Drift Trike: Recap

Most of my free time recently has been going into my new drift trike.  One of my sister's friends had one last year and showed me this video, and I decided that I had to make my own:

youtube: devinsupertramp

So I've been working on making my own, modified design using my old mountain bike.  I was actually having a bad day last spring, and on top of it I got a flat tire while riding back to the dorm.  I was mad enough to start chopping up my bike, and that served as the final catalyst to get going on the project.
Using just an angle grinder, I cut the top tube right at the head tube and cut off the seat tube and seat stays, leaving behind a sort of huge mountain bike scooter.

centurycycles.com

At the rear drop outs, a long 1" square steel tube (sized just long enough so the whole thing could fit through the elevator door without the tank bike struggle) replaced the rear wheel to make it a tricycle.  The small rear wheels were soon replaced with a pair of 10" harbor freight pneumatic wheels on casters to allow the back end to swing into turns and give the drifting effect.  The traditional drift trikes like the ones in the youtube videos use pvc wheels that easily skid on the asphalt, but I wanted to try something different.  Some reinforcement was added to the frame by welding 1/2" x 1/2" angle iron from the down tube to the rear square tube:

And aside from a spray paint primer coat over the bare steel, that's the condition in which the bike would stay for the remainder of the spring and summer.  It was fun to push and spin, but Boston doesn't have really any hills for drifting down around MIT, so the next phase in the plan was to put a hub motor on the front wheel for some EV Drifting.