Mast to Suspension

The next job is to fit the rear suspension. Make sure you use the correct handed suspension components! The black protective boots are a pig to fit. Warm them with a heat gun, but not too much seems to do the trick. They are to reduce the ingress of mud and spray into the suspension units.

Fit the upper suspension units to the mast/seat channel

Fit the lower suspension to the stubs in the keel

Finally bring all suspension arm together at the wheel axle. This is a bit fiddly, bringing many components together. I had to enlist help for this bit. I also found at this point that the right axle link to drag link plate would not line up. After an hour of fiddling I decided it wasn't going to go, so looked at it more carefully. The location holes were about 1mm out of alignment which was confirmed by comparing it to the other side. First duff component I had come across.

Note the mount for the spats.

Beware when making up the wheels of the spacer that fits in between the wheel bearings. I forgot this first time around and had to drift out the bearings to get the spacer in. Make sure that the star washers that fit between the two outer wheel nuts are just nipped. Yep, you guessed it I over tightened these and flattened them. Thanks for the new ones Jim! Apparently they always have trouble with the kit builds in this area and have to strip them down anyway on inspection!

Remember the little girl that when she came upon a bus stuck under a low bridge and lots of people unable to work out how to get it out, simply mentioned letting air out of the tyres. Well... The garage roof was not high enough at this point to take the trike unit with the mast up, so I had to let air out of the tyres to get it to fit with the front wheel in place!