The ever-resourceful [Turbo Conquering Mega Eagle] has an excellent excuse for starting on projects, he’s building them for his kids and making videos. We’re not so sure his little motorcycle wasn’t built because Dad also wants to have a go though, because it seems he had quite a lot of fun testing it.
The build starts with a Chinese petrol conversion kit for a bicycle. There’s a little twofour-stroke motor and a basic chain drive to a large sprocket intended to fit on the opposite side of a bicycle wheel to the pedal sprocket. He uses a pair of pneumatic wheelbarrow wheels for which he makes a new bush and to which he welds the sprocket. These go into a fairly simple hardtail frame for which he makes a padded motorcycle seat, and from then on he’s ready to go.
The result is a rather cool little non-road-legal motorcycle that we suspect most readers will have a hankering to own. We’re not so sure about its seeming lack of brakes though. Judge for yourself, the video is below the break.
This isn’t the first home made small bike we’ve brought you, though it’s a lot safer than the first one.
Brakes! They only slow you down
What are brakes?
On this thing brakes are only for bones!
That “2-stroke” is 4-stroking quite a bit, Jenny.
You’ve made my day by making me laugh!
Apologies, and yes. :)
This is awesome :D
Well before the advent of Chinese slave labor built products, Dad’s with decent mechanical skills used to build “minibikes” for their kids. You could buy the kits from sellers in the old Popular Mechanics and Boys Life magazines.
And oh they had brakes.
I remember minibikes from the 1970’s. 4-cycle lawn mower engines, Tecumseh or Briggs & Stratton (nothing Chinese). You could find minibike magazines at larger newstands.
Old school plans…
https://www.vintageprojects.com/mini-bike-plans.html
I’d have used a GX160.
Sorry for the nitpicking; but I am purrrrrrdy sure that’s a four stroke motor.
Yeah you can hear it try to reng de-deng every other stroke :P
It looks like a Heathkit Boonie Bike. I only knew about those starting inn1971 when I was 11.
My favourite conversion of a pedal bike to fuel powered remains Colin Furze’s insane pulse-jet bike:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKHz7wOjb9w
Described by its creator as “The JET Bicycle – The most dangerous unsafe bike EVER”
Fun to ride till your friend catches you on one, use to be the saying.
Very nice job !! What a GREAT Dad ! I really enjoyed watching how thrilled the kids were with it as clearly seen from their joyful laughter ! Outstanding Brother !! I LOVED always doing things with my son and STILL do although he’s almost 29 now ! Those were and still are very fun-filled days !
Yes! I also loved how happy and truly engaged everyone was.
Would have been a better dad, with an electric build.
Back in the ’60’s our public jr. high 9th grade school shop class had a set of jigs. Bring in black iron (no galv) pipe and you could do this in an hour or two at school. The school shares a name with one of those engine brands. We discussed changing the oil slinger to use a vertical shaft lawn mower engine on a mini bike. Some parents ‘loved’ it. Then came the fad of inverted bikes with elevated seats, modded out of said shop class. The city passed an ordinance about seat height.
BIG extra points for basically making his own plywood (bent), and THEN making his own seat AND cover (rather well, also). Gotta love the confidence he has with a MIG welder, although he is running a bit light in the safety department.
Mega-millionaires have been building post-apocalyptic shelters in the event of a society-collapse type of catastrophe. I’d rather just be friends with this guy.
I am in the middle of a motorized bike build even smaller than this. I have a cheap pipe bender and it is extremely hard for me to do tight radius bends over about 90 degrees, so I had to make smaller bends and join them. I did not like my results with MIG on small tubing/pipe, so I bought a TIG setup and had no luck with it. After buying a much smaller and lighter torch for the machine, this video inspired me to try it out on this cold day in the garage and SUCCESS. So, I’ll be putting my frame together with TIG.
I enjoyed the video,
but what language was he speaking?
It would have been nice to have English sub-titles.
B^)