike build.

First off, pretend that it's not made out of golf clubs, kitchen utensils, baseballs, pool tubes, a lawn chair, and a toaster, and just focus on the shape, the silhouette. This is kind of the flavor I want to shoot for: Short frame, big fat tires in the rear, small skinny tire up front, long fork, ape hangers, seat between the wheels, and maybe even a tank.

Next, these 2 trikes that Ian Roussel from Full Custom Garage built serve as a major inspiration for both my Poison Apple trike build, and another Spaceliner/Flightliner bike I also want to turn into a trike. Actually, a lot of Ian Roussel's builds serve as inspiration for my custom bike projects, especially with how he's always looking for "shapes" and how he likes to utilize scrap pieces and whatever else he has laying around.

This first trike is where I got the idea for the seating position, the BIG tires in the rear, the extended fork, and even that rear bodywork idea I have in mind with that metal drum I mocked up yesterday.

This other trike is more of an inspiration for the Spaceliner trike I want to build, but it's still a solid reference point for the trike I'm currently working on.

And most recently, I just came across this trike while looking for more ideas, and I might have just found a solution for making some rear bodywork that still looks muscular! This guy used a combo of '36 Olds and '39 Chevy fenders, but I think I could do something similar with either some leftover '40 Ford fenders from one of my dad's projects, or maybe a pair of VW Beetle fenders, if one of my contacts has a pair I can buy. My main concern is having room to pedal, and that means the fenders can't stick out too far and inward. Plus, my trike's more short and stubby than it is long and low. I want it to look proportionally correct.

 

[Bike from the Dead]

Well, yet another cheap fat tire cruiser bike I was looking at for the rear wheels and tires sold, and this one really irritated me. Long story short, the guy just sold the bike because he said, and I quote,"Someone else wanted it, and you were not sure that you did." I was interested, I just wanted to know what wheel/tire size the bike had, since he didn't include that in his ad, and I wanted to know the rear sprocket size because I wanted to make sure the sprocket was small enough to sit next to the axle sprocket on my trike rear end! If those 2 things checked out, I would have gladly purchased his bike!

*sigh....* Some sellers...

So now, all I can do is wait for this one last person on FB Marketplace to get back to me about their ad for bike wheels and tires. If that one turns out to be a dead end too, I don't know what I'm going to do about this trike. Sure, I could just stack the parts I've got, hit everything with a new coat of paint and call it good enough, but "good enough" sometimes just isn't good enough.

Between the missed opportunity with that last sale, my neighbor who could help me with the metal fab getting sick, and an honest lack of funds to really build this trike the way I want, I don't know if now's the best time for me to participate in this year's Muscle Bike Build Off.

 

[ian]

Well, yet another cheap fat tire cruiser bike I was looking at for the rear wheels and tires sold, and this one really irritated me. Long story short, the guy just sold the bike because he said, and I quote,"Someone else wanted it, and you were not sure that you did." I was interested, I just wanted to know what wheel/tire size the bike had, since he didn't include that in his ad, and I wanted to know the rear sprocket size because I wanted to make sure the sprocket was small enough to sit next to the axle sprocket on my trike rear end! If those 2 things checked out, I would have gladly purchased his bike!

*sigh....* Some sellers...

So now, all I can do is wait for this one last person on FB Marketplace to get back to me about their ad for bike wheels and tires. If that one turns out to be a dead end too, I don't know what I'm going to do about this trike. Sure, I could just stack the parts I've got, hit everything with a new coat of paint and call it good enough, but "good enough" sometimes just isn't good enough.

Between the missed opportunity with that last sale, my neighbor who could help me with the metal fab getting sick, and an honest lack of funds to really build this trike the way I want, I don't know if now's the best time for me to participate in this year's Muscle Bike Build Off.

You know, I worked for an old man in my younger days and he had a saying for a situation like this......
"You can't rush perfection". Sometimes ya gotta just go with the flow and come up with Plan B, or Z.
It'll happen.

 

[Bike from the Dead]

You know, I worked for an old man in my younger days and he had a saying for a situation like this......
"You can't rush perfection". Sometimes ya gotta just go with the flow and come up with Plan B, or Z.
It'll happen.

Thanks Ian. Yeah, this may be one of those projects that I chip away at a little at a time.

 

[Bike from the Dead]

Okay, I still don't know if I'll be making any progress on Poison Apple anytime soon, but here are some ideas I had for how this trike might look with some body mods.

The first sketch on the top left was loosely inspired by a comment @Dominicus posted earlier, with a wheel barrow T Bucket body, but the rest are based more on that one trike I posted a picture of earlier. My main concerns are keeping the rear of this trike from just looking like a car trunk stuck on a bike... something these sketches veer a little too close to for my liking.

