Haven't updated in a while, but work is progressing slowly.

I've just about amassed all the parts I need to complete the build apart from brake lines and a chain.

I now have a boxed in cabin which I am skinning in 0.5mm aluminium. I've found that with such a thin metal its quite easy to get a nice radius on body panels by running the sheet over your legs back and forth like you are drying yourself with a towel. Sounds crazy but it works.

Also made a foam buck for a nosecone. Got it into shape over the weekend and laid down my first layers of glass and resin. By far the messiest thing I have ever done. I just used chopped mat for the fibreglass, but in hindsight i would use woven cloth for straight lines and simple curves whilst saving the chopped mat for the more intricate compound curves. Now time to sand, cut and recoat where necessary

My front wheels have arrived. Chinese dirt bike, nice quality.....and the price... around $54 ea. with free shipping. Whoo Hooo!
These were on Aliexpress, you need to spend a fair bit of time sussing out the bargains and pay particular attention to the shipping cost.
Bit of tension while monitoring the tracking, they were held up at Chinese airport for a couple of weeks to get on special "oversize'" freight flights.
I actually got some discount vouchers because of the delays.

My original plan was to build my own wheels around some nice 1970's Yamaha MX hubs I have. Then sourcing the 17" rims and custom spokes, tyres, tubes and rim bands, add the time to assemble and true and we are looking at hundreds & hundreds of $$$$$ for 2 wheels.

Now that I have the wheels, I can finish the pillar spacing and the stub axle design to meet the track width spec.

front axle starting to take shape and more parts slowly starting to arrive.

Some slight design changes, there's a plethora of Austin based karts already, so have decided to base my design on the ERA Type-B. I will most likely model mine off chassis no.10, ERA R10B of Peter Whitehead who won the 9th Australian Grand Prix in this car at Bathurst in 1938.

Original plan for driving the trike was with a rear mounted engine and a swing arm. (Simple)
In order to fit it into the available space, I was planning to extend the motor drive past the front of the wheel and put the Torque Converter on the other side of the wheel. This was not going to be a problem as one of my 'donor' engines is from a portable generator. These have a tapered drive into the alternator rotor, press the rotor apart and away we go, extended shaft, (Simple). Next step was a short swing-arm pivoting in-line with the output sprocket of the TC. (Simple... sketch attached). For proper alignment with the wheel sprocket, I would need to place the drive sprocket on the inside end of the TC. (Simple) Apparently, this is possible with a genuine Comet TC. My Chinese clone, TAV20, on the other hand, has a 5/8" shaft through the rear pulley and drive sprocket, expanding to 17mm through the alloy bearing support. (Not so simple??) New Plan in development.