'Schmitt Date 2.52 --- Additional

nother KR200 has been through the garage and is ready to either hit the road or be restored further. This car had been dragged out of a shed after years of storage. It is amazing how if stored in a dry dark place these cars just do not really seem to suffer greatly from being mothballed. I think they must have been made from good steel as given the same treatment a similar year Fiat would be hanging. So very little needed to be done.

The electrics suffered a few problems but most were just corroded contacts on bulbs or terminals and were simply traced, as the wiring loom in this car is 98% intact. The wiper motor required a rebuild and an additional earth lead as the door seems to be isolated from earth after being treated to lubrication. Likewise the horn needed rebuilding. Yep the originals unscrew and you can clean up the contacts and adjust the tension so the horn strikes a true clean note — none of this sealed for life crap. For some reason the horn is mounted on the offside inner wing on this car. Not sure why, so the wiring was rerouted under the pedal plate as it was in danger of getting wrapped around the drivers feet.

Ignition

The ignition switch was really the only thing that had failed — it refused to operate the reverse solenoid.The ignition switch was really the only thing that had failed — it refused to operate the reverse solenoid. Shorting across the switch to the terminal bought the required 'donk' of the reverse solenoid being thrown across so it was a switch problem. The ignition switch can be disassembled. The back is held on to the case against a light spring by two screws. The bottom moulding carries the riveted contact strips that make the system work. Inside there is a central shaft on which the lock mechanism is mounted at the other end via a grub screw to loosen the assembly, and a dowel to remove the lock itself. On the bottom of this shaft is a circlip holding a paxoline disc with a contact around its circumference. Below that is a shaped paxoline plate with another set of contacts riveted to a plastic moulding. The moulding carries a spring to engage a wedge on the main switch moulding. This all sits on a spring around the shaft. If the circlip is removed then these two subassemblies remove and the spring is revealed.

The contacts can get burned sometimes or some lubricant added might isolate a contact and a clean up solves the problem. In this case the circlip had failed and the contact subassemblies were free to move independent of the shaft and therefore were not reliably aligned in operation — in effect a random ignition switch. I cleaned the lot up and on reassembly there is a choice of two ways to assemble the subassembly at the bottom of the system. If in doubt it is quite clear that one way it is not spring-loaded and the other it is. This spring-loading comes from the aforementioned spring in the base of the subassembly and is the action to rotate the ignition switch out of starter mode and back to just ignition. So clearly this is the correct orientation for reassembly. I was lucky to find a suitable circlip in a bit box so an outside search was not needed. Back together the switch now tested OK but the grub screw fitted was plastic and not really up to the job, falling in half as I fiddled doing the tests. So I drilled out the flush stub left in position and chased out the remains with a bit of fuse wire. This grub screw can be replaced by a terminal screw from a certain size of plastic extruded terminal wiring block available from most sources. So it is worth looking in the bit box as I did and find a ready source of this small and narrow headed screw.

Back in the car the engine happily selected forward or reverse with warning lights working. So it was time for some fuel. This proved, as it often does, to be where the work was. The tap leaked so a replacement was made out of bits and swapped into position. The pipe leaked; replaced. The carb leaked so it was removed and cleaned out. A new fault to me was a rusted up choke cable in the dash — just the shank the knob fits on. These tasks done the engine burst into life. Good enough, and normal tuning and fiddling to do.

The tyres had all perished so these were replaced, but the hubs, brakes and steering all past inspection after a clean up. So with the change of a few windows missing their corners and other minor changes the car is really ready for the road and its new home. The joy of a car which has not been bodged up or fitted with el crappo parts in place of sad but usable original components. It also proves that there is always a reason why a car is laid up. Clearly the ignition had failed and the car was stashed until time was available to sort it out. Time that never arrived in the end.

Tri Tech

The next task is to MOT a Tri Tech for Nick Hills. This was obtained for a reasonable price from a well known 'schmitter. The car is in basically very good order but they are very much a curate's egg of a bubble as certain fittings and designs are really not very good (coming from the era of el crappo parts). So, while it is clean, tidy and virtually unused, I expect it will take a lot longer to sort it out into a usable car than recommissioning a real 'schmitt out of hibernation. I will be interested to see what it turns out like as although I have had four Tri Techs, two were scrap rolled ones, another a write-off after it caught fire, and the forth is a very unfinished project! Using the things learned on a genuine Tri Tech I hope to create a bit of a hybrid out of the bits of the unfinished car and using real 'schmitt front suspension. It has been nick-named the Tripe Schmitt. If it works it should meld the best of both cars and, what's more, be repeatable on other Tri Techs providing a much more predictable handling package. However that's for the future.

Meanwhile, inspection of the real Tri Tech has revealed why these cars have a problem handling.Meanwhile, inspection of the real Tri Tech has revealed why these cars have a problem handling. The first obvious factor is that despite the clever use of Indespension type trailer units to create the front rubber in-torsion suspension the Indespension units are too soft a rubber to replicate the performance of the original FMR item. The amount of camber needed to be added to get the wheels to run at a correct sort of camber adjustment means that the steering cannot really operate without part of the floor being removed! The rubber is not of a known 'sure hardness' and as it is too weak the travel is too great when in use. The damper fitted is one from a Mini. This car has a Unipart unit and despite the car's minimal use it is already worn out. Firstly, it was mounted without copperslip on the two mounts so the centre of the silent blocks have rusted onto the shafts and failed. The unit has insufficent damping and the steering has damaged the bottom of the damper due to the huge range of movement in the system as it is. The Mini damper does not have a great range of movement on a Mini so I think it is probably unable to cope with controlling this suspension system as it is moving too far and too hard for the designed internals which have failed.

In addition to the soft suspension, the Tri Tech front arm has a lot more weight to carry as it has a nice conversion of Mini front drum brakes on it. This extra mass on the kingpin (not so nice — mounted a lot further from the rolling centre of the hub than is wise, certainly not as on a KR200) affects the efficiency of the steering and makes for a heavier steering bar. It is clear that with great movement in the soft suspension the camber is changing, as is the angle for the steering due to the slightly odd geometry. Both these input steering corrections as the car continues in a straight line if the suspension is deflected. So a few bumps destabilise the car making fast speeds difficult as, if it starts to destabilise and if the driver attempts to correct it, the suspension is too soft to remain in the same position at the correction and moves changing the angles and altering the input. This magnifies the movement so steering into the now destabilised car's movements just increases the instability. So the car is proportionally unstable with speed and in relation to the surface of the road it is driving on.So the car is proportionally unstable with speed and in relation to the surface of the road it is driving on.

The next discovery was quite startling. I measured across the centres of the Tri Tech and 'schmitt front track at camber vertical. The Tri Tech has just over three inches less track! When dealing with tricycles the triangulation of the wheels is very important for handling. Anyone who has driven a KR175 will know they are far tippier than a KR200 as the front track is nearer 6 inches narrower I believe. I cannot understand why this error(?) in construction was made. Indeed, you wonder when taken with the sloppy suspension issues and the fact that FMR suspension units have been remade for many years and that the production was improved when Russell Church and Brian Perry created new front suspension arms as well during the period of Tri Tech being in production why they did not choose to fit these reproduction original units. It is proven and tested technology even if it was about 40 years old at the time. They were offered supply and refused. Indeed, there was even a stack of very similar MKE units available from something like a Mokoli at the time —- bought for the new Messerschmitt KR200 front hub/brake assemblies. I have one set.

Also, the car Nick has is on 10 inch Mini wheels. Good, as it has a car rim rather than a trailer rim, which does not have a beaded edge to prevent the tyre rolling off the edge of the rim on hard cornering, umm, if that were to be a possibility. Unlike a TG500, which made an allowance for the additional ride height of 10 inch wheels with a raised kingpin tube, thus lowering the car, the Tri Tech has no provision to do this. Compounding that is the fact that the wheels carry some very nice Scooter tyres. However, they are a good inch taller than using Mini tyres. So the ride height of this Tri Tech is getting on for 2 inches higher just for running the wheels. Again, the higher the centre of gravity of a vehicle (especially a trike) the easier it is to destabilise and roll.

To summarise then, the way this Tri Tech is set up is to make it practically undrivable at anything more than about 45 MPH. This is partly a function of the Tri Tech design but also in part from the choice of components. But having tested it out I can quite understand how a Tri Tech turned over as one did on a straight bit of the A303 or wherever near Andover resulting in a nasty accident and the police wishing to inspect the vehicle some years ago. Yet Brian Perry's old Spacey/Messerschmitt is as stable as a normal KR 200 and quite capable of cruising at 70 MPH on the motorway on 8 inch wheels at the front. Clearly there needs to be some modifications attempted to try and create a more stable and predictable suspension on the Tri Tech in an effort to make it usable, as the rest of the car is capable of providing service.

My initial thoughts are that not much can be done with the Indespension units. So the answer is probably to add coil-over springs to stiffen up the suspension considerably. The problem here is that the mounting on the suspension arm looks inadequate, even for the Unipart damper, and it will increase the loading on the damper leg attached to the monocoque. The second modification is to look at fitting packing plates into the base of the suspension arm to get an extra inch track each side. I am not sure it would be wise to do more but adding a spacer to the drum will push the wheel centre out another third of an inch. This looks to have been expected, as the studs are long enough to match the plate. The downside of this is it increases the distance of the kingpin to the centre of the wheel. I would personally go back to 8 inch wheels to get the centre of gravity down but I think Nick is against this as it means changing the wings from Tiger to KR200. Of course, with the lack of lowering it will never look right as the 10-inch wheels will never really fill up the Tiger wings whereas if Super wings were fitted they would have both shape and a full look with 10 inch wheels as Harry Conners discovered on his modified KR200. Choices, choices. However with the suspension considerably stiffened and the track pushed out to near Messerschmitt values there is some chance the Tri Tech might become predictable. It remains to be seen if these mods are agreed to and/or work.