RANCH ROCKET!!

 The "Ranch Rocket" sitting there all pretty and glistening in the sunlight. What a beaut!

To the left is a picture of the Honda 4 stroke gas motor that makes trike riding easy for us old folks. It has enough pep to haul my heavy carcass around with a few things in the basket as well. We're only 3 miles from downtown Springville so this little ute will come in handy and save a ton of gas when we only have a few errands to attend to (like mailing an eBay item or such).

 

Connie is getting used to the new hauler. She likes it!

 

 

 

 

 

Ranch Relaxo is coming into the modern age with the addition of a handy energy saving, gas saving, and practical device. “What on earth is this man talking about”, you ask? Well, we have the “Rancho Rino”, which is our 1950 Ford 8N tractor, our “Rancho Rafto”, 14’ aluminum fishing boat, “Hephalump”, our 6’ x 12’ covered trailer, “Rancho Tote-O”, the 6’ x 8’ stake side trailer, and now the new “Rancho Rocket”.

Just let me tell you about the “Rancho Rocket”. She’s a beaut, for one thing! She’s a pretty white and blue cutie what sits as proud as a grandmother with a fresh-baked peach cobbler! What it is…. is a new Schwinn “Meridian” adult tricycle with 26” wheels. It’s going to be a utile and handy gadget to have around because of its nice deep basket riding between the two rear wheels and an old people-saving small motor hanging on the rear. The head and tail lights will be ordered shortly as will a couple of brain buckets to insure the integrity of the rider’s noggins should they attempt to check out the pavement at a worm’s eye level.

It only took Brother Ran about 6 weeks to finally get all the screws twisted down and such. But, with a bit o’ coaxing from a longsuffering wife who wanted her back patio put back in use, I managed to bring the project to the completed stage. That was probably the best 6 hours I’ve invested into an endeavor in awhile.  

Ah, but something new has been added: we glued a 1.5 hp Honda 4 stroke motor to it that takes the sweat out of hauling things around (have I mentioned that I’m convenience oriented?). It actually took awhile to dial in the motor mount. It was designed specifically for the trikes with 20” wheels and not the 26” model. So, I had to fit spacers and such then adjust everything into alignment. Well, that would be just too easy now wouldn’t it? Of course it would be! After taking great pains to align things, guess what? The motor was in the way of the basket. Well, ain’t that enough to make you stuff your overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder! I might add that most of the pain came from skint knuckles. Guitar pickers hate to have their knuckles busted!

 It took a bit of Yankee ingenuity to resolve the issue. I took four 2 ½” spacers that were cut from ½” pipe and simply lifted the basket up and out of the way of the engine case. I did have to drill out the metric sized threaded holes and use lag bolts but that was easy enough and only cost a few bucks for hardware. It leaves minimal room to adjust the seat but I’m the only one riding it so far so we’ll deal with that matter if it becomes an issue somewhere down the road.

After everything was tidied up, I put oil and gas in the engine. To expedite the matter, I squirted a shot of starting fluid into the carb. She started with the second pull and has been purring like a kitten since. The tires were aired up and Ol’ Rancho Ran climbed aboard his new hefty heiny hauler.

The neighbor has a nice ¼ mile long concrete driveway so that seemed to me to be the best place to execute a test run so I did just that. The contraption performed flawlessly with the minor exception of having to fine tune the rear fenders which appear to love annoying the tires by getting in their way and making harsh tire-abrading sounds. 

After zipping around for a bit, I put the trike to bed in the barn and was most pleased with it and myself. Imagine my surprise the next day when I went to the barn to conduct a post test ride evaluation run and found the front tire was flat! The best I can tell, there’s a patch of Oklahoma goat head stickers left over from my last eradication campaign and some of them punctured the tire. “Slime” time! I shoved some slime into the tube then ran it around awhile and came back to the barn to check it out. It was nearly flat. More slime! After that, it just wouldn’t hold air so we’re going into town tomorrow and have them install the indestructible tubes we bought (two years ago) in anticipation of precisely this event.

Stay tuned as Ol’ Rocket Ran will soon be assembling another Schwinn “Meridian” trike with work-saving Honda internal combustion engine attached to it for his side-cook, Connie.  What shall we call ourselves? How about the “Rancho Rocket Riders” (corny and goofy but, hey, that's us in a nutshell). Or, what about “The Schwinn Twins”? I know! Let’s do, “The Meridian Marauders” and that way we can get the jackets, helmets and tattoos to go with the name (I doubt if I can get that one past Connie)! We shall see what other trouble the pair of rancho ranch hands can get into next time.