How did you get introduced to motor-assisted bicycling?

I've always been into bicycles, rode ramps, and flips on bmx type bikes for years.
Got old and bought a NIRVE cruiser on CR.
Wanted to get an electric assist, but the motor kit was cheaper, and I'm glad I did, cause it's been sooo much fun ever since.

There is an old man who motor's by a friend's house each morning on his rack mount FD.
I figgered that would be all I need for most of the short trips around town.
Internet searches brought me here to motorbicycling.com.
My chinagirls have come from college students selling basket cases on Craigslist.

...asking price for mopeds is far too high, IMO, here...

Best
rc

My son is rapidly outgrowing his Power Wheels but still wants to keep it around, so I was looking at different ways to modify it to make it faster for him (right now it is at 18V, going to go 24V with an ESC soon). While googling for setups with electric scooter motors and sprockets, I found this site and was immediately intrigued!

I gave up motorcycling shortly after my son was born since even just commuting to work I was dodging careless drivers on a daily basis. But I really, really miss it. My wife picked up a new Vespa 150 last year for puttering around the neighborhood, so I threw a leg over that about twice a week to head to the grocery store. But we ended up selling it since she really did not enjoy riding it like she thought she would, lol.

So finding a hobby to keep me busy in the garage and allow me some motorized fun but at hopefully a little less risk to life and limb seemed like a perfect fit. My first build ended up being a weed eater FD on my old mountain bike, but that was just because I stumbled upon a free Ryobi weed eater on CL. Had fun on that for about a month, then sold it to help fund my china girl build

My story started when I moved from Michigan to Connecticut for my job. My family stayed in Michigan since my kids were a senior and sophomore in highschool. I was renting a room in a house with 4 other guys and only lived about 4 miles from work. I've been into Jeeps and off-roading for years so my daily driver was a 98 TJ on 35s with 4.56 gears, lockers in both axles and many other upgrades that gave me about 12-13 miles per gallon. I wasn't new to wrenching. I was looking for a moped to go back and forth to work and ran across a tag on the side for a motorized bike kit. I started following those links and ended up at this forum and started to do a lot of reading. I picked up a diamondback beach cruiser for $20 off craigslist and a 2 stroke from Thatsdax. Put it together on the living room floor while watching football and started riding it to work every day. I modified the exhaust, upgraded the carb, swapped out to 12g spoke rims and a MM sprocket adaptor and had a ball.

Fast Forward from 2008-09. My ex-wife back in Michigan decided she wanted a divorce since she had a boyfriend. She told me on our 19th anniversary while I was in Michigan. With all of that things have changed. I sold that bike and moved out into the country about 12 miles from work. I am now working on a 4 stroke bike since things have settled down and the guy that I sold my 2 stroker to broke something in the motor and is giving me the entire back so I'll either put another motor on that one and complete the 4 stroke build or I'll strip the parts off that bike to assist in the new build. Waiting for the bike to be dropped off so I can see what kind of shape it's in.

It sucked at the time, but I've moved on and I'm happier than I've been in many years. I just got remarried this past October and I'll have at least one motorized bike in the garage in the next couple months and maybe two, depending on the condition of the one being dropped off by the house.

I was naturally introduced to MB by my own one-time far-away bike spin. I loved the scenery, and made it a weekly ritual to travel the same route. But law-abiding issues made me hold-off any thought of motorising my bicycle. And even as I type this, I am still so-so about the idea. My bike motor is a 66 CC gas engine. Not a 50 CC or lower unit that would eliminate the need of any license or insurance. Am I worrying too much? Thank you all on this great site!

My mate rode his to get around while I had my license.
I thought he was abit of a dweeb at the time.
My car has 515rwhp and 1070Nm of torque so as you can imagine it wasnt too long before I managed to loose my license and I had a 25km trip to work with no public transport.
Hmmm these motorised bikes where do I get 1.
Built my MB roughly 2 weeks before my license was gone.
Lost my license for 3 months and have kept it since that was over 18months ago and I'm still a mad keen MB addict since the day I made my 1st 1.
+ this site has been gr8.. god only knows how many hours I've spent lurking the threads.

First saw MB's in 1967 in Viet Nam (front wheel drive). Thought they were kind of innovative. Fast forward to 3/2009, my son didn't have a drivers license for the past 14 years (33 years old). He peddled a bicycle to and from work (also peddled from Orlando, FL to Atlanta, GA, over 500 miles), and thought about a electric motor powered bicycle. I told him I didn't think that would be the way to go, and told him I saw MB's back in 1967 while in Viet Nam. Looked for the front mounted engine, and the only thing I came up that was in his ball park is the HT. He checked on local laws concerning the legalities, and here we are 3 years and still riding the same MB. Bought 6, 5 from Ebay, and satisfied with everything except a defective coil on the first bike bought.

I just happened to have a few hundred extra bucks and decided I wanted something cool for myself. I was on the internet, mainly ebay searching for stuff and came across a bike motor. I had to have it. So I went to gasbike and saw a better one and bought it! It is now currently having wheel troubles though.

I had been into bikes off an on all my life one thing led to another an I was building custom frames for my son an i , being a bit of a gearhead an tinker , I was searching google an found this forum .. best way to describe the bikes I saw here is " oh H@ll yes! I gotta build one of these ! " I honestly dont think I been here 6 months an have learned soooooo much I am on the second one , an see no end in sight .
Gary

3 years ago, i was unemployed, my 96 impala SS got stolen, was living in costa mesa on a friend's couch, pretty much broke, and i saw some guy smoking down the street on a ratted out piece o crap.

checked ebay first, almost bought one complete, then did some research and found out i could build my own. and i found this awesome forum.

since then, i've built a bunch of custom bikes, started racing them, organizing my own races, met a bunch of crackpots like myself who never grew out of putting motors on stuff, got another job, moved into a house, and now i build some of the fastest bikes around.

still miss that impala, though...

