98cc Villiers on a 1945 Sears Roebuck
- Thread starter Harold_B
- Start date
A lot of work was put into it, buyer probably can tell its uniqueness. Building it accounts for a great amount of satisfaction I know! I remember the video you had it out running. I maybe could have solved a way to keep the pedals on my bike, but it got licensed for off road and it worked out. Nice to hear from you!
Thanks. Never know what’s next!
Great thread Harold, thanks for sharing.
Tom
Tom
Thanks Tom.
Glad to here from you, and still a member, and well Yet ?...............Curt
Hey Curtis, thanks. Yes, still a member just not very active or as engaged as I had been. I am well, aside from the stuff that comes with age. Some family members not so much but that’s also something that comes with age. It’s the competing time commitments that make it so the bike builds are getting set aside. I’m glad I’m available for the people that need me and that makes me happy. I’m sure at some point I’ll need to get my hands a little dirty. Maybe something electric?
Great to hear that your still hanging out. Life does have a nasty habit of getting in the way of all great plans.
Battery isn't as inexpensive as China Girls were but as long as the battery is charged you can be riding.
Steve.
Battery isn't as inexpensive as China Girls were but as long as the battery is charged you can be riding.
Steve.
I understand about setting projects aside and it accounts for much of my absence until recently when I took on an electric recumbent tadpole trike project... just the thing for old farts like us. Thanks for your thread.
SB
SB
Seeing familiar faces here is getting the itch going! I have a Pashley Guv’nor that would be pretty neat with electric drive. I have a lot to catch up on As far as technology. Reading is something I can do while caring for my people.
I think Tony would be the guide for electric, and the rest of the guys here Steve, Silverbear, nice project............Curt
Great to hear from you Harold. I really miss your posts and your bike heading down the road kinda' makes me sad. I've built several electrics over the last three years and I really like riding them. Still ride my gas bikes from time to time but mostly the electrics. I encourage you to study up and start an e build.
I really hope you chime in often as your posts are always quite interesting. You made my morning seeing your posts.
Rick C.
I really hope you chime in often as your posts are always quite interesting. You made my morning seeing your posts.
Rick C.
Must be spring fever coming on early, LOL I to am doing a build 2 stroke, getting stuff together. But not much action till spring, motor is built and will be here ( China girl ) soon. I to have been laying back and snooping, old builds. It is a little saddening to see it go down the road, must do what we must do. Sure glad to see a spark coming to all fire on. Marry Christmas .........Curt
Actually the guvnor is kinda what brought me into building bikes. I found a 70s steel bicycle and rebuilt it with modern SA hubs. 2 speed kickback coaster rear and 90mm front drum, laced into 700c wheels. I didn’t know what I was doing at all although it turned out looking great. Sold it for double what I put into it, that was nice. It would be nice to build something like that again ten years later.
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Hey buddy glad to hear you sold the bike. It is one unique bike with lots of cool stuff! Great work!
Harold,
You don’t know it, but I have just spent much of the day with you through your thread, starting over at the beginning and revisiting parts of the build I was following and then catching up on all that I missed. Like you, I also experienced time away from making things while interrupted by life and changing circumstances. What an accomplishment. Such a beautiful, well thought out build. I liked it already when it was just a kind of rough looking Villiars engine I was familiar with from my own gas bikes. Love that engine.
Medical issues including two heart attacks and two rounds of cancer along with finding a partner to share my life, moving from one state to another and then back again shifted focus away from making things with my hands. I didn’t get rid of my builds and have several in the basement kind of as works of art or something like that. I spent a lot of time staring at them as they came to life and now I can look at them again with renewed appreciation. None however approach your bike. You have more patience and skill than me, but it isn’t a competition to see who makes the fastest or the most authentic or any of that. We are part of a brotherhood (and sisterhood as I think of our friend in Australia) who like to make things with our hands and love bikes in one form or another. Like you and Rick and any number of us I used to fool around with restoring vehicles. In my case vintage pickup trucks and antique sports cars. Great fun to resurrect something and ride off into the sunset, but also expensive and time consuming. Gas bikes came later in my life and were more affordable. They also took me back to my youth when riding a bicycle was an experience of freedom and I have never tired of feeling the wind in my face. I can be a boy again on a bicycle. Or in my current case, on a recumbent tricycle.
