Motorized Bicycle

[Harvey]

Have any of you ever put a motor on a bicycle?

I am considering doing this as a winter project.

 

[oldryder]

yup. me and my buddies did it as kids more than once.

took a "standard" bike frame (pretty much all there was in those days)

cut the vertical post between the crank hub and the seat away. mounted a plate for the motor with "u-bolts" to the frame. (we didn't have a welder)

engine was a horizontal shaft mower engine scavenged from a reel type mower which was popular at the time. some were two strokes.

fan belt drive. rear pulley was scavenged from a scrapped gas dryer; mounted more or less centered on a front wheel off a donor bike with bolts thru the spokes and a lot of washers.

no clutch, they cost too much. we'd set the idle high & run along side and jump on when the motor fired. the really high tech ones had a cable actuated throttle, otherwise we steered with one hand and worked the throttle on the carb with the other. sometimes you burned your hand on the cyl head or (worse) the muffler.

braking was engine compression and tennis shoes. top speed was 25 - 30 mph.

amazingly no one got killed. when I reflect on this I often wonder if our parents really loved us ... of course, families were much bigger then and one less kid maybe wasn't such a big deal.

we also made motorized go carts, wood frames but you had to buy axles and wheels at the hardware store so it was cheaper to do bikes since we could scavenge the parts.

I wouldn't recommend doing anything the way we did.

 

[madmike2]

Sooooooo...you're going to build one of these: Whizzer

 

[03HiYoSilver]

harvey,

My friend has one of these, Subaru engines, and likes it pretty well.

Here's the link to the Engines and Kits they offer:

https://www.staton-inc.com/Results1.asp?Category=13

 

[Solo]

I wish you'd have been one of the kids in my neighborhood growing up oldryder.

 

[Harvey]

harvey,
My friend has one of these, Subaru engines, and likes it pretty well.

Here's the link to the Engines and Kits they offer:

https://www.staton-inc.com/Results1.asp?Category=13

Does he have friction drive, chain drive, or belt drive?

 

[oldryder]

thx. for the thought. it was a simpler time. I lived in a pretty typical suburb and we played at friends houses all day without our parents worrying at all (as far as we could tell) about what we were up to. except for smoking; the surest way to get your *** beat (literally) was to get caught smoking.

we made motorbikes and wood go carts wen we were about 10. around 12 when some of us started having money from paper routes and other work we graduated to mini-bikes with actual brakes and clutches. a few of us graduated to motorcycles wen we turned 16 but as I recall it was a battle every time with parents as none of us had dad's that rode.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I wish you'd have been one of the kids in my neighborhood growing up oldryder.

 

[fjrchooser]

I built one for a winter project last year, used a 2 stroke kit from Bike Berry. Its chinese manufactured and needed a lot of casting clean up, fin straightening ect. to match my expectations. Been a fun ride for 300 miles so far. Used my mid 80's Trek mountain bike as a donor, it mated up well with the kit and looks very much like an old Whizzer.

Collapsible dual rear wire baskets make beer runs fun and easy !

That said, I later picked up another kit from a Canadian distributor I've yet to mount. Appears to be a much nicer casting with better porting from a different chinese manufacturer. About the same price with the improved roller bearing chain tensioner and a few other upgraded parts. It can be found here Zoom I had a lot of fun putting it together and re-farkeling the Trek. A word of warning -it can be as addicting as farkeling the FJRs !

 

[RadioHowie]

Wow, does this bring back memories. About 20 odd years ago, bought my son, then 12 years old, a 10 speed for Christmas. So he had someone to ride with, I bought myself an 18-speed mountain bike.

After half-killing myself trying to keep up with the little *******, I rigged a Poulan chainsaw motor to my mountain with U-bolts. Ran a chain from the centrifugal clutch on the motor to the outside chainwheel on the crankset and put basically an ATV thumb-throttle on the handlebar's right grip.

I wound up with a 12 speed motorized bike, since I could still use the Derailleur setup for two of the three front crank sprokets, and all 6 sprockets on the rear. That thing would FLY!

The only downside was there was no free-wheeling of the pedals, since the motor was driving the crankset, so top speed, at least with your feet on the pedals, was "how fast can you pedal?"

I put some "stunt" pegs on the front wheel axle (imagine hiway pegs for a bicycle) so I could take my feet off the pedals, and winding that little 1/2 horse motor through the gears, I could get it up to about 52 miles per hour before I chickened out.

"Hey, Y'all.....watch this!!!!!"

Good old days. :yahoo: