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15-Year-Old Built His Own “Chore Tricycle”
“We own two livestock farms about 1/4 mile apart and have to do chores on both of them twice a day. My home-built ‘chore tricycle’ is a lot easier than riding a bicycle back and forth between the farms,” says 15-year-old Ontario teenager Aaron Martin.
He built the 3-wheeled rig out of an old tricycle and various equipment parts. It rides on a single wheelbarrow wheel on front and a pair of lugged wheels, borrowed from a walk-behind rototiller, on back.
Martin removed the tricycle’s original steering column and handlebars and replaced them with ones off an old bicycle. A Honda 5 1/2 hp. engine drives a pair of pulleys that propel the rear wheels. Martin welded the lever off an old pull-type silage chopper to the belt tightener off a self-unloading forage wagon. To make the machine go forward, he just pulls up on the lever’s handle, which is located under the seat.
The tricycle still has its original foot pedals, which Martin disconnected from the axle so they now serve only as foot rests.
“It’s fun to drive and cost very little to build. My dad helped me build it,” says Martin. “It can go up to 30 mph, but to be safe I usually go only about 15 mph. When I want to speed up or slow down, I hold onto the handlebars with one hand and reach down to grab the belt tightener with my other hand. I use a pair of plywood ‘knee pads’ located below the handlebars to help steer. I made the pads by bolting two small pieces of plywood onto a vertical metal bar that’s welded onto the handlebars.”
The tricycle came equipped with a narrow metal fender on the front wheel. To keep mud from flying up at him, Martin made a wider fender by cutting out part of a plastic oil jug and bolting it on over the tricycle’s original guard.
He made an axle to connect the rear wheels by inserting a length of solid round tubing inside a length of square tubing. “The axle has no bearings to wear out. I installed a grease zerk on top of the square tubing and filled it with grease,” explains Martin.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Aaron Martin, 9030 Con. 9, RR 5, Mount Forest, Ontario, Canada N0G 2L0 (ph 519 323-3690).


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2019 - Volume #43, Issue #6