Ridin' DIY

[deacon]

result of todays test rides....

The front mount bike with the sandpaper covered drive wheels performed the absolute best of all the bikes so far. There was no pedaling even on the bike killer hill...

The chainsaw with the jb/salt wheel did better but not as good as the sandpaper,,, I had to pedal on most of big the hills to keep the speed up.

I think that in the end I might wind up with one bike to do the heavy lifting and one to ride for fun and exercise... The fun bike can have a little pedaling without it being a problem but the heavy lifting bike I need to run errands with. It is one thing to run around the hood on a bike that I have to work with and another to go out in traffic and stumble around.

It may rain for a few days so lots of things will have plenty of time to cure before they get tested. That might be a good thing as well.

 

[Egor]

Good to hear that you like the sandpaper, Did you put the slot in the roller to start in? What are you using to hold the paper on! I just used contact cement. I used a fairly coarse paper, actually it is fabric. I think it needs to be a lot finer for mine, it was hard on the tires, it was a sanding belt I had. Have fun, Dave

PS: I started the engine up and ran a bar of steel to take the tooth out of the grit, still a little coarse. OH it makes a good grinder!
PSS: Have you tried any of the 4 stroke weed eater motors, I have a new one but I don't want to wreck it. I still wack with it

 

[deacon]

No on the four stroke weed whacker but I expect in a year or two they will be on the secondary market. Right now they are a bit pricey.

Good idea on the sandpaper. No I just laid it on the wheel and held it in place with some old inner tube strips. I used gorilla glue my neighbor, who got me the sandpaper, suggested it. He is he maintenance engineer for a furniture company. Glad to know yours is a regular sanding belt his is a commercial belt huge. Yes it wrecked a couple of tires. I'm going to pick up a fine grit at the home depot this weekend. I want to thank your for another idea.. I have a nice finishing file. I just went over the medium grit wheels I made last night with it. Knocked the grit down a lot that might help a bit. Until I can get a fine belt.

I can certainly see where it would make a great grinder but I would have to take the engine off the bike lol. I wonder how emery paper would hold up on one of these things. I was thinking that all day yesterday

 

[deacon]

Somebody probably needs to produce this 31cc design already bolted together and ready to stick on a bike and ride away. They could call it Bike Bug II lol. Free spirit on steroids

 

[Egor]

Deacon I can tell you that the 4 stroke is not very durable. I think if you keep good fresh oil in the thing it would last a long time, but I suspect that is going to be the thing that takes them out of service. I put straight Prolong oil in the thing and it is doing OK but I noticed that the store I got it from is not selling them any more. The little bottle of oil that it comes with is junk, I would never use it. It sounds a lot nicer than the 2's, I hope you find one it would be fun to hear what you think. Have fun, Dave

PS: I have some Gorilla glue that stuff is tenacious, good choice

 

[deacon]

If I run across a four stroke I will pick it up, go knows I am a whore. I have no loyalty at all. I'll build with anything.

My neighbor who is a maintenance engineer told me about the glue. It works better than anything I have used so far, but the trick with it is to not overlap the ends, but to butt them up pretty good. I tried gluing down stips but it pulled them right off.

The weather turned crappy so I haven't had a chance to run the paper after I filed it down. A storm is off the carolina coast so I probably won't get to ride till tomorrow more likely Sunday.

I want to try the jb and sand on the big chainsaw bike. It has a large diameter spindle but skips before it goes full power. So does the 33 chainsaw but the 33 gets closer to the top. It has the smaller wheel though. The 33 is a 3/4" galvanized pipe. I just covered it with filed down paper.

 

[Egor]

Deacon I don't know if I have asked you this, but have you ever seen a 4 Stroke that takes a oil Mix. They are only in high end whackers but are built to last forever. The way it works is that there is no oil in the crankcase, the intake is connected to the crankcase so all the fuel has to go there to get to the valves (so oils the parts). The advantage is that the valves control the flow so no fuel is wasted out an open port. It doubles the mileage, and another thing that is cool is that the piston on the down stroke acts like a super charger pushing the charge to the intake valve. We had one of them at work but I don't know what happened to it, got legs! If I see something like it on Ebay I will let you know, I would like to play with one also, no smoke and not much smell. Have fun, Dave

 

[deacon]

To be honest I never heard of such a thing.

