Sorted.

It's a long story, nearly two years long. The last time this trike was ridden, the forks snapped, that was in July 1012 during my annual homage to my racing past - the Mersey 24 Hour time trial. I had aimed to have it fixed for last year's event; I did have the forks and front brakes sorted but, as I tightened the last screw, the one that held this gear mechanism on, the thread stripped. That was a few days before the race. On and off, for the last ten months I've been trying to source the thread inserts to effect a repair. The name I remember from my engineering days is "T-sert." Google didn't help much,but then a few days ago in an idle conversation with a friend who, not only rides trikes, but has an old AA motorbike and sidecar (500,000 miles old), mentioned the magic work, "Helicoil."

Within hours the inserts and tools required were ordered and on Saturday the job was done. There were problems as I'm not a mechanical engineer and don't have the jigs, practice or skills recommended for the job. The old thread was drilled out (a little bit skew), a new thread was tapped, and the Helicoil fitted. It wasn't until I was on the third Helicoil that I managed to actually fit the screw. I think the problem was that I oiled the insert before fitting it and the film of oil prevented it from bedding in properly; anyway, once I'd cleaned the oil off, fitted the third one and then fitted a very tight screw, the threads eased and everything was fine. Once the assembly is complete, you can't even see that the screw is not straight. So, I now have a fifty year old steel trike with a modern carbon fibre fork.

Today I went for a half mile ride and checked that it all works; if the weather is fine on Wednesday I might take it out on the club run.