If have ever gone snowmobiling, you may have thought about how to revive that thrill in the more confined atmosphere of an urban environment — to say nothing of their utility. In anticipation of heavy snowfall over the winter in his hometown, [Ben] stripped the essence of the snowmobile down as an emergency vehicle and reshaped it into the Snow Bike.
This compact, winter transportation solution uses an e-bike controller, a chopped up ski, and a heavy snowblower track and a large RC plane motor for power all strapped onto a modified mountain bike frame. The motor mount is machined aluminum, the track rollers milled out of spare plastic — though they later had to be modified as they tended to get clogged by snow — and the front ski is simply bolted on using some 3″ square tubing.
Due to its small size the Snow Bike looks about as stable as a pocket bike, so perhaps some training tracks and or skis might help in deeper powder. [Ben] also notes that the present motor doesn’t have much power so the rider needs to keep it at full throttle to push through the snow. That said — seeing this thing smoothly cruising around in several inches of snow makes us wish we had one of our own.
If this ride isn’t fast enough for you, check out these rocket-powered winter vehicles.
If only so fortunate. Snow around here tends to get piled up making even a full snowmobile challenging.
you have snow? the wind here turns it all into ice powder that behaves like fine dry sand. cant support any weight and finds it’s way into any opening.
While an interesting post, an auto-looping video clip as part of the post (with no control for start / stop) isn’t cool. In the future please don’t do that.
Seconded.
You mean a GIF?
>_>
I hate the GIFs – resorted to a text-only feed after they started doing that.
Well i like the gifs just to add some balance, they are completely innofensive and unobtrusive
Bah. That’s not snowbiking – snowbiking is done with a salt-eaten mountain bike salvaged from the trash.
I’ve got the real thing – the Chrysler Sno Runner. Most people never knew they existed. When you learn about the back story and how they were designed for the military you would be glad they never made it into service of you were training for artic conditions. I couldn’t imagine actually strapping one them my back and hiking it in where it needed to be deployed. They are heavy and awkward just to move it around the garage.
There was that classic Heathkit from about 1965 into the seventies, The Boonie Bike. It was a motorized (gas) all terrain bike, very small. Fat tires, and if things got stuck, you could push with your legs.
And n accessory was a short skit that fitted to the front, for use in snow. You didn’t even have to remove the front tire.
Michael
and again hackaday succeeds in putting an animated GIF with the size of 9.358.018 Bytes on the website, slowing the whole wireless world down… Hackaday, PLEASE STOP THIS MADNESS!!!
It also isn’t of any use because the link to the video is a few inches below.
There is another record: error in the second word of post.”If ? have ever …” So my English is not that bad.
Just get uBlock origin and set it to block media files larger than 512kb.
looks good till you hit a patch of dry pavement and your front fork gets worn down the handlebars :P
Deeper powder? …I assume it only works downhill.?
These are about to bursting into commercial distribution, bringing the same sort of…fun…to quiet winter woods and fields that jet skis bring to lakes and bays everywhere. Bring earplugs.
https://youtu.be/-Ul95IuMON4
Atleast the sound from them can’t be worse than the “music” in the clip.
Wow, that is terrible. I think we have found a perfect example of what is noise to 99% of the world. Ugh.
If anyone liked that ‘music’, ima slap tha face. :P
Wait… So that WASN’T the sound of a dozen motorized snow-bikes!?!?
Wondering if adding a flywheel would aid in balance/stability.