All well and good, but I gotta say, by the looks of the rubber seals and parts, if it's a 96 they musta' used some poor quality rubber.
I have a Ford 800 tractor / backhoe, which, by serial # I can tell was made in '57 and some of the original rubber parts on it look to be in better shape than the seals around the pushrod tubes on this trike.
The numbers don't lie, and I believe what the experts say, but, knowing nothing about these machines....it looks a LOT older than a '96.