This Chopper’s about as close as you can get to bare-backing a VW motor. And while I appreciate the fact that it probably comes with reverse gear, I’m still trying to figure out how you shift it?
Image source:[SVRider.com]
Last Call- Silly Rabbit, Trikes are for Kids
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35 responses to “Last Call- Silly Rabbit, Trikes are for Kids”
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This warrants an absurd, hopelessly-imprecise jockey shifter.
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I dig it!
Although the headlight makes me want to look up. -
Cooling?
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Air baby, air.
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Air
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That caliperless front disc brake is just the hippest thing yet. Hey, it'll never heat up and fade.
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Well since it appears they decided to flip it around Formula Vee style I'm thinking it works similar to the shifter set ups those guys use and is probably on the left so you can work the throttle while you are shifting and is connected to the black rod seen below the seat.
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I thought I sent a pic into tips@hooniverse.info of a VW Bug sawed in half with a trike front end. Has anyone seen it? It would be perfect to upload into this thread.
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Since it's Last Call, I'm changing the subject.
I've recently relocated and am apartment living again. I have a neighbor with a Pontiac G6 that doesn't realize her doors are a mile long and keeps opening them into my cars. While I may look like Popeye when I'm done, I'm tired of rubbing out the scuffs every week. Any suggestions? I try to park as far away from her as possible and leave ample room between cars, but it's just not working.
Please help before I lose my cool and park my F150 on her car.-
If talking to her hasn't worked, reverse your tactics. Seek out her car and park about 2cm off her door. Eventually she will avoid your vehicles or she will drop a Molotov cocktail on your truck. Yous pays yer money and takes yur chances.
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Try writing a note…..on an opened up, empty box of 12 ga slugs and leave it under the wiper. When I was in college my roommate and I were having parking problems with the house that had been converted to 4 apartments we were living in at the time. Guests for other residents would take up the very limited parking spaces. Left a note one time like this, seemed to help the problem.
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Hah!!!!! LOVE this idea.
This would work at our place too, my roommate is from the sticks in PA and drives a diesel with stacks. If I were to try this though, I may need to mount a rack in the Stratus or just not be seen doing it.
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I had this happen so often I got pissed. I used to commute by train and this one car would always park so close to me that I would have to get in through the other side or my passenger would have to get in through the drivers side. I tried parking in all areas of the lot and this D-BagCooper would find me and park right next to me again. I took a banana peel I had just eaten the banana from and ripped the peel so it fit under the door handle of the jerks car. Soggy and gross right? I came back at the end of the day and there was dog crap all over my drivers side door handle. Touche. I got the crap end of that deal, but the person never parked next to me again. Like high-mileage says.
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<img src="http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/tolae_2148_59482671" width="400/">
I think something like that can be made of cardboard, styrofoam or something. Some use magnets to hold it onto the door, so maybe styrofoam for the lighter weight. Then I'd write a message on it…
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Flashback to Christmas Day, 1972. I got a Cox gas-powered scale version of pretty much this same trike, right down to the color. My brother got the lime green Cox dune buggy, and we thought we'd died and gone to heaven.
http://cgi.ebay.com/1971-Cox-Gas-Chopper-Advertis…-
The line at the end of the ad makes me laugh: "The Cox Chopper is one of the few inexpensive, exciting things that you and your son can enjoy together."
Alright, really it makes me sad because I didn't have one. I was sure we did exciting and inexpensive things though.-
The line at the end of the ad makes me laugh: "The Cox Chopper is one of the few inexpensive, exciting things that you and your son can enjoy together."
That makes me shudder, not laugh. Unless you're Jewish, I don't think any father & son would want anything to do with a Cox Chopper.
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According to the Inflation Calculator, that $21 price in 1973 was equivalent to $102 today. Those were a couple of sweet presents. Kudos to your folks.
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Yeah, and my dad was kind of a cheapskate!
In thinking further, the promise of fun with those things was far better than the actual experience. You had to clip a battery lead to a glow plug on top of the engine, then squirt fuel into the cylinder*, then spin the rear tire to get it to start. But the engine would flood, the battery was usually kind of weak (it was the Cox version of one of those big square lantern batteries), so you'd sit there in frustration trying to get the damn thing to run, spinning that tire over and over and over, with nothing happening. "Bpppp…bpppp…bpppp…bppp…."
Once it did fire, it would just run in a big circle (the front wheel was permanantly turned) until it ran out of gas. It also made a shitload of noise, so all the moms in the neighborhood hated it.-
*I cannot image the raised-like-veal, helmeted, elbow-and-knee-padded children of the 2000s being allowed to get within ten feet of a toy like that. From the risk of burns (the glow plug and the engine itself), to the nitro-methane-type fuel sloshing out of a metal squirt can, to the ear-splitting noise, little Max, Sam, Jake or Dakota would be rushed to the ER and then a child psychologist immediately and an attorney would be quickly called once his mother got back from yoga class and saw what was going on.
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Dude, that was awesome. You just described my entire summer vacation in 1977.
