I have been wanting to motorize my bike for a long time. My parents never let me have any kind of motor cycle or
quad when I was a kid so it's no wonder I did this project as an adult. I got this brand new Huffy cruiser from Walmart for $75. When I bought the bike I never had any plans for motorizing it. I was just in a hurry and I thought it looked good. It's really surprising the number of complements I got on this bike riding it around town before I motorized it. In a way I kind of feel like I ruined it by putting a motor on in, nevertheless, I do believe that this particular Walmart huffy was destined to be a motorized bike.
I ordered a kit from an Ebayer with a somewhat decent reputation, the best reputation I could find for a kit seller still was a bit low for my standards. The kit turned out to be really good. They provided an attachment for drilling through the frame to mount the motor on a cruiser and everything, even though I was too thick headed to use it at first, I'll get to this mishap later. My kit didn't come with that little electrical box that steps up the voltage to ignite the spark plug.
I think the most important thing I learned during this build is a can do attitude. Whenever I would get
to a really hard problem and there were many: the motor fell off, the chain cut part of the frame, riding with no brakes
for a while, the chain came off, the pedal chain got cut too short, the motor chain got cut too short, I pounded the heck out my frame to try to mount the motor, I had to bend the back part of the frame to get a freewheel wheel on, I put the motor sprocket on backwards with bolts sticking out the wrong way. I did a lot of things wrong and out of haste because I was so excited.
I kind of felt like a chimpanzee trying to assemble this monstrosity. I mean the first tool I used was a hammer when I decided that it would be best to pound the frame into a shape that would fit the bottom motor mount. Needless to say this procedure didn't work out very well, but I found out how strong my frame actually is. I kind of Jerry Rigged the bottom engine mount with everything I could find except duct tape, mind you, and the engine came off in mid ride. One of the engine bolts snapped because of the lame way I mounted it.
Eventually I did use the supplied drill through adapter, though I still only have one engine bolt holding the bottom mount on through a severeyly pounded frame :-\ It hold fine, for now... JB weld maybe ???
I ended up having to purchase new chains. Through a series of mishaps and faulty plans I ended up shortening the big fat chain that came with my kit to an unusable length. I thought I would mount the big fat chain to a fixie flip flop wheel to increase top speeds, but I never obtained the fixed gear flip flop wheel. I shortened and installed the original huffy chain on the motor side to have better engine alignment and not tire and frame rub. But then I ended up cutting that chain too short as well.
So I had to go to the store and buy 3 more bicycle chains and daisy chain them together into 2 usable chains for my motorized bicycle because the chains are made to short for my cruiser. I pounded and otherwise bent and ruined the original coaster brake wheel (don't ask me why) that came with my Huffy. I got luck, a stroke of fate? and purchased a ruined bike frame at a flea market that included 2 hand brakes a n d a perfect back wheel with free wheel. Yay! I finally installed the new chains, the used brakes, and wheel, Viola, I have a killer motorized bicycle, albeit, my frame is bent and cut in some god aweful ways, but it seems structurally sound for now. I mounted a head light and a tail light and cruise around. I finally got around to mounting the engine kill wires.
Sorry for being such a bad example as a builder, but if I can do this anybody can! I love my bike.
quad when I was a kid so it's no wonder I did this project as an adult. I got this brand new Huffy cruiser from Walmart for $75. When I bought the bike I never had any plans for motorizing it. I was just in a hurry and I thought it looked good. It's really surprising the number of complements I got on this bike riding it around town before I motorized it. In a way I kind of feel like I ruined it by putting a motor on in, nevertheless, I do believe that this particular Walmart huffy was destined to be a motorized bike.
I ordered a kit from an Ebayer with a somewhat decent reputation, the best reputation I could find for a kit seller still was a bit low for my standards. The kit turned out to be really good. They provided an attachment for drilling through the frame to mount the motor on a cruiser and everything, even though I was too thick headed to use it at first, I'll get to this mishap later. My kit didn't come with that little electrical box that steps up the voltage to ignite the spark plug.
I think the most important thing I learned during this build is a can do attitude. Whenever I would get
to a really hard problem and there were many: the motor fell off, the chain cut part of the frame, riding with no brakes
for a while, the chain came off, the pedal chain got cut too short, the motor chain got cut too short, I pounded the heck out my frame to try to mount the motor, I had to bend the back part of the frame to get a freewheel wheel on, I put the motor sprocket on backwards with bolts sticking out the wrong way. I did a lot of things wrong and out of haste because I was so excited.
I kind of felt like a chimpanzee trying to assemble this monstrosity. I mean the first tool I used was a hammer when I decided that it would be best to pound the frame into a shape that would fit the bottom motor mount. Needless to say this procedure didn't work out very well, but I found out how strong my frame actually is. I kind of Jerry Rigged the bottom engine mount with everything I could find except duct tape, mind you, and the engine came off in mid ride. One of the engine bolts snapped because of the lame way I mounted it.
Eventually I did use the supplied drill through adapter, though I still only have one engine bolt holding the bottom mount on through a severeyly pounded frame :-\ It hold fine, for now... JB weld maybe ???
I ended up having to purchase new chains. Through a series of mishaps and faulty plans I ended up shortening the big fat chain that came with my kit to an unusable length. I thought I would mount the big fat chain to a fixie flip flop wheel to increase top speeds, but I never obtained the fixed gear flip flop wheel. I shortened and installed the original huffy chain on the motor side to have better engine alignment and not tire and frame rub. But then I ended up cutting that chain too short as well.
So I had to go to the store and buy 3 more bicycle chains and daisy chain them together into 2 usable chains for my motorized bicycle because the chains are made to short for my cruiser. I pounded and otherwise bent and ruined the original coaster brake wheel (don't ask me why) that came with my Huffy. I got luck, a stroke of fate? and purchased a ruined bike frame at a flea market that included 2 hand brakes a n d a perfect back wheel with free wheel. Yay! I finally installed the new chains, the used brakes, and wheel, Viola, I have a killer motorized bicycle, albeit, my frame is bent and cut in some god aweful ways, but it seems structurally sound for now. I mounted a head light and a tail light and cruise around. I finally got around to mounting the engine kill wires.
Sorry for being such a bad example as a builder, but if I can do this anybody can! I love my bike.
