My team is about to start building a new car, right now we have a cycle car but we are thinking about making a tricycle because of there being zero tire scrub
I was reading here that the kingpin has to be pointing directly to where the tire hits the ground but it didn't say what the rake had to be. What should the rake be on the front wheel? This car will mainly be on small tracks.
This seems to us not to be too critical. We have only made about 10 of these over the years and seems like about 30 degrees above the horizontal is OK but I'm sure that those like the Clouds or Henry's can give you a specific angle that is best.
I am talking the angle between the ground and the 'kingpin'. We made one at a little over 45 degrees above the horizontal several years ago and it worked OK but I don't think it was quite as efficient as some of the others but that may have been due to other factors as well. To be very honest I do not know. Like I said out of our over 300 cars we have made we only have a handful of trikes and have not done any experimentation with them like with our tri-cars. Someone like Dave Cloud or the Henrys would be a good source of information if you want to get hold of them.
A few years ago (wow nearly 10 years...time sure flies) my daughter got interested in building a custom "chopper" motorcycle (never got built).... I found lots of info on "rake" and "trail" on sites dedicated to custom motorcycles, perchance you could find answers to your questions on a website of that type.
What I (vaguely) remember was that the more "rake" you had (forks angled forward) the more stable you were in a straight line... less "rake" caused better cornering at the sacrifice of straight line stability...... (think Harley Davidson versus Kawasaki Ninja)... Either way the "trail" (the distance behind the wheel that the theoretical "line to ground" of the forks) should be 1-3 inches depending on amount of "rake".... (if I am remembering all things semi accurately)
