My first post. I had my first motorized bike when I was too young to drive. It was a Sturmey Archer equipped (3 speed hub) English Bike with a 2 or 3 HP Briggs and Stratton engine bolted to a plate welded into the crotch of the bike. The plate was supported by two tubular supports that ran down to the bikes bottom bracket (What the pedals attach to) the pedals were gone and in place of the pedals was a jack shaft with a small sprocket brazed to the jack shaft on the right side....chain drive ran back to the wheel............but in place of the small gear normally mounted to the rear hub....there was the ring gear that had previously been up front.....don’t recall how it was attached.
The Briggs had a standard centrifugal clutch on it with a belt drive down to a pulley on the left side of the bottom bracket jack shaft----very simple.....garden tiller style throttle lever on the right handle bar.....and......no brakes.....had to drag my feet to stop.
I replaced the handlebars with a 2 foot or so length of straight tubing..... and removed the fenders to give it a bit of a track bike look.
At one point, I needed a new belt and could not find the right size....but sourced one that was a wider width at the local hardware store.....it was so wide that it essentially disabled the centrifugal clutch and made the bike a direct drive machine.......I said..........what the heck,....lets give it a whirl.........I picked it up by the seat, lifting the rear tire off the ground.......ran like heck, and slammed the rear tire down on the ground while adding throttle......the trick was to hang on to it after it fired, run along next to it,.....then.....throw myself up onto the saddle and blast off-----(it did about 40-45 mph)........to stop it....I just shorted out the spark plug with a ground strap........I thought this was all quite bad ass until one afternoon I missed the jump up onto the saddle and the bike,....now running ended up on top of me when I fell down............YIKES!!!.......so....needless to say.........I was looking for a properly sized belt later that day.
I had standard plumbing pipe coming out of the back of the engine just to the right of the seat post that went to a standard Plumbing "T" that went to short 2" or so lengths out each side to 90 degree elbows that faced straight down.....I screwed more galvanized pipe into the elbows then dressed those up with some nice chrome tubing in a long curved L shape on each side. I slash cut these. This gave me Chrome dual exhausts that exited the engine on each side of the seat post then dropped down about 10" before curving back to the slash cuts..........at Age 13.....I thought it was the bomb (although, that expression did not exist yet).
I was fortunate to grow up in a somewhat rural community in upstate New York....and our home was surrounded by a huge network of farm and ag roads through mile after mile of apple orchards and farmland....most of it hard pack dirt......so endless opportunities for riding my bike and hanging the tail end out on my West Bend Powered racing Kart I had built up.....as long as I made sure the lawn was mowed (3 acres of it,...but I changed the ratios on the belt drive CVT Jacobsen ride mover so it would do about 10-15 MPH....also had to add a chrome exhaust to it,...had to run sheet metal screws into the hard rubber tires as they would turn on the wheels when I would reverse then nail it forward to do a wheelie......
>)
Back to the bike....Other than the 3 speed hub blowing up almost immediately,....it was bullet proof reliable and I was the bad a** kid on the block. That was in 1963 by the way.
Brian
PS. Ive got 3 BMW bikes in the garage a K1200LT, an R1200RT and an R1200GS...............all great bikes....just looking for something light to run to the grocery store etc. Having now spent some time here lurking......I see that a board track racer is in my future.
The Briggs had a standard centrifugal clutch on it with a belt drive down to a pulley on the left side of the bottom bracket jack shaft----very simple.....garden tiller style throttle lever on the right handle bar.....and......no brakes.....had to drag my feet to stop.
I replaced the handlebars with a 2 foot or so length of straight tubing..... and removed the fenders to give it a bit of a track bike look.
At one point, I needed a new belt and could not find the right size....but sourced one that was a wider width at the local hardware store.....it was so wide that it essentially disabled the centrifugal clutch and made the bike a direct drive machine.......I said..........what the heck,....lets give it a whirl.........I picked it up by the seat, lifting the rear tire off the ground.......ran like heck, and slammed the rear tire down on the ground while adding throttle......the trick was to hang on to it after it fired, run along next to it,.....then.....throw myself up onto the saddle and blast off-----(it did about 40-45 mph)........to stop it....I just shorted out the spark plug with a ground strap........I thought this was all quite bad ass until one afternoon I missed the jump up onto the saddle and the bike,....now running ended up on top of me when I fell down............YIKES!!!.......so....needless to say.........I was looking for a properly sized belt later that day.
I had standard plumbing pipe coming out of the back of the engine just to the right of the seat post that went to a standard Plumbing "T" that went to short 2" or so lengths out each side to 90 degree elbows that faced straight down.....I screwed more galvanized pipe into the elbows then dressed those up with some nice chrome tubing in a long curved L shape on each side. I slash cut these. This gave me Chrome dual exhausts that exited the engine on each side of the seat post then dropped down about 10" before curving back to the slash cuts..........at Age 13.....I thought it was the bomb (although, that expression did not exist yet).
I was fortunate to grow up in a somewhat rural community in upstate New York....and our home was surrounded by a huge network of farm and ag roads through mile after mile of apple orchards and farmland....most of it hard pack dirt......so endless opportunities for riding my bike and hanging the tail end out on my West Bend Powered racing Kart I had built up.....as long as I made sure the lawn was mowed (3 acres of it,...but I changed the ratios on the belt drive CVT Jacobsen ride mover so it would do about 10-15 MPH....also had to add a chrome exhaust to it,...had to run sheet metal screws into the hard rubber tires as they would turn on the wheels when I would reverse then nail it forward to do a wheelie......
>)Back to the bike....Other than the 3 speed hub blowing up almost immediately,....it was bullet proof reliable and I was the bad a** kid on the block. That was in 1963 by the way.
Brian
PS. Ive got 3 BMW bikes in the garage a K1200LT, an R1200RT and an R1200GS...............all great bikes....just looking for something light to run to the grocery store etc. Having now spent some time here lurking......I see that a board track racer is in my future.
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