When my son Sean was assisting me with the trash at the town transfer station, he saw a BMX bike and mentioned that he wanted to build a drift trike like Colin Furze (original video - newer video). So, we grabbed the bike and some scrap steel and brought it home. I had squirreled away an 8 HP snowblower engine, a centrifugal clutch, some #35 chain, a sprocket and a 1" barbell shaft thinking that someday we would build a go cart - but we already have two go-carts with suspension and several other toys. When we got home, Sean grabbed the cutoff wheel and quickly hacked apart the bike frame, leaving the front end, neck and larger lower down-tube. We did some preliminary layouts of how the parts could be arranged on wood blocking, and got to work. We found that the original down-tube on the bike frame was at the wrong angle, and didn't look that great. We chopped that off too, and used a larger diameter thicker wall tube as the new down-tube. We made some pegs to rest your feet on on the front axle, and installed the twist throttle. The hubs, wheels, tires and plastic sleeves arrived, so we trimmed the rear axle and installed those parts.

Remaining work to do:

• Finish the frame design and weld together - DONE 5/6/2020

• Make supports to mount the seat- DONE 5/6/2020

• Cut keyways in the shaft for the sprocket and hubs - DONE 5/10/2020

• Reconnect the brake in the front - DONE 5/10/2020

• Design and fabricate bits for throttle connection to engine - DONE 5/17/2020

• Install kill switch- DONE 5/17/2020 (replace - broke the first day using it).

• Fire it up and test ride it!- DONE 5/17/2020

• Design fabricate and install a rear brake & Improve front brakes - DONE 6/18/2020 Converted to Disc Brakes, front and rear. Front wheel is rear BMX bike wheel with a machined aluminum adapter to mount the rotor in place of where the ratcheting mechanism was under the rear sprocket. New side plates were fabricated to mount the caliper, and the front fork axle mounts were widened to accommodate the wider hub.

• Make a chain guard

When my daughter Lauren was assisting me with the trash at the town transfer station, she spied some heavy metal grating on the scrap pile. I saw a stainless steel washing machine drum and mentioned that I always wanted to make one of them into a fire pit. So, we grabbed the metal along with a rectangular frame of 1" steel angle from the pile and brought it home. The following weekend, I removed t he plastic parts from the ends of the drum while Lauren trimmed the steel grating. Unfortunately, we had two pieces, neither was large enough alone, so we marked the diameter on the two pieces and Lauren welded the grating into one circular piece that would form the base of the fire pit. She used the metal cutting bandsaw to trim the angle steel frame to fit under the bottom lip of the drum, and used the extra end bits as legs, welding them onto the base. We then bolted through the grating to the frame, clamping the flange of the drum in place. We positioned the fire pit in the center of the old playground area, which is about a 6" depth of pea stone in an area 25' square. The legs are easily buried in the pea stone with a decent air gap at the bottom.

That night we lit the fire for the first time, and wow, does it work well! It burns hot and fast, something that works well for us in a fire pit. It allows us to be outside for an hour or two, and not have to babysit a pile of wood that is slow to burn down. I have some heavy stainless steel mesh that I may use to make a lid for the fire pit in the future. Also on the to-do list is to strip and repaint the metal chairs...