A Belated Note on Robert Q Riley of Trimuter and Tri-Magnum Fame

After writing about Pete Larsen’s new Honda Gold Wing powered Ace, it crossed my mind that another fellow, Robert Q. Riley, had been promoting DIY plans for a couple of three wheelers for several decades. Some of you likely remember those trikes and other similar projects appearing in the pages and on the cover of Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Mechanics magazines encouraging homebuilders to buy the plans and bring them to life in their garage.

I thought I’d check in to see what he was up to and his site wasn’t there. His Facebook pages were still up and I quickly found several others who were as surprised as I was to find he had apparently passed away sometime around May of last year.

Although Riley had remained actively involved with these vehicles and plans packages, in my mind he appeared to be more a fixture of the 60s, 70s and 80s because the magazine covers from those decades made such an impression on me. Those of us who grew up before the internet took off, remember certain magazine covers and projects very clearly, they serve as markers of sorts for various times throughout the period.

The popular three wheelers

Trimuter

Riley offered a wide range of plans for many types of vehicles, but his first three wheeler was the Trimuter, a standard trike layout with a single wheel up front. It was (according to the rqriley.com website) the most popular DIY project in the 75 year history of Mechanix Illustrated magazine and I still have a set of those original plans in my filing cabinet. He was working on and evidently completed plans for a much improved version, the Trimuter HP3, with options for using a VW 4 cylinder engine, a Kubota diesel or an electric motor, but, unfortunately, he passed away just as he was in the process of releasing them.

There was also what appeared to be a variant of the Trimuter that never left the drawing board, the Project 32 Slalom, a leaning version where all three wheels tilted in the direction of the turn.

Tri-Magnum

His second three wheeler, the Tri-Magnum, was a reverse trike. Power is from a variety of motorcycles essentially plugged into the rear of the trike’s frame after the front fork and wheel are removed. With the bodywork enclosing the rear, the motorcycle is completely hidden except for the rear wheel and exhaust peeking out below. Articles appear on occasion showing a proud builder who just completed one though I have no idea how many are out there.

Every now and then, one shows up on eBay, sometimes a real beauty, though at other times it’s a long neglected, unfinished project covered in dust and “almost complete.” There’s a Tri-Magnum project for sale as I write this.

XR3 Hybrid

The last of these three wheel designs is the XR3 diesel electric hybrid, though it’s not a hybrid in the usual sense. The front wheels are driven by a diesel engine, the rear wheel by an electric motor and the connection between the two drive systems is the road surface the wheels are rolling on. There’s no control system to coordinate the two, but Riley said that’s unnecessary. The XR3 can be built with either drive system alone and it can be run on one or the other system when both are installed and if you’re running on one and want a boost from the other, it’s supposedly no problem. Riley claimed the diesel version delivers 125 mpg and as a hybrid, 200 mpg.

The XR3 is more complex than the previous trikes and there were plans to sell kits with the more difficult pieces already built. Of course, that’s no longer possible, so any builders with plans are on their own.

3 wheelers were just a part of the plans portfolio

The four wheelers in the lineup were built on a variety of chassis, some on top of a VW Beetle or VW bus, the first two, the UrbaCar and UrbaElectric, used a very basic metal tube frame and one design, the Centurion, began with the chassis from a Triumph Spitfire.

The use of a chassis from a VW for all sorts of vehicles became popular in the 1960s when the Meyers Manx started the dune buggy craze. That led to fiberglass body kits for VWs from a multitude of companies creating every kind of vehicle imaginable, but those same VWs are classics today, so you’re unlikely to chop one up for one of these projects, but maybe something else could serve as a replacement.

While doing research for this article, I noticed something else I missed in previous years. Riley either partnered with the designer or obtained the rights to plans for a number of the DIY projects he was selling. How many, if any, of these were his own designs? It’s hard to tell. The VW Minihome, for instance, was something already being sold as the “Lil Bugger” when he saw one for the first time on the highway where he chased down the owner and eventually struck a deal with the company to sell the plans.

Perhaps Riley’s part in many of the projects was to generate the idea after which others then drew it up or to find projects and plans he could sell. Whatever the case, he was the driving force exposing a lot of these plans through his many magazine articles to the DIY builders and thousands of dreamers that might otherwise never have seen them. Pre-internet, magazines were how you found projects like these.

They even made it into the movies

If you get the impression of a slightly dated sci-fi design influence when looking at these, you’re not alone. Some movie producers agreed and Riley’s vehicles found their way into a couple of movies, the XR3 was in Looper and several others were in the original Total Recall with Arnold.

Many, many more plans

What else did Riley have plans for? The earliest was Ground Hugger, a recumbent bicycle and much later was Ground Hugger HR2 an improved version with an electric drive motor in the rear wheel, HydroRunner, a small tri-hull watercraft for two kneeling occupants, the Tri-Flyer a boat/hovercraft, Pegasus, a smaller hovercraft, Aquasub, an enclosed submarine attached to two pontoon outriggers, the Gluhareff pressure jet engine and the MEG 2 single person helicopter powered by the jet engines, plus Super Spa hot tub, Old Hickory brick barbecue, the Lean Machine exercise machine and the Surf Sailer, combination paddleboard and sailboat. Quite an array!

Popular plans, but how many were finished?

There are a lot of reasons so many found these plans appealing. Their relative simplicity, the low cost to build and operate, their unique appearance and they seemed to be functional and fun, just the kind of project someone handy with tools might look at and think, “I could build that!” The bodies were usually designed with foam and fiberglass construction while motive power was a choice of gas or diesel engines and electric motors. When combined with an appealing story and photographs in the popular DIY mags, many home builders imagined themselves putting one together and rolling it out of the garage to the applause of family and friends. It would be very interesting to know how often that actually happened. Right now, you can find several groups on the internet where current builders of one or another of these projects discuss construction tips, parts sources and problems they’ve encountered, so the vision is still alive.

What’s become of the plans?

The rqriley.com site where these plans were previously sold is down and I found no official word from anyone else as to what has become of the business. There is a site where the plans are for sale, but it’s an anonymous site and it’s unclear who is behind it or even if they have the legal right to sell them, so I’m not linking to it. If someone has a definitive answer on that, please let me know.

Where do projects like these fit in today’s world?

These projects seemed perfectly suited to the times they were from. Many were based on the VW Beetle chassis which was everywhere in those early years and when I looked at my Trimuter plans, I noticed several parts called out were from the same source. Today you would use something more up to date, but today’s tools would also make all sorts of other improvements possible, too.

As noted above, these projects look like something you can build, even if your skills and experience aren’t top notch. With enough time and effort, you might be able to turn out something reasonably good looking and fun and what more does a project have to do? You’ll gain skills in the process and have a great conversation piece when friends drop over.

You can decide whether these are a serious answer to the high cost of gasoline or anything else, but if you like it or think it’s cool, no other reason is necessary to build one and we can thank Robert Q Riley for putting these out there to stimulate our thinking and providing potential projects you might build and get to drive sometime in the future.