Raced for years- 14 in fact- and loved the feeling when I was young of not being tied to the car- at least in the summer- or, if the bike was in the back of the car, no breakdown could much leave me stranded-

I lived in L.A. for a number of years, and when the Northridge quake hit in the '90's, the bike was the best way to get around for the day or two after.

Theen I went back to live in Indiana in 05. I wanted to get my Indiana licence renewed (I'd had one in 2000 there), before my current Califoirnia license expired. And despite the fact that I had an active CA license, and EVEN my Indiana license had technically not even expired by then- they took it in California-

they had begun to implement the Unreal ID nonsense as some sort of terrorist nonsense- and could then conveniently use it as an excuse for The Gang to make war on your neighborhood tranny godess. So even though I'd grown up in the area, graduated from college there, substiutute taught for a year there in 2000, and had the same social security number since I was 16- They all knew me.

I'd CHANGED my name when one could years and years and years ago without hassle and even in court at one point- Had two still valid licences according to the computers at least.

So it was the HASSLIN HOOSIERS at their Mean Red Meanest.

Enter seven feet of water, literally, into the house I had been renovating for the three years I had been there, (Not Global Warming flooding! NOT! NOT! NOT!) and I ended up in Florida with a drivers license ready to expire and another legal name change in court required and pending. I realized I could be cycling a lot more to get where I wanted, but in my mid-50's and having some health problems, knew I'd have to pace myself a bit. I still try to peddle as much as I can without getting too stiff or tense- I'm suffering froim hypertension already.

At one point I saw something about a bicycle motor on the net, and did some searching and ended up at Spooky Tooth and ordering a kit from Bike Berry. It's been perfect here- I can ride the motor bike about 90 percent of the time if I choose, or unless I want to haul bigger stuff. I've saved all kinds of gas at a time when my funds were very tight, and had fun doing it.

Me and the '67 Peugeot next to the St. John's river in Jacksonville last month.

We have a motor powerd sit down race scooter thats alotnof fun but when i figuRed out it was very illegal i garged it. While researching the laws on the scooter i came across the ht motors but never bought one. Fast forward a year my friend at school asked me if i would put it together for him if he got one so i decided to take the plunge with him. We ordered that week and there both running great and ive never looked back.

I lived in North Dakota at the time (Summer of 2006) and after attempting to ride my bike to work and back a few times (25-26 miles both ways) often with high winds, I decided my high-mileage knees needed some help.

Been motorized bicycle riding ever since!

Saw a few Whizzers thoguht about buying one. Being anal as I am I determined I would rather build one and did. But actually starting one was becasue I am too injured to continue in my feild and now that I am doing less then I am used to I was going crazy. Doctor recommended a hobby and al lthings fell into place...

It all began for me because of an interest in electric hub motors. I absolutely adore the site instructables.com. There they have many folks interested in powering bicycle by alternative methods (electric, gas, even steam!!!). Everyone should check on the 48v flat tracker build, its pretty incredible. Appearantly it goes up 45mph!!! Anyway, i was interested for a long time in building a hub motor from scratch. After a lot of research i realized this was WAY over my head since i knew next to nothing about our good friend the internal combustion motor, which i found to be a little more straight forward than the complex math involved in electronic power. I thought small 2 stroke engines would be a great place to start my edu-ma-cation. After buying a crappy china girl, i found i was terribly right! You learn a ton when the thing your working on breaks down all the time. But Its been a love affair ever since. The idea of getting so much power, speed, and fuel usage out of a bicycle is just plain awesome. The idea of how much money you could save on an electric bike is what first intrigued me. But the technology for it just isnt quite accessible at my price range at this stage of the game. However, gas power engines are. And wouldn't ya know it, they're fun too!

Motor assisted bicycles take what i believe to be two of our greatest inventions as people and smash them together into a smorgisborg of efficiency and fun. I hope to ride for many years to come!

$4.75 a gallon in 2010, a six mile commute where my engine seldom got up to temp in winter and ony did so half-way there in summer... tripped across Five Flags in Florida, they sold me a "Flying Horse" China Tramp kit which I promptly bolted onto a WalMart Cranbrook. At first, everybody figured I'd gone off the deep end. Then they saw how reliable it is if you don't abuse and do the maitanance and then they started trying it out. One day during surgery, I commented that I can purchase six motor kits for below wholesale ifI buy them all at once- the anasthesia provider asked how much to build six bikes total- I gave a figure. He wrote a cheque. We've been at it ever since. I designed a hubmount and a brakelight switch, working on a production model lighting system (head,tail,brakes,turn) in 6 volt that trickles off the white wire- very close to having it. I can do protoypes, but they are pricey- trying to create a design that will mass produce well enough to sell. Several ideas, not sure which one to chase down first. Still haven't really turned a profit, but working on it...
there is no 12 step program for this, is there? I guess I'm in it for the ride....
the Old Sgt.

I wanted something lighter and more maneuverable than my old 78 GL1000 Goldwing for just zipping around on short trips to the bank and around the neighborhood.

I was looking for a smaller motorcycle, but everyone around here seems to be on crack, and the prices they're asking for their old fixer-uppers are probably going to support their habit!

So, while I was looking for a small MC, I came across a Craigslist ad for a motorized bicycle kit. I was intrigued, and looked around the web to find out more. I found a kit on ebay for half of what the CL poster wanted, so I bought it.

The rest of the addiction is history!


I still ended up needing a small motorcycle too, so I'm building a mid 60's Honda Trail 90 from the frame up with a Lifan 140cc engine.


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