Simple chain drive

I took a look at a wheel I had left over from my pusher motor and the light bulb lit. Why not put the whole assemble in the front fork. So I did. I'm waiting on a new controller, due in today, to finish it.


An unexpected benefit is that it is easy to mount and dismount.

I probably will pull a battery trailer but you could do this as well if you wanted to go 24v


Of course this bike is so small i'm going to look like a circus bear.

when the controller arrive I spend most of the afternoon figuring out what the devil I had done to my system. When i burned up my last controller I also burned up the throttle. I finally got it all working at 6pm but my battery pack is flat now. I am also drained so it will have to wait until tomorrow. But it does run.

After I run it with a full pack I will see what I need to do to make it better. I think a larger wheel and a smaller sprocket are in order. I am going to try to mount the spare motor from the 2nd rhino drive onto a 20 rear wheel and make it fit into a front fork. If i can do that then I will get a #25 sprocket and weld it to the sprocket of the 20" coaster wheel.

This particular one is the 600 watt the same as the one from all electronics. The mount is one I had from tnc for their bike motors. I did a little modification to make it fit nothing much.

This particular wheel is a front wheel from a kids bike. I bought it because it had a very larger flange around the hub. I was able to bolt the scooter sprocket on it. I'm going to look at doing it with a 20" wheel tomorrow.

It steers a lot better than I expected. All the weight is below the center of gravity on this one. I have a 36 watt controller now. I have a feeling the 24 watt I gave a link to before is at least as good. It migh even be a little better.

I think I have pretty much accomplished most of my Ebike goals.

I built an easy pusher motor.... then probably the best friction drive I have ever seen. ugly sure but it really does perform well. Now this is by far the easiest chain drive I have ever worked with.

I rode the bike with the 16" wheel. It was just okay so I moved the sprocket up to a twenty inch wheel and spent the day trying to get it adjusted. I just don't like it. I will give it a day or two more, but I think it is going to wind up with a rhino drive. They are much simpler and seem to have as good as if not better performance.

I just like that drive I guess.

myocardia said:

I'm glad you said it Deacon, because I was thinking it but not wanting to say it. I'm glad you have your main bike the way you want it now, so you can experiment and still have a ride. I like this particular build, besides the size of the bike, but then I'm a chain drive kind of guy. Would you mind telling us what you didn't like about this one, besides the size?

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To be honest I rode it again and it has possibilities. I set it up with the twenty inch wheel and the 65 tooth sprocket. It has a performance problem. The friction drive set up the same way has some issues as well with throttle. For some reason the throttle will only increase the speed to a certain point then it will stop and is just useless. I think that is a torque problem.

I have decided to get a 80 Tooth sprocket and a different drive wheel and give that a try. I think that on the medium incline the bike just gives up because it is geared wrong. I'll let you know what happens. I know i can always run the friction drive which makes me feel a lot better about messing. with this bike.

I did have to reengineer the front fork. I added some width by adding some shackles for the wheel. That required a little trial and error but it ran pretty good the last time. I had a mountain of small things to correct but it did run better the last time but that no top end on the throttle irritates me. I have decided to see what I can do about that. I don't like being beaten by machines.

I fooled with this bike a couple of more times then gave up. the reason is that the fork even with adapters just got too wide. I didn't want to run a long chain from a platform on top of the wheel. When I put all that motor mount hardware on the side of the axle it widened the fork requirement by at least an inch and all of it on one side. Just too much hassle to deal with.

Especially since the performance was not much, if any, better than my rhino friction drive bikes.

Either the hub motor or the trike would be a steal at that price so both together is really a deal, plus I bet he would take a buck and a half.