After watching some of Colin Furze’s drift trike builds, I was inspired to make my own. I had a fair amount of fabrication and machining experience, as well as power electronics experience from my years spent racing drones. The project went rather smoothly, only a few weeks total spent working on the trike.

Finished Build

The trike uses six, 6S 1.3 Ah batteries I had in my gaggle of Lithium packs. I put them in a 3S2P configuration for a roughly 72V, 2600mAh equivalent pack. The motor used was Vevor’s 72V, 3000W motor. If one were to take the batteries 70C rating at face value, they could produce roughly 182A peak, at around 72V, leaving me with 13kW peak output, and 190Wh of capacity. The trike will last anywhere from 5-20 minutes depending on how heavy you go on the throttle. I have yet to take it up to it’s max speed, but it will definitly go uncomfortably fast.

When I started this project, I did not know how to weld, and took a largely bolt together approach. This left some rigidity issues in the chassis. I took a local class from the Gearheads Workshop Makerspace near Torrance, and was able to add a few TIG welds in some key areas to stiffen the chassis.

Up on the workbench, preparing for welding

After that I am pretty confident in the chassis, it has been a blast to ride around parking lots, and I hope to do some speed tests eventually.