Imaginary Industries

So, since I’m planning on doing a bunch of work on the freeway, I decided to pull the top half of the body off. This is very easy to do, since it’s effectively held on with 8 bolts and a few sheet metal screws (they hold the edges of the fiberglass together so they don’t rattle).

I have a old 1-ton chain fall and I rigged up a mounting eyelet in my carport to make this easier to do with one person. The top of the body is probably ~60-80 lbs, but it’s a large and awkward shape, and you have to jiggle it around to fit the rear section over the trailing frame bars.

Anyways, a bunch of ratchet straps and some mildly careful balancing and it comes off without too much work.

I also got the change to discover how terrible the existing wiring was. Completely re-wiring the entire car is now another thing I need to plan on doing.

Amusingly enough, whoever redid this car last used MDF pegboard for the interior! I’m not planning on replacing any of the interior paneling, I’m OK with the frame being visible inside the car.

I also took the opportunity to pull the engine to give it a once-over (it’s leaking a bit somewhere), and remove the governor.

First, we can see this thing has had a pretty bad exhaust leak for a while. It turns out the upper bolt-hole for the exhaust is largely stripped. I got it together once during reassembly, but it really needs to be helicoiled.

Since this uses a literal Tecumseh utility engine, it comes with a governor to stop the engine from going more then a few thousand RPM. While this is a overhead-valve engine (with pushrods! and only splash lubrication!), I’m not sure how high I can rev it without something failing.

I’m going to find out.

Long term, I’d like to graft a proper motorcycle powertrain (I’m actually thinking the entire back half of a motorcycle) onto the rear of the thing. I need to re-engineer the front suspension before that, though.

So first order to actually fit myself in the freeway is moving the seat down and back.

Seat Relocation

So the freeway, as stock (I believe) had a funky seat mounting system, where the seat front is effectively mounted on a horizontal dowel, and the rear just sits on some adjustable feet. This then sits on top of a funky tube-steel structure, which I believe was designed to clear the extended fuel tank option (the 9 gallon fuel tank option mounted under the seat).

I cut the seat mounting angle-structures off with a grinder, and rebuilt the mounting structure out of 1” x 1/4” flat bar.

This was all done with the worst welder possible. A few years ago, I bought literally the cheapest wire-feed welder I could find on amazon, mostly out of curiosity (I think it was ~$70). It only does flux-core welding. It’s…… surprisingly not /that/ bad?

Anyways, I fixtured the new seat mount by putting it ontop of the old mount, and put bolts through them to keep things aligned. This didn’t work as well as I had hoped, since the holes in the old mount are way oversized, and since the new mount has appropriately sized holes, one side does not line up (gah).

Fortunately, I’ve been planning on improving the seat mounting anyways (switching to grade 8 bolts), so I should be able to fix that issue pretty easily.

This is a 1981 HMV Freeway.

Sorry for the terrible picture, but this is one of the many weird, amusing vehicles produced as a result of the fuel panic of the 70s. The 340 cc freeway (the version I have) was guaranteed to get 100 miles-per-gallon at 40 miles/hour on flat ground.

It has a literal lawn mower engine, manufactured by Tecumseh, with quite janky steering system, and a bizarre belt-CVT based powertrain that is effectively stolen directly from a snowmobile.

It made a blazing 12 horsepower (when new!) to the single rear wheel. Since it’s 3-wheeled, California treats it as a motorcycle.

So far, I’ve mostly been doing work on it, because while it worked, it had a number of issues. I’m starting this blog mostly to track the project, because if it amuses me enough I figure it might amuse someone else as well.

I have a lot of things that need to be tweaked before it’s something I’d consider daily drivable:

Immediate priority:

• The fuel tank has a leak somewhere, making the cabin reek of gasoline. I need to rework the whole fuel system to seal it properly

High Priority:

• I’m too tall to sit comfortably in the thing. The seat needs to be lowered and moved back.
• Additionally, since this is technically a motorcycle, I’d like to at least be able to fit comfortably while wearing a skullcap helmet. The previous owner said he drove it without one all the time, but I figure safer then sorry. Also that means if a cop pulls me over I’m completely legit.
• Whoever did a rebuild of this last redid the wiring, and I don’t trust any of it. I’m going to rewire the entire thing. It works, but I have picky standards.
• This thing originally had a 3-point seatbelt. It’s not installed anymore. Reinstall it.
• The door hinge is a bit wallered out, as it’s a plain hole in steel with a steel pin as the hinge. This means you have to lift the door to have it latch properly. I’d like to add a proper bushing or hinge to it.

Longer Term:

• I’d like to completely replace the engine & powertrain. The current engine and drivetrain is mounted on a subframe that is bolted to the main frame with rubber isolators. I suspect this is because the big single cylinder Tecumseh vibrates a LOT, and was an attempt to isolate it. I’d like to get a proper motorcycle, and graft most of the frame + engine + rear wheel in place of the current drivetrain.
• Reverse! This doesn’t have one, and it means parking can be challenging. It is not easy to push backwards, due to the awkward door and the fact that it’s ~700 lbs.
• Front end suspension geometry is absolutely terrible.
  The front end’s steering and suspension geometry is really bad, it has horrible bump steer and can be rather frightening to drive at speed. I’d like to re-engineer the entire front-end to a proper wishbone system.
  There is also a location I could potentially install a steering stabilizer. Do that too.