First partial project: S&R motorized road bike

silverbear · Aug 26, 2013

Before anything else, welcome to the forum. This has been a good way for you to get your feet wet in this motor bike craziness. A suggestion for the petcock problem is to use an in line fuel shutoff and at the gas tank use a brass elbow type of fitting so that where you attach the fuel line it is right up against the base of the tank.

Regarding the use of a sidewall generator for lights, it is true that at speed you will burn out incandescent bulbs. But not LED lamps as they are more tolerant of a wider range in voltage. I use an older 6 volt version of the sidewall generator (lots of them used on ebay) and have used flashlight units intended for 3 AAA batteries which would come to an intended 4.5 volts. At speed I'd guess the generator puts out 8 or 9 volts, yet I have never burned out an LED unit. They also use less juice than incandescent.

You're doing well! You might want to reconsider selling your bike while you are building the other one. Do you really want to do without? And you know two bikes really are better than one. You can take a friend riding or have a backup bike for when your primary is out of commission for upgrade or repair. They get lonely all by themselves...
SB

fabgear · Aug 26, 2013

silverbear said:
Before anything else, welcome to the forum. This has been a good way for you to get your feet wet in this motor bike craziness. A suggestion for the petcock problem is to use an in line fuel shutoff and at the gas tank use a brass elbow type of fitting so that where you attach the fuel line it is right up against the base of the tank.

Thanks for the welcome. So far, this one's been very informative and I've enjoyed working on it. I ended up not trusting any of the work they did, so I did completely tear it apart and using informatin found here and someo ther places online, I think I've come up with a nice looking, stable and quick little bike that has a lot of vintage motorcycle vibe. I actually ended up tapping threads into the stem of the tank, and I inserted a 1/8"NPT brass hose barb which worked perfect. Once I changed out the larger fuel filter to the pancake one, that gave me just about all the room I needed.

Regarding the use of a sidewall generator for lights, it is true that at speed you will burn out incandescent bulbs. But not LED lamps as they are more tolerant of a wider range in voltage. I use an older 6 volt version of the sidewall generator (lots of them used on ebay) and have used flashlight units intended for 3 AAA batteries which would come to an intended 4.5 volts. At speed I'd guess the generator puts out 8 or 9 volts, yet I have never burned out an LED unit. They also use less juice than incandescent.

Good info to have... I might need to remember that for my build, although the light I put on this one is a 3-led and it came w batteries, so I'm not sure what it even uses.... however, I'm not riding past dusk now and I don't imagine I'll do much night riding on mine either (especially with a black and chrome bike... mainly want those headlights for the completenes of the look).

You're doing well! You might want to reconsider selling your bike while you are building the other one. Do you really want to do without? And you know two bikes really are better than one. You can take a friend riding or have a backup bike for when your primary is out of commission for upgrade or repair. They get lonely all by themselves...
SB

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words. I'm waiting for my front brake to get here in the next day or two, and then I'll mount that and adjust it and get the back Pletscher rack painted the rest of the way black tonight so that can get installed. Once that's done, I should be ready for final pics.

I DO like this one... dont' get me wrong. For what I paid for it, and what it's now come out to be compared to what it started as (a homely death trap that didn't run.... honestly), if I had the space or places to really ride it I might consider keeping it. However, by selling it, I'll be able to hopefully pay for the build I intended to do and use this one to experiment with in the mean time and enjoy. I am pleased with how it seems to run and pick up and how fun it can be, at a time when I can use fun. We call that GAS in the guitar world, and I've been affected by it for years, but I don't think I can justify 2 "similar" motorized bikes to bop around in the suburbs of Detroit. If I lived in somewhere like NYC or out West.. perhaps.

-Jeff

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First partial project: S&R motorized road bike

silverbear

The Boy Who Never Grew Up

fabgear

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