For me the pure beauty of the 2 stroke is the simplicity of it. The number of moving parts is minimal. The beauty of the weedeater type engine for bikes is the fact there are so darn many of them out there. They truly are disposable engines. Abuse them all you want, heck 30 buck or so on ebay and you are riding again.

Even my too big chainsaw was only 35 bucks. For a man who gets off on the building of the bike, not the riding, an engine that lasts forever is a nightmare lol. However I would love love to hang one on just to prove that I could.

I wish I had built these alternate engine bikes sooner. I'm thinking of selling my china bike but it's the wrong time of year. If I keep it, I'm going to drain the gasoline from it. I will probabl run some carb cleaner through it for the winter storage. I expect that I will run the weed whacker with your sanding wheel on it.

I found that home depot sells the 100 grit floor sanding belt for 7 bucks. That will make about twenty drive wheels.

I also found that hey sell 1/2 cubic foot of paving sand for $4. that should be enough to make about a hundred jb weld/sand wheels.

You know I will eventually coat the drive with gorilla glue then apply wet sand to it. Now that should be an interesting drive wheel.

The up side to all this is that I have seen the friction drive with a 31cc engine pull the bike killer wheel and do it under power not pedal. I know that it can be a great little engine.

The slightly larger chainsaw bike, I have trouble keeping a surface on the drive wheel. It is running the smaller 3/4 inch pipe so I glued up a sandpaper wheel for it yesterday. It had had a lot of time to cure. If I can test it over this weekend I should know something about rear engines.

So far I the front wheel drive might be ugly as heck but it pulls better than any of the rear wheels ones even with bigger engines.

I think I'm going to put a 20" front wheel on the smaller of the chainsaw bikes. Made it a stretch looking bike. Heck I have about five 20" front wheels laying around.

 

[deacon]

I bought the sand for the jbweld sand drive from the craft store. First of all I had no way to store 50lbs of play sand. I would have wound up with a jar full and washing the rest away. it is also a lot more coarse.

The craft sand was $2 for a peanut butter jar full. More than enough for the rest of my bike building life. An probably my grandson's as well. I was tempted to buy a 20lb bag of swimming pool filter sand, but I had no need for that much either. If there were more of us using friction drive I would have just bought the filter sand and parsed out the rest. Oh well.

 

[Egor]

we had some sand for our cabinet blaster, but it was not sand, it was some kind of Oxide. The trouble with sand is that it is not very strong it turns to dust too easy, this stuff was as tough as "nails". I think you could ask at a parts store, they might sell it for a spark plug cleaner in small quantities. The latter is just a small device to put a plug in and hook air line in and push a button and blasts the plug clean. Just a thought for a durable medium. I am curious to hear about the gorilla and the sand. Do you get one side wet to kick it off? Have fun, Dave

 

[deacon]

Yes so far I have wet the drive wheel and used the glue on the back of the sandpaper. It seems to hold really well.

I'm going to have to undo all the work I did today. Mostly I switched wheels and tires all day. I don't like how any of turned out. The joy of home built, I can undo it and start over.

I had two flat tires on the same bike. One tire was worn through and I didn't notice. The other had a very neat round hole that was so perfect it looked like it was done with a paper hole punch. About the same size to. I have no idea what caused that.

 

[comfortableshoes]

I'm finally feeling back to my usual self today- no more dayquil high, it's good top breath. With the darn rain I spent the day putting on a new tire and flipping the tire on the Madwagon. I'll get a pic tomorrow of the uneven wear. I'd like to find a solution to that. I suspect though I'll spend the time riding rather than inspecting..