 

[Bike from the Dead]

BIG NEWS! BIG TIRES! BIG GRIN ON MY FACE!

I managed to make $50 today on an old Tonka Winnebago toy I got at a garage sale years ago for $2, and then this afternoon, I bought this 26" x 4" fat tire bike for $60, with wheels and tires that are arguably worth 5x what I paid for the whole bike!

I've already taken it for a test ride, and this beast rolls and stops well! I wouldn't mind leaving it like this and just goofing off on it, but this bike's donating its wheels and tires to Poison Apple.Funnily enough, both of the bikes that donated parts to this build are/were green, so now I practically have to make this trike green!

There's just one small snag I'm immediately worried about: when I disassembled the trike rear, I learned that my welder accidentally welded the basket frame to the axle, which is no bueno. I still have yet to hear from my neighbor on the fab work stuff, but that can wait until after this garage sale my family's starting tomorrow. With any luck, I'll be able to sell most if not all my unwanted bike stuff so I can fund this project!

 

[Bike from the Dead]

Finally had an opportunity to work on my art some more today. Among the things I sketched, were these ideas for Poison Apple. I started with the "icon" that would go with this trike. The first two designs were me just getting a vague idea down, with the third one being closer to what I want to do for the final rendition. I wanted the final design to look like the badges for the Dodge Hellcats, Demon, and Viper. I'll clean up the line art in Adobe Illustrator when I'm ready, but this isn't far from what I want to do. I just don't know if I want to put this on the chain guard or the tank...

At the bottom, are two new designs for the final version of my muscle trike. I decided to scale back on the custom body work, and just settle for some dovetail fenders and a tank. The rest will be just a steel frame with a seat positioned over the rear axle.

So, what do you guys think? I'm open to any and all critique!

 

[ian]

Maybe some wheelie bars?

 

[Bike from the Dead]

Maybe some wheelie bars?

If I was still using the sissy bar and banana seat, I would have definitely considered that. However, since I'm going to be sitting lower and slightly further back than the original seat would've allowed, I don't think there will be any wheelie-popping with this trike. I have thought about adding some VW stinger-style tailpipes, though, but first I need to find a fabricator who can make all this other stuff first...

 

[Bike from the Dead]

Today feels like two big steps forward and one small step back.

I sent Dumpster Diamond and my trike rear axle over to Welder Joe to get some work done on them, not really expecting him to get everything done in the same day, just whenever. I needed the kickstand on Dumpster Diamond shortened so the bike wouldn't fall over, and the chain guard tweaked so the crank arm wouldn't rub against it. On the trike rear, I needed Joe to redo the part he welded last time, so the axle and basket frame could separate, fix the part that was causing the chain to pop off the sprocket, fill a couple holes that weren't supposed to be there, and disassemble the trike rear down to its individual components so I could sandblast and powder coat everything later. Well, Joe not only got all that done in a few hours, he even noticed the trike axle was bent and straightened it back out for me!

Excited by the rapid burst of progress, I went ahead and took the wheels and tires off my fat bike and mocked up everything on a milk crate... and that's when I began second-guessing myself.

See, the fat tires say they're 26" x 4", but in reality, these tires are closer to 30" tall! So as a result, the small 20" x... I'm guessing 1 3/4" wheel and tire, looks even smaller. That made the proportions just feel... off. I want this to look like a chopper-inspired trike, but the front/rear tire ratio made me think of a tractor. I decided to mockup the 24" x 2.125" wheel and tire that was originally on this trike rear end, but I'm not sure. I like the width better, but I'm not crazy about the height. It didn't help that it made the frame look smaller either.

I busted out some cardboard and scissors and made a quick mockup of the tank I have in mind, figuring that might help me figure out this issue. Sure enough, the tank seems to help flesh this trike out. I'm still a little wishy-washy on the front wheel and tire size, but I think if I get a 20" balloon wheel and tire, that might be the thing that this trike needs.

Unfortunately, in the process of mocking this trike up (and moving it into the garage for the night,) I found out how important that basket frame/brace is to the structural integrity of the trike rear end. Without that piece to hold the other side of the wheel axles, the trike axle dropouts can actually bend fairly easily. Also, since I didn't fully bolt the trike rear to the Schwinn frame, one of the dropouts on the bike frame bent when the trike rear end came halfway off. The good news is that the damage isn't too bad. Everything just needs to be heated up and bent back into shape. But right now, I think I'm going to wait at least a week before I do anymore with this bike. My family and I just had a garage sale this past weekend, and I just want to be sure I didn't catch anything in the process before going out any time soon.

In the meantime, I'm working on my digital mockup of Poison Apple so I can figure out what the paint scheme's going to look like.