Progress

Today have made a little more progress on the new bike, yep the one made out of Stainless. Finally managed to get the engine adapted up to the transmission. It took quite a bit to cut the aluminium back to fit in the larger clutch. The original clutch for this transmission was 58mm. The trans comes out of a very small rotary hoe (roto tiller) so had to adapt it fit a 76mm clutch, it seems to run great.










To give you some idea of what I am hoping the bike will look like I have been drawing it !! Huge thanks to Google for giving the world free use of some cool computer drawing programs like Google Sketchup (very cool program)
Here is the basic drawing 
As you can see still lots of drawing and designing yet to come but really enjoying the fun of putting this project together !!

Thanks Dan!!

Today we have been doing some work on the new concept, the stainless steel bike. A huge thanks to Daniel Geary who just happens to be here in Kolkata doing some work at Freeset and he is a Stainless Steel expert welder. Today he very kindly did a significant amount of work on the new frame and I must confess his welding is a huge step above mine. 
Daniel is quite a bike enthusiast himself and is currently got some amazing projects of his own on the go back in NZ, will look forward to seeing how his turns out in the future.


In the next day or two will start to mount up the motor to the frame. I started mounting the motor onto the transmission, its taking a bit of work as the transmission isn't quite suited to the engine so having to do quite a bit of modification to it, so plenty of aluminium flying around the workshop as I grind into it. 


With having Dan around for another week will speed the manufacturing process up !!


Incidentally Dan is going for a tour around Rajasthan for 14 days after he leaves Freeset on a Royal Enfield bike, this is something I have in mind for the new bike, hopefully next year some time but will need some willing friends to join in with me  !!

50kph (30mph)

This morning I went with a friend out for coffee, him on his Honda scooter and me on my little baby Honda......cum bicycle !
As we went down one road I gave it all she had and was clocked at 50kph (30mph) and that is about as fast as it would go I could not get any more out of it unless I did some engine modifications.


I happened to miss seeing a large pot hole until the last minute, 50kmh impact on a Kolkata sized pothole is not recommended however I am pleased to say the bike held up very well....gave me a fright though !!

Caught !!!

Today the Kolkata Police pulled me over, I thought that I was going to get in trouble for having an engine on my bicycle, instead they accused me of driving amongst the traffic on a busy fast road where bicycles are not supposed to be......well it is true I wasn't just keeping up with the traffic I was going faster then them. Fortunately I managed to talk my way out of the situation and the Police told me to keep going, I didn't get a fine nor did I have to pay a bribe !!!


Everywhere I go people stop and stare, I wonder if there is a business opportunity here, to make cheap versions of these transmissions with a good quality engine so that they could be clipped on the back carrier of local bicycles for the Indian market, there are 12.5 million bicycles sold in India every year ????

New concept early stages

This bike is being made out of stainless steel. that really was not my first choice but since we cannot weld aluminium here in Kolkata but can weld stainless with our tig welder it was the next best thing and I think it will work out pretty well only issue is it will be a bit on the heavy side.


Here in this photo is the main top structural tube (it will not have a bottom stay), it also combines to be a 6 liter fuel tank. As you can see the project still needs lots of work


























The transmission I am going to try and it is very much experiential is off a very small rotary hoe (rotary tiller), it was very cheap and suited my needs quite well however not too sure how long it will last. It is 35:1 ratio.

Prototype one - just how good is it

Well it goes pretty darn good and many aspects of it I just love, even since putting it on the bike I have made a number of adjustments and have learnt plenty for a go at completely making my own design.
I didn't quite get the gearing right, it is geared way too high so I have to pedal it a bit to get it going and then once up to 15kph I can gun the engine and it gets along really well.
So far it will pull 40kph no problem, with my own design and better gearing it should go faster, however 40kph on a bicycle is pretty fast around Kolkata that is for sure.
It is very quiet and at idle I can hardly hear it. It does vibrate too much so next time will have to rubber mount it.
The bike handles really well and with the soft mountain bike suspension it can handle the pot holes of Asian countries well.
It gets 160mpg which is better than I expected, but at present I only have a half liter fuel tank and only get 30 kilometers on it. So that will need to be improved.
It is easy to pedal and you can pedal it and it will not spin the motor or use the motor and the pedals wont spin so it all works really well.
It has a Nuvinci planetary hub instead of a rear de railer. This works as gearbox so that you can vary the final drive and this is working very well.
Having the engine hanging over the back wheel means there is too much weight up high and puts  too much weight on the rear wheel. So the next bike will need to be a mid mount to spread the weight better and mounted lower.
Although this one really doesn't fold up on the whole it works really good so now time to build my own and see how I go.
Since I am on a tight budget  I will need to rob this bike of all the components which is a bit of a pity as it is such a good bike.
Soon I need to take it on a long journey to really put it through its paces!!

Prototype one - Motorized mountain bike

This is my first attempt to power a mountain bike

Must say it goes pretty good but have lots of ideas to improve it 

How do I start ?

After doing quite a bit of research on the internet I discovered other people have already been doing this sort of thing for some time, but most bikes are just built to commute around town and there was nothing too radical out there. Certainly there was nothing that can be folded up and put on a plane, so time to hit the drawing board or my case Google's Sketchup.


In the meantime I decided to buy an existing mountain bike and fit an engine to it as my first prototype before launching into my own design, so I scoured the internet and bought a bike in bits on ebay. Since I am on a very tight budget (yep birthday money and Christmas gifts) it had to be cheap and fortunately I got a bike in many many pieces and put it together. 


I want to use as many local parts in India as I can so I found a suitable engine at the local Honda dealer, it is a weedeater engine but a very unique one, it is a little Honda 4 stroke, 35cc. Normally 4 stroke engines cannot be tipped upside down but this one has a different oiling system which it enables it to be tipped and run upside down if you wanted to, plus it is quiet and very economical. 


So birthed was the first prototype -

Bike objectives

Bike Objectives - what would the bike need to be like, here are some ideas 

• ·         It must be light for easy transportation, good fuel mileage, storability, movability, so it can go on a plane without having to pay extra luggage (less than 25kg)
• ·         Be able to be tipped on its side without oil, or fuel leaking out
• ·         It must be able to be folded up so it can be stored, go on a plane. Preferably as small as possible. Be quickly folded
• ·         Economical (150 mpg) eco friendly
• ·         Good suspension travel (125mm)
• ·         Have enough fuel to last a good distance (250km or more)
•      Be able to do at least 40-50kph (25-50mph) 
• ·         Be strong without frame or components breaking
• ·         Quiet
• ·         Not look like a motorbike but more like a bike
• ·         Be fun to ride
• ·         Be easy to pedal
• ·         Look awesome
• ·         Be safe, stop well, handle well
• ·         Easy to repair

What is the point of this blog??


Well for some time now I have been contemplating the documentary "Long way Round", this is a few guys that got together and thought they would drive around the world on some motorbikes, I have only seen a couple of the shows of their trip but it sure looked a blast and thought to myself, one day I would like to do something like that.


Although I have done some epic motorbike trips in New Zealand, Australia across India and up and around the Himalaya's I would like to do more.... not just in one country but across and through several countries.
The problem I see with this is that going  across boarders in Asia is a right pain, you need so much paper work with a motorbike that it would take an enormous amount of preparation and organizing to put everything in place, and quite frankly I cannot be bothered with that level of cost of both time and money, so I got thinking, what other way could this be done.


So this blog is about a plan to put together a vehicle that can go across boarders with easy and be a lot of fun on the way. The solution...... a radical motorized mountain bike........