I’ve met some fine people on this forum and made friends I will never have the opportunity to meet in real life. People like you, Harold. I did have the good fortune to meet Steve Nevison (fasteddie) as he was returning from a cross country trip to visit his son on the east coast. We had chatted some on this forum and I suggested he stop by if passing through Minnesota on his way home to British Columbia. And he did. I was in the middle of trying to figure out how to make a sidecar for my dog Aaniimoosh out of a demolished Grumman canoe and was in the middle of cutting it apart, and as usual not really having much of a plan. Stare and then start. Stop and stare some more. Stop and go. Steve got interested and took pity on me offering first advice and then rolling up his sleeves and helping. His brief stop by turned into a couple of weeks of his camper parked in my drive out in the forest. The sidecar got made and along the way he became a friend to me and to Aaniimoosh who waited by his camper door every morning for him to waken and dole out dog biscuits. Those were good times and led to a repeat over the next couple of summers, making sparks with the welder, cutting up bike frames and everyday making stuff. I had more ideas than was sensible or practical, but Steve was game and “Summer Camp For Boys Who Never Grew Up” was born. I will forever be grateful for those days in summer camp. So when I go to my basement and stare at old builds and maybe pump up a tire that has lost its air, I think of those days and of the encouragement from forum members who followed our nutty posts. We had a lot of fun and some of the people here were cheering us on, contributing in their own way to the delinquency of elders.
Anyway I wanted to say something about your amazing build and to thank you for sharing it with the rest of us. Wishing you all good things my friend.
SB
You don’t know it, but I have just spent much of the day with you through your thread, starting over at the beginning and revisiting parts of the build I was following and then catching up on all that I missed. Like you, I also experienced time away from making things while interrupted by life and changing circumstances. What an accomplishment. Such a beautiful, well thought out build. I liked it already when it was just a kind of rough looking Villiars engine I was familiar with from my own gas bikes. Love that engine.
Medical issues including two heart attacks and two rounds of cancer along with finding a partner to share my life, moving from one state to another and then back again shifted focus away from making things with my hands. I didn’t get rid of my builds and have several in the basement kind of as works of art or something like that. I spent a lot of time staring at them as they came to life and now I can look at them again with renewed appreciation. None however approach your bike. You have more patience and skill than me, but it isn’t a competition to see who makes the fastest or the most authentic or any of that. We are part of a brotherhood (and sisterhood as I think of our friend in Australia) who like to make things with our hands and love bikes in one form or another. Like you and Rick and any number of us I used to fool around with restoring vehicles. In my case vintage pickup trucks and antique sports cars. Great fun to resurrect something and ride off into the sunset, but also expensive and time consuming. Gas bikes came later in my life and were more affordable. They also took me back to my youth when riding a bicycle was an experience of freedom and I have never tired of feeling the wind in my face. I can be a boy again on a bicycle. Or in my current case, on a recumbent tricycle.
I’ve met some fine people on this forum and made friends I will never have the opportunity to meet in real life. People like you, Harold. I did have the good fortune to meet Steve Nevison (fasteddie) as he was returning from a cross country trip to visit his son on the east coast. We had chatted some on this forum and I suggested he stop by if passing through Minnesota on his way home to British Columbia. And he did. I was in the middle of trying to figure out how to make a sidecar for my dog Aaniimoosh out of a demolished Grumman canoe and was in the middle of cutting it apart, and as usual not really having much of a plan. Stare and then start. Stop and stare some more. Stop and go. Steve got interested and took pity on me offering first advice and then rolling up his sleeves and helping. His brief stop by turned into a couple of weeks of his camper parked in my drive out in the forest. The sidecar got made and along the way he became a friend to me and to Aaniimoosh who waited by his camper door every morning for him to waken and dole out dog biscuits. Those were good times and led to a repeat over the next couple of summers, making sparks with the welder, cutting up bike frames and everyday making stuff. I had more ideas than was sensible or practical, but Steve was game and “Summer Camp For Boys Who Never Grew Up” was born. I will forever be grateful for those days in summer camp. So when I go to my basement and stare at old builds and maybe pump up a tire that has lost its air, I think of those days and of the encouragement from forum members who followed our nutty posts. We had a lot of fun and some of the people here were cheering us on, contributing in their own way to the delinquency of elders.
