Winter Project - ATC Three Wheeler Conversion

A good friend of mine planted the seed a couple of years ago. Said he saw some cool videos on the Web of three wheelers that had been converted into two wheelers. This fall I came across a guy selling an ATC 200 with a Lifan 200 engine he pulled from a Chinese dirt bike. So I picked up the ATC plus what was left of the dirt bike frame and had myself a winter project!

Here I mocked-up what the finished product should look like (sort of). I tacked it in this position and coasted down some hills to check the handling. Looks like I need to increase the rake cause it turns way too sharp. Looking at BW200 and TR200 specs I need to angle the forks out another 5 degrees and stretch the wheelbase a few inches.

So I've got the engine opened up; needs rings and a lower rocker arm (it's a pushrod engine!). I traced the dirt bike swing arm on a piece of cardboard and then widened to accommodate the fat rear wheel. I also had to locate the drive chain from the engine countershaft so I could begin design of a jackshaft. Looks like I'll use a couple of flange bearings and a 5/8" or 3/4" keyed shaft with a couple of 16 tooth sprockets to do the job. Hoping to start tacking some tubing together this weekend!

Got a prototype swingarm assembled! Next step is to locate the jackshaft to see how everything lines up before I finish welding. The extra bars you see where the engine should go are temporary supports tacked in place to hold the front end together while I experiment with the back.

February 1, 2016

Had to cut-off front end to adjust head angle to 27 degrees and wheelbase of 54". Everything is tacked, time to do some welding!

Took it for a coast-run to test the new steering angle. Works great! Also dropped the motor in to check alignment of the motor mounts after fusing the two frames together.

Jackshaft starting to take shape. 

Here's a closer look at the plate behind the flange bearing. Need to do something similar for the inside bearing. 

March 11th and I've got a rear sprocket! About 1/16" of runout, not bad. 

Final stages here. A few adjustments here and there and the drivetrain should be complete. 

April 4, 2016 - Finally got the swing arm finished-up. Reassembled everything with new chains. Going to have to put a guard on that outside sprocket. Starting to sort out the wiring. Previous owner hacked off a lot of connections to lights and things. 

Oct 10,2016

Didn't work on the bike much this summer but got back into it recently. Modified the muffler to clear the wide tire, added a kickstand and got the front brakes working. Been out for a couple of drives now. A narrower front tire would do it some good as the 12"er follows every groove and rut in the trails making it a constant fight with the handlebars. 

Sanyo DP37647 LCD no picture no sound

Picked up a Sanyo DP37647 from a guy who said it just died while he was watching it. I determined there was a problem with the CPU after cooling it down with an inverted can of compressed air. As long as I kept the CPU cold the TV functioned normally. 

I don't think the CPU can be replaced. A  replacement board (N4PH) is a little less than $100 but there don't seem to be any available right now.

I managed to mount a small PC CPU fan at the bottom of the main board that draws air from the bottom of the TV and blows it up over the CPU. Unfortunately I didn't take any pics before putting the back cover on. I'll post something if I ever open it up again.

The fan cools things enough to use component video but not HDMI. I suspect HDMI puts greater demands on the processor and the fan doesn't provide enough cooling. HDMI does work when the CPU is iced-over from the inverted air can but that's not a practical way to watch TV. :)

One other thing, I took 12V from the power board then ran it through a 7805 to slow it down and keep the noise down. Don't know how long this fix is going to last but it's working great for now!

Genesis Technologies GT-3.0 no audio no backlight

So I have one of these in my travel trailer and it started acting wacky after I plugged my Galaxy S5 into the front USB port to charge it. I thought I read somewhere you could do that. Well, all of a sudden the backlighting on the front panel doesn't work anymore and there is no more audio from any function (radio, DVD, CD, USB stick).


Turns out there's very little (none) online resources for this unit and a few e-mails to dealers yielded only one response, to the tune of "there are no repair facilities for these units but we can sell you a replacement!".
So, not to draw this out, turns out the problem was a burnt BD438 power transistor inside the box.

The transistor is located on the upper board behind the sockets for speakers and 12V power. To get to the view you see above you'll have to remove the unit from the RV, remove the front control panel and remove the side plates. You'll have to remove five screws from the top board to access the underside to solder the new transistor (hint: the fifth screw is on top of the unit, under the sticker).
I ordered a new transistor from Digikey for $0.72 and I was good to go.

Good luck!

An Introduction

Ok, so I've been thinking of starting a blog for some time... I'm a tinkerer and love the challenge of trying to fix stuff. Ever since I could work a screwdriver I've been taking things apart, sometimes even managed to get them back together again. :)

The web has been such a great resource for me that I would like to have a place to share some of my 'fixes' with the world. Hopefully I can post a collection of things here and maybe, just maybe, someone out there will have a search engine point them to my blog and they can take away something useful for the project they are working on.

I don't pretend to be a professional repair man nor will this blog be a work of art. The vision I have right now is a repository of pictures and notes to share how I managed to bring something back to life.
Enjoy!