i was thinking of building a malone shunk trike. anyone built one / driven one / has an opinion of them. i am atracted by the weight and because they are little different to sevens
james

It's a skunk. There was a Grinnall Scorpion round here a while back which is a similar setup and was very quick. Get in touch with them as there is a waiting list and they don't make many. Don't expect it to be cheap either.

[Edited on 18/2/06 by Peteff]

Is this the baby?

looks fast!

From what i have read they are super quick and great fun plus easy to build.

i know someone who has had a drive in one, said it handled realy well too

Yes, I have a Skunk.
Not finished the build yet, it's been painfully slow. Mostly due to the fact that I bought the first of the R1 engined Skunks. It's taken a while for Malone to sort out the niggles and send me the parts. (I bought the car before the development work was done.)

Yes, they are fast - power to weight is everything (until you run into aerodynamic problems). Don't know how fast - perhaps one day I'll complete MSVA and find out.

The other thing to note is that they are not cheap. The kit from Malone is around £5000. Wheels are bespoke and will be £1000 ish. Expect to pay £1000 for a decent used bike engine (Fazer 1000 or R1), and £600 for a Quaife reverse box.
You won't be able to do without a paint job either, unless you like the look of filler.


Most of the other parts could be sourced 2nd hand, but you'd compromise quality. Eg the front calipers could be sourced from a leyland mini cooper, or bought as a much lighter bike caliper from wilwood. The rack could be lifted from a MKII escort, or purchased new as a 2.2 turn quick rack.
I'm probably asking for a flaming posting this kind of thinking on a locost group, what I'm trying to say is you pays yer money and takes your choice.

Your best bet if you're interested is to visit Jerome Malone in Devon, or at his website http://www.voleh.freeserve.co.uk/

cheers,

I have 2 friends who have Scorpions, cant comment on the Skunk but I have heard they have similar problems. The gearbox isnt really up to putting all that power through a much larger rear wheel. One has gone through 3 gearboxes allready!

Vealmike,

What kind of rear suspension does the Skunk use?

I'm currently building a front-engined, rear-wheel-drive three wheeler. I was really interested when I found the Skunk because it's so similar to what I had in mind, a three-wheeled Locost. (Actually, it stopped being low cost when I bought my first component, the Hayabusa engine.)

Hearing more about your build would be particularly interesting to me since I still haven't figured out powertrain issues like how to direct power from the center shaft to the side of the wide back wheel.

The rear suspension is a pretty complicated trapeziodal affair. You'd need a string calculator to replicate it.

As for the rear drive, that's pretty simple.
Use either a Yamaha Diversion or a BMW R80 / R100 rear drive unit.
Those bikes are prop driven, and the rear drive unit has a crown and pinion gear to turn the drive through 90 degrees.

The drive shaft spins in a different direction on the Yamaha and the BMW, so be sure to pick the right drive unit for your engine.
The other alternative would be to pick up a car diff, discard the outer casing and weld up one drive shaft to stop it spinning.

You could either run a prop from the engine to the rear drive unit, then use a chain to get the power down the swing arm, or you could mount a CV joint coaxial with the swingarm mount and use prop drive all the way to the rear.

Thanks Mike. That's a lot of useful information. Is Malone still in business? Their Web site isn't.

Dunno what's up with the website. Seems to have been down for a while.
They can be reached on 01409 241044.

I weighed my Skunk this weekend. Came to 384kg. I know another owner who weighed his at 380Kg, so it seems the claim of an average 300Kg is a little short of the mark for the current cars.
Both weighed cars have reverse boxes, so are probably 15-20Kg heavier that Malones benchmark. Both cars also have 18" front wheels compared to Malones 17" wheels.
There's still 50-60Kg to account for though.

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7263248922748425865

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Originally posted by vealmike
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7263248922748425865

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