Sorry for the steering bearing tangent. I was looking back over my notes and saw that it was thebat that references steering bearing in post #49. I didn't notice that the post was not written by you and kept looking for other references...

Started welding up some prototypes of steering knuckles, kingpin bosses, and spindles out of scrape. For anyone new to this type of vehicle design, there is nothing like a working prototype to help understand how thing are going to fit together.

Do you have any experience with hydraulic brakes on these vehicles? I found a set of free levers and calipers from a junked bike. I don't want to add too much complexity to save a couple of bucks at this stage. The Bengal brakes you mentioned seem to be about $65 for a pair.