The bell tire looks good too, I put that on my schwinn MTBike, and I think it's going to make a fsat friction drive, it was a fast little bike back when I was lighter and in shape, and I suspect it will cruise at higher speeds than the madwagon. the frame is light and components tough. A new set of handle bars will make it a better ride, but the guy never got back to me from Clist.

I took the mount from the OCC Chopper and put it on the Schwinn and I think that with a little tweaking it will be good. I think I'm going to mount the craftsman on that once I get it back up and running. I've been scavenging parts off it for other things...

The LiveFastMotors kits still hast not arrived yet.

 

[deacon]

I have been having trouble with my clutch rod systems. I'm thinking I might go with a heavy duty clutch cable system like shoes. Just lift the engine and lock the hinge to start and warm it up, then use the cable to lift it for a clutch action. I do like the safety of the rod for use when the cable gets slack or if it broke but it's a pain since it keeps bending. It is going to be either a better rod, or a cable not sure which.

 

[comfortableshoes]

Deacon to get some of the stretch out of the cables, put one end in a vice and a vice grip on the other end and give it a good 3 or 4 pulls. And I mean really pull on it. That should take a lot of the stretch out of it. I found that after 10 miles or so of riding that most of the stretch was out of my cables. also figuring out where to put the cable stop was critical to making it work.

 

[deacon]

Before I go full cable, I think I am going to try a square rod. I think I can get some at home depot and cut it to size. I think it would be stronger than the round conduit I'm using now. All I need is for it not to bend when I pull down on it. i think the square will be stronger. The conduit and the fence stretcher bar both bend. Those chainsaw engines are heavy to lift.

I think the square tube will do it. That is really all I need to make the lever work. I like the security to be able to lift it a second way. I have decided also that I need to reattach the small chainsaw motor. I have it attached with a 1/4 bolt now as a pivot. I am going to pull it off and put a hinge under it. That bolt just doesn't make me feel confident.

I'm telling you guys all in all the front mount 31cc weed whacker is the way to go. All this other stuff is just a pain but of course I love the tinker of it all.

Oh yeah, on my lever the brake cable pulls it down while I'm riding. I drill a small hole in the lever and run the cable through it and put an adjustable stop on the cable so that I can adjust for cable stretch.

 

[comfortableshoes]

What about some of that channel for mounting shelves? It comes in a variety of sizes, has a lot of slots and areas to attach nuts and bolts and its pretty strong, and cheap. I think even some u channel aluminum would be sturdy enough to lift an engine.

 

[deacon]

I bought 2 pieces of box channel 36" long for 16 bucks and change. At that price it better last forever.

 

[comfortableshoes]

I was thinking about the round shaft that comes with the weed whackers. I had used that for my original mount. It never bent but I had taken the plastic sheath for the flexible shaft and cut that to size. I wonder if you crimped the end and drilled holes for attachment then shoved in a trimmed piece of the sheath if that would stop it from bending? just an idea.

 

[deacon]

The shaft is what I used for my first clutch lever and it held up a long time but finally bent. I think it is my fault that they get bent. What happens is that they need to be locked up to a certain height to get the motor to start. If it drags at all it won't start easily or at all. So in an effort to get them up high enough I probably force the rod past the point where the engine stops.

I'm going to have to watch out for that.

 

[comfortableshoes]

I just got back from a ride. I'd let my bike sit for a week due to the weather and a darn head cold. Well I got on it, she started right up but right away I can tell something isn't quite right,it's got that sound likewhen I was at the bottom of my tank of gas- letting it sit for a week seems like it lets the oil settle out! After the engine warmed up there was no more bogging down and she ran just fine but the first 2 or 3 minutes were nerve wracking.

When I switched the tire around I pumped it up to a full 45psi, I'd been running it at 35psi or so. The increase in pressure made a nice increase in speed, I assume from an increase in tension with the drive wheel. I had a fast little ride tonight, it was good. The gray weather has gotten me down- sort of an impending doom of what is to come with the winter months here.