gobigkahuna
New Member
Small update: I got the caliper brakes from DansComp.com (great company to deal with btw) and installed the front brake last night. Would have been a 5 minute plug and play job except that the levers are for a 7/8" diam handlebar and mine is 1"... sooo... I ended up spending a couple hours hand filing the lever mount so it would fit. As you can see, I'll need to repaint the black base as the original paint got scuffed up pretty badly.
The good news is that the brakes seem to work pretty well. They squeak pretty bad, but that's because of the powder coating on the rim. I plan on roughing up the braking surface (see last photo) to help improve braking and reduce the squeaking.
The less than good news is that last night I realized that one of my spokes has an awful bend in it. If you look at the bottom of the front wheel in my first post you'll see that one of the spokes has a nasty bend. Can't believe I didn't notice it before. Had to be something that happened in transit as I haven't done anything with the bike that would cause that (and when I took that photo I had only just finished assembling the bike). In any event I need to pause working on the bike until I find out what Kent International (the manufacturer) wants to do about it. If worst comes to worst, I'll just replace the spoke myself.
As for the future, while I finish installing the brakes I intend on ordering my motor and drive. After many (many!) hours of homework and research I've decided to install the best motor I can afford and a rear wheel friction drive. I've read too many horror stories about broken this and that associated with chain drives and frame mounted engines and I really can't afford to do this more than once. At present, the answer appears to be Dax's competition 47cc 2 stroke and his friction drive kit.
The good news is that the brakes seem to work pretty well. They squeak pretty bad, but that's because of the powder coating on the rim. I plan on roughing up the braking surface (see last photo) to help improve braking and reduce the squeaking.
The less than good news is that last night I realized that one of my spokes has an awful bend in it. If you look at the bottom of the front wheel in my first post you'll see that one of the spokes has a nasty bend. Can't believe I didn't notice it before. Had to be something that happened in transit as I haven't done anything with the bike that would cause that (and when I took that photo I had only just finished assembling the bike). In any event I need to pause working on the bike until I find out what Kent International (the manufacturer) wants to do about it. If worst comes to worst, I'll just replace the spoke myself.
As for the future, while I finish installing the brakes I intend on ordering my motor and drive. After many (many!) hours of homework and research I've decided to install the best motor I can afford and a rear wheel friction drive. I've read too many horