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For some of you that are not aware of steering geometry, just a bit on the steering arms. On a "rear" steer like the original 5-spd M3W, the steering arm ends are set inward from the hub assembly. On all "front" steering cars/trikes etc, the steering arm ends have to be outward in front and will sometimes end up inside the wheel area.

The true reason for this is our good ole friend Ackerman, or Ackerman Steering theory.

If you draw an imaginary line between the upper and lower ball joints and then draw a line from the center of your rear axle assembly, that line would extend forward and outward in front of the spindle assembly centered through that ball joint vertical line. It's on that line that the steering arm ends will reside; how far forward will depend on the steering rack and other factors. On the rear steer cars/trikes, that same line is drawn from the imaginary line between the ball joints and then to the rear center drive axle. It's on this line that you will find the rear steer steering rod ends.

When turning a circle the outside wheel has a larger turning radius than the inside front tire. The inside front tire turns inward to a higher degree than the outside tire turns inward. This keeps both front wheels on the true turning radius without scrubbing the tires. Of course there are many variants of this theory, but this is how the "true" Ackerman Steering is designed.

Front steering.



Rear steering.



I know I'm never really short winded, but I do have a relevant story to prove my point.

When I got interested in the M3W's I told a friend of mine down at the Lake of the Ozarks in MO. He decided to build a trike using a Moto Guzzi for the drive line. He found "A" arms off a Polaris quad that were very well built and along with the arms he got the spindles/knuckles and steering arms. The Polaris was a rear steer like the M3W.... BUT he wanted to use the MG Midget front steer rack gear and just flipped the spindles from side to side to put the steering arms in front.

On one of my visits to the Lake I had to go see how he was doing. He had the chassis all done and part of the body attached along with all the driveline and steering. I saw right away there could be an issue and I explained the same to him that I described above. So we put his trike up on jack stands and I proceeded to show him his error. As stated above, in a left turn the inside wheel will turn the sharpest and the outside wheel will be somewhat less to follow the larger turning radius. Guess what??? When we turned the steering wheel hard left, the outside wheel went almost flat across the front of the trike and the left wheel was still pointing somewhat in a turn to the left. We repeated this now to the right and the left front wheel laid almost flat, as in 90 degrees to the right. The right wheel was again somewhat turning to the right, but very little. He was dumbfounded that he screwed up that bad. But he took off the steering arms and made new ones inline with the line from the center of the rear tire through the ball joints and then forward up to the end of the steering arms and ends.

Sorry for rambling on again.

I'm still a bit confused about the diagonal rod from the outside end of the top "A" arm running downward towards the shock. I'm going to guess that this being adjustable as it looks with the rod end etc, that this is a push/pull link that operates the coilovers through some sort of a pivot arm assembly. If the coilovers were actually mounted to the lower "A" arms, the leverage would be way to great to support the frontend. Pivot bellcrank of some sort make sense to me. Any other pictures of that area?