It lives!!

I just took my china girl out for its maiden voyage, which just so happens to be my first time on a motorized bicycle. We made it out of the Virgin Islands out into deep ocean and back, woohoo! Now we are both devirginized.

For this first build I put the 4 stroke 4G onto a 29 in Schwinn beach cruiser doing all the stuff Bikeberry suggested in their construction video, rode her over to the gas station, and voila! She fired right up and took me home.

There are two minor problems that need address:

1.) The spark arrestor switch does not seem to work. This is the Huangshi motor, and it only has one black wire to a red arrestor switch on the motor... I assumed that putting the switch in series to the arrestor wiring setup would work, but it didn't. Not sure how to wire this thing...

2.) After driving it around for a bit, the motor pulled the tire down from its rear station and loosened both chains. I thought I put the nuts on pretty tight, so not sure if its just the torque pulling the tire down or if I need to tighten it even more....

Any suggestions are welcome. Keep the rubber on the road!

Oh, and I'm currently living in North Carolina, after having lived in Texas, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia (in that order). So I can't really say I'm "from" any place in particular, or maybe just that I'm from the US. My dad was a civil servant working for the Air Force, so we moved quite a bit, I was in the Navy for the Gulf War in 92 (hence CA and HI), and after that I've been like a migrant worker after getting my chemistry degree, moving from job to job, city to city as companies I worked for moved overseas and laid everyone off.... wahh f*in wahh, as they say in the Navy. But when things go bad like that, just hang in there... eventually everything will come round right....

I ONLY ride motorcycles, and haven't owned a car in 9 years. My current motorcycle is a 2006 Yamaha Vmax sport cruiser, which I love very much. It's like a Harley Sportster on steroids.... I've put 41k miles on it in the past 5 years, and it runs like it did the first day I got it... have to love those Japanese engines....

I'm not sure what appealed to me about motor bicycling, except maybe "two wheels gooood, four wheels baaaad..." I just love having free space around me and the wind in my hair (AZ had no helmet laws for motorcyclists)... since there is a helmet law for motorcycles in NC that doesn't apply to motor bicyclists, I kind of like that.

See? There is another reason why motor bicycling is cool... all the benefits of a bicycle (no licensing, insurance, plates, or helmet required) with some of the benefits of a motorcycle (faster than walking transportation).

And I like machines. I've rebuilt a Chevy 454 from the block up back in high school, stuffed it into a sleeper 81 Camaro. I was an A student in automechanics, and when I did drive cars, I did all my own work on them. Part of the reason I don't drive cars now is because of all the computer controlled crap on them that makes it nearly impossible to troubleshoot and repair my own vehicle. Some motorcycles are like that too, but my Vmax has none of that crap.

There, that is me I look forward to hanging with the big dogs here and learning what you all have to share in this cool little hobby