SchwinnWacker first build, more to come

I could wait no longer and I happened upon a free weed wacker on craigslist so... I decided to make a friction drive.

The main goal of this build- cheap, build it out of as much stuff I had around the garage as possible. I've sunk very little cash into this but see how I could.

The engine had very little wrong with it, just needed a new gas line, fixed that quick and easy.

I had tried to make the mounts out of the steel from a broken box fan... Which I think would work if my bike were bigger and I tried a different sort of mount. Anyway. I had plenty of 1/4 all-thread the tubing from the weed wacker and some 1/8th aluminum all left over from other projects.

I bent and shaped a mounting bracket from the aluminum and used the all thread inside the wacker tube to support the all thread and maintain a little stiffness. all in all it works pretty well. It can't haul my fat butt from a standstill but if I get it up to speed it will accelerate, and keep me going at a good clip. I put the speedo on it today and made a mount for a video camera with the last of the wacker tube.

I'll be looking into getting some slick tires for it and a registration.

pics:

It's mounted on a 1996 schwinn S95.6 a sweet ride I've spent hundreds of hours on. I call it the ScwinnWacker now.. I'm looking for another bike to mount this set up on, I'm not too found of the possible damage that the vibrations could do to my precious bike.



Here you can see the old craftsman weedwacker engine on the side of this thing. The mount isn't that visible, but you can see some of it.

It if ever stops raining here I'll get more pictures.

It looks good to me.... Has to be the most inventive mount I have seen lately.

I went this direction because I couldn't get the housing off the clutch. That *^&^%%^$ plastic just won't budge. My plan was to not reinvent the wheel and make a pretty typical set up. but that all went out the window when I tried to get that clutch out and I was worried about damaging it.. I may cut it out and rework it so it's more typical... We'll see how this works first. It feels a lot more sturdy than it looks if you can believe that.

It looks pretty sturdy to me. If it isn't try adding corner braces.

what does it do to the balance?

it throws it off a little bit. Oddly enough it's not as bad as I expected. I'm not sure if it's not as bad because it's such a small bike- 16 inch frame (more like a 15 due to angle) or if it's just that I'm so heavy It's not even noticeable when not pedaling and the motor is driving.

comfortableshoes said:

I went this direction because I couldn't get the housing off the clutch. That *^&^%%^$ plastic just won't budge. My plan was to not reinvent the wheel and make a pretty typical set up. but that all went out the window when I tried to get that clutch out and I was worried about damaging it.. I may cut it out and rework it so it's more typical... We'll see how this works first. It feels a lot more sturdy than it looks if you can believe that.

Click to expand...

Down inside my clutch housing was a torque head bolt, accessible through the square hole in the end of the housing, holding it to the crankshaft. Once thats loosened (it cannot be removed, the head is too big for the square hole) the housing comes off exposing the centrifugal weights.

I guess I should specify- I was able to get the housing and the clutch bell off, able to see the weights etc, but the plastic housing that holds the bell and shaft won't separate. I'm assuming it's something like the other end of the shaft where it had a non removable sealed bearing and to get that out I had to cut the shaft.

As is it's runs just fine. I'm going to rework one of the brackets but so far so good.

that bike reminds me of an old Kona I used to have I like that style- nice rear mount but not very high on friction drives