Anyway I wanted to say something about your amazing build and to thank you for sharing it with the rest of us. Wishing you all good things my friend.
SB
“Summer Camp For Boys Who Never Grew Up”
Oh how I long to have been there as a mouse in the corner.
I hope Harold will give us another well thought and executed build.
Tom
Oh how I long to have been there as a mouse in the corner.
I hope Harold will give us another well thought and executed build.
Tom
Tom, you would have heard the plotting and planning, strategy sessions and endless hours of bike talk from breakfast to bedtime. All of it in great depth. Then you could have been part of the material gathering at the town dump where usually there were more and better taken home than brought there.
Everything from bed rails to boats were salvaged and the competition was stiff. Scrapper mostly but some were looking for supplies to further their projects. Constant inquires about what everyone was looking for and information to where it might be found.
Then the run home discussing just where and for what every treasure might be used. A lot of it was combined with what I'd made here at home over the previous Fall and Spring before I made the run to Bike Camp. Always interesting conversations with the border crossing people as to whether or not I was taking work away from Americans or not. No, made one for myself and one for my friend who is making the same bike. Jig was set up and it was as easy to make two as it was to make one.
We had a canoe sidecar mounted and ready that first meeting and the next year we did some remodelling to be able to remove the side car more easily. A remarkable first summer stop over for two old fellas that never grew up or old.
It was a fun time from 2011 after seeing my son in New Hampshire until 2014 when the bone infection in a replaced knee returned. Race was on to save my leg. As the Infectious Disease doctor said it was the one infection they never wanted to see since it was the worst one and extremely hard to get rid of and some times impossible. The hint was that I won the health lottery. Interesting conversation as to what would happened if it failed. I'd be nicknamed Stumpy at best or the late Fast Eddie at worst.
The third operation and second replacement and it knocked me out of the game. There was a third knee replacement planned but the one that was temporary to kill off the worked so well I was asked if I wanted it done again. No, No and most sincerely No.
Recovery from 2015 to 2020 was hard. Pain never let go and severe arthritis set in.
Ready to go this summer if the plague subsides.
I understand how Harold felt about his build. The constant looking at it as you pass it and for me the plans that time and health never allows for. The new owner will enjoy it and show it off with pride as well he should and perhaps an electric bike build will take its place at Harold's.
Steve.
Everything from bed rails to boats were salvaged and the competition was stiff. Scrapper mostly but some were looking for supplies to further their projects. Constant inquires about what everyone was looking for and information to where it might be found.
Then the run home discussing just where and for what every treasure might be used. A lot of it was combined with what I'd made here at home over the previous Fall and Spring before I made the run to Bike Camp. Always interesting conversations with the border crossing people as to whether or not I was taking work away from Americans or not. No, made one for myself and one for my friend who is making the same bike. Jig was set up and it was as easy to make two as it was to make one.
We had a canoe sidecar mounted and ready that first meeting and the next year we did some remodelling to be able to remove the side car more easily. A remarkable first summer stop over for two old fellas that never grew up or old.
It was a fun time from 2011 after seeing my son in New Hampshire until 2014 when the bone infection in a replaced knee returned. Race was on to save my leg. As the Infectious Disease doctor said it was the one infection they never wanted to see since it was the worst one and extremely hard to get rid of and some times impossible. The hint was that I won the health lottery. Interesting conversation as to what would happened if it failed. I'd be nicknamed Stumpy at best or the late Fast Eddie at worst.
The third operation and second replacement and it knocked me out of the game. There was a third knee replacement planned but the one that was temporary to kill off the worked so well I was asked if I wanted it done again. No, No and most sincerely No.
Recovery from 2015 to 2020 was hard. Pain never let go and severe arthritis set in.
Ready to go this summer if the plague subsides.
I understand how Harold felt about his build. The constant looking at it as you pass it and for me the plans that time and health never allows for. The new owner will enjoy it and show it off with pride as well he should and perhaps an electric bike build will take its place at Harold's.
Steve.
Steve you and Silverbear were two reasons I quit lurking and joined in the forum seven years past. Along the way others were discovered and some have left us, sad to say. At any rate the side/back stories are a big reason I'm still tuned in.
Rick C.
Rick C.
