New and confused

I think they are all chinese. The gears on the bike make no difference unless you get the shift kit which costs as much as the engine itself. I have mine on a mountain bike because I didn't like the retro look. Also I wanted 29" wheels. All of these motors require some tinkering but that has been the fun. trying to get the most out of them. I'm more and more surprised each day. You'll get hooked fast if you have any mechanical ability at all.

You could surely buy your parts individually but I wouldn't do it until you have put at least one kit together first. It's fun as **** I have to tell ya.

http://www.kevingraham.info/bike/bike1024.jpg

My own advice: DO start witha 2 Cycle China Girl- sounds like you have read some snooty nonsense. It is the basics- you can change things around from there- my own first build took almost three years to reach it's present incarnatation.

The china girls fit between the cranks without changing them- 4 strokers are wider - you may opt for one with experience- after 3 1/2 years I still have two 2 stroke builds

A cruiser DOES give you better clerarnces- for the motor chain and the frame- I like to forego the chain tensioner, and a cruiser may be the only kind of fframe you can do that. The longer top bar gets the tank forward and out of the way for any normal peddaling- I do quite a bit with the motor shut off.

I think a freewheel hub is easiest to mount the motor sprocket on- some are "grooved" and have a stop, as if they are made for that- notable EXCEPTION- schwinn, but sproket hole still fits OVER the hub with no modification. Still then, you have to set up two handbrakes, unless it's already built with multi-speeds- Still you can use any freewheel wheel or hub, and use just a single gear freewheel. One of my builds is like that, the other was a 7 speed cruiser (Micargi) with a multi-freewheel

good luck

2 Stroke China girl is the way to go for your first build,it takes a few short rides to get the bugs worked out. Read the forum , as far as speed goes some where around 30 but it is what it is! bike with a motor on it,not a motorcycle , sure beats peddling

I built mine in 2011. It gave me ****. So much so I actually had to take a break from it because I was almost to the point of scraping it. HOWEVER! Now that I've got it running right and it has not broken anything, I love this thing. So much power and so fun.


My next build, if I were to do one, would be on a mountain bike. I wouldn't have to shell out more money for brakes and what not like I did on my cruiser. The rear sprockets will also fit on a mountain bike, I spent about 3 hours trying to hone out my sprocket to fit on the coaster hub.

The biggest advantage of using a mountain bike over a cruiser, in my opinion, is that the mountain bike comes with front and rear brakes and the cruiser usually will not. For a vehicle going near 30mph, you will want more than coaster brakes. That said, all my motor bikes have been built on cruiser frames, I just added brakes where needed.

The first "add on" and the only one I strongly recommend for a new builder is a direct to hub drive system for the sprocket on the rear tire. When you pick out a bike and get the kit, invest another $50 or so in a rear sprocket adapter and gear and throw out the "rag joint" sprocket that comes with the kit. Yes, the rag joint DOES work and many people have used them successfully. But this is the weakest link in the original kits (again, my opinion) since they drive through the spokes. Most of my motorbikes started with the rag joint, all of them have been converted to a direct to hub sprocket system of some sort.

Beyond that though, the basic kit is a good starting point. Go with that first and only modify things as you feel the need. But fair warning...it seems like most of us DO feel the need, if only because it adds to the fun of tinkering with these things. When you do get to the point where you want to hop up your kit, this forum has many threads on how to do that.

Grand Island huh? I'm between Hastings and Minden. In my opinion, a 2-stroke China Girl would be about the best beginner course in MB there is. I think that doing a quality install is probably more important than where you get the kit.