I ended up with a second hand trike, dune buggy and dragster a few years after they came out. I discovered early on that thrift-shops were a goldmine for the used cool automotive toys back in the day, usually stuffed back behind the dress shoes. I was able to get lots of cool stuff with change I found in pay-phones and newspaper machines. First a trip to Johnny's Donuts for some forbidden "day-olds", then off to the thrift store to see what kind of cool stuff could keep my 10 year old's brain occupied for a while. Cheap slot car sets, Richard Petty toys (always easy to pick out with the STP colors), Evil Kenevil toys etc.
The cox cars were a favorite, though I rarely got them to actually start and quickly ran out of fuel. I had more fun taking them apart and placing the wheels against a spinning upside-down bicycle tire to watch the piston going up & down, or holding them against a retaining wall as I ran to hear the tiny motor scream.
Thanks for the trip back in time.
<img src="http://www.rcgrabbag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/D70_3449-Edit.jpg" width="500" />
<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hgQd6uzf6eA/SeKOae9mMYI/AAAAAAAAAKo/-n77w_jr58Y/s320/IMG_1460.JPG">
<img src="http://www.fast-autos.net/diecast-cars-models/diecast-car-image-large/vintage-cox-eliminator-ii-dragster-gas-powered-nib-red_130483781969.jpg">
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A good friend of mine used to assemble all of the Rewaco trikes that came into the US before they folded. The company moved to Vegas and then they started renting the trikes. He has some interesting stories of driving out to the Grand Canyon and other strange locales to help stranded German tourists who wrecked or disabled the trikes.
Seems Germans love the idealistic American southwest you see in movies. I certainly saw that when I visited Seligman, AZ, a "Mecca" for Route 66 fans. Bus-fulls of German tourists.-
I was at Mammoth Fall in Yellowstone while a bus-full of German tourists and a bus-full of Japanese tourists were there. The Japanese people kept stepping over the little "don't go past this point" rope, out onto the mineral mantle to have their pictures taken in twos and threes. One of the German tourists angrily shouted, "Hey! You can't do that! You're being disrespectful to Americans! You're guests in this country! Get behind the sign!" Five minutes later, my friend and I were in the middle of a shouting match between two busloads of foreigners, all yelling at once in German, Japanese, and broken English. It was very surreal, but I have to say it was the highlight of the trip.
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Haha yeah, that certainly would be a memorable experience. Frankly I'm surprised the Japanese tourists were disobeying the signs.
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The only thing more important to the Japanese than adherence to rules is bringing home a set of really good travel photos.
Stereotypical statement, I know, but one borne from truth in my experience.-
I once went on a Japanese tourist trip from Japan to Guam with my ex, and it was a surreal experience. The bus would stop and within seconds everyone was outside clicking away, then filing right back on. By the time I got off the bus and snapped a picture the rest of them were already sitting, waiting for me to hurry up. Although they were typically polite, I could tell most of them were getting pretty impatient with my lallygagging.
There was another gaijin (foreigner) lady on our bus as well, and she & I kept laughing at how bizarre it seemed to us.
Turns out the Japanese take their fun VERY SERIOUSLY. They were less interested in soaking up the ambiance, and more interested in capturing as many moments as they could to share later. Quite a different mindset.
We ended up renting a car the next day to go back and see what we had visited.
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Or maybe they're just fans of all those Roadrunner / Wile E. Coyote cartoons.
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Germans have lots of vacation time.
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Germans LOVE the American West. Every year, we have bunches of them visiting Tombstone. There is even a dude ranch outside of town owned by Germans, catering to them. I don't know how many times I've seen a couple of guys impeccably attired in period dress, walking down the street conversing in Deutch. Actually, there were quite a few Germans living here back in the day, so it is period correct.
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Sounds like Otto's ranch on the show Malcom in the Middle.
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It is our custom here not to mentioned those shunned—Let us ne'er broach the Amazonas here again.
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I thought it was exactly our custom to mention those shunned.
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Touché!
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![http://www.rcgrabbag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/D70_3449-Edit.jpg"](http://www.rcgrabbag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/D70_3449-Edit.jpg"){kind=link}
![http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hgQd6uzf6eA/SeKOae9mMYI/AAAAAAAAAKo/-n77w_jr58Y/s320/IMG_1460.JPG">](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hgQd6uzf6eA/SeKOae9mMYI/AAAAAAAAAKo/-n77w_jr58Y/s320/IMG_1460.JPG">){kind=link}
![http://www.fast-autos.net/diecast-cars-models/diecast-car-image-large/vintage-cox-eliminator-ii-dragster-gas-powered-nib-red_130483781969.jpg">](http://www.fast-autos.net/diecast-cars-models/diecast-car-image-large/vintage-cox-eliminator-ii-dragster-gas-powered-nib-red_130483781969.jpg">){kind=link}
![http://www.motorcyclespecs.co.za/Custom%20Bikes/Amazonas%201600.jpg">](http://www.motorcyclespecs.co.za/Custom%20Bikes/Amazonas%201600.jpg">){kind=link}
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