Drift Trikes 101 (AKA How a Big Tricycle Can Be Awesome)

Hopefully you’ve never felt the panic of accelerating your car a little too quickly into a turn on a slippery road and feeling your back wheels go into a slide.

However, if you have had that experience and want to recapture the adrenaline rush minus the danger, a drift trike might be just the thing for you.

But before you plunge into buying (or building) a drift trike and start launching yourself down steep hills, you should know a bit more about these strange sliding tricycles. So take a spin through our quick guide to drift trikes.

The science behind drift trikes

Knowing the general design of drift trikes has probably already helped you understand why they're so "drift"-y. After all, you're probably not surprised to learn that low traction = sliding.

However, if you're curious to learn more about the physics of drift as it applies to drift trikes, former Local Motors engineer Matt Jackson goes through it on this YouTube video. For easier access, we’ll sum his main points up here.

Let’s say you’re going into a left turn. You turn your front wheel left. The center of rotation is approximately in the middle of your trike with your center of gravity a bit behind that. In a turn that doesn’t involve a slide, you have a centripetal force resisting the centrifugal force, and there’s always some inertia that’s moving outwards from your center of gravity.

However, if you break free of the static friction of the back wheels, you’ll start to slide. This can happen once you’re going around 5 miles an hour. Even though you’re trying to turn left, you’ll be sliding to the right because it’s an inward left turn, so your direction of motion is to the right. However, the sliding of the rear wheels creates a force going backwards from that direction of motion, and that force is offset from your center of rotation. That offset plus that rear force creates torque, and it will eventually cause your trike to straighten out.

To keep your front wheel from sliding, you’d need to have it parallel to the direction of motion (which is, again, to the right, as counterintuitive as that sounds). However, if you want to maintain the drift for longer, by keeping the wheel somewhat left of your direction of motion (but still turned rightwards overall), there will be some force in the leftward direction that will counteract the torque created by the rear wheels.

But what happens if you don’t do that initial counter steering by turning your front wheel in the direction of the slide? Then you’ll be creating a leftwards force (still assuming a left turn) that completely overwhelms the force of the back wheels, making you spin out.

What does all this mean for your steering technique?

Well, assuming you do want to drift for a while (which is the purpose of a drift trike, after all) but you don’t want to do a full 360-degree spin, you’ll want to do the following: direct your front wheel into the turn, and then once your back wheels start sliding, turn your front wheel into the slide—not so much that you quickly stop drifting but not so little that you start spinning out. Find that sweet spot.

According to Matt, there are a lot of people who don’t counter steer sufficiently as they’re starting out with drift trikes.

Bonus tips for using a drift trike

A few more quick tips on drift trike basics: ³

• Keep your feet off the ground (ow).
• Counter steer about twice as much as you initially steered.
• Lift your leg as you’re turning your front wheel to prevent it from getting hit by the tire. (Matt refers to this as a “time-honored tradition” among drift trikers worldwide.)

It’ll still take practice to become a pro at using a drift trike, of course. However, keeping these tips in mind will help to make your first drift trike outing (as you’re working out the kinks in your technique) a bit smoother.

Final thoughts on drift trikes

So now you know the basics of drift trikes. If all this physics talk hasn’t scared you off and you want to experience the sweet rush of “sliding-but-on-purpose,” we can help you out.

We carry two different drift trike kits at affordable prices so you can quench your thirst for adrenaline without breaking the bank. (Plus, you’ll be establishing your DIY bonafides.)

Next, check out our blog on the different types of drift trikes so you can determine which one is right for you.

[REVISED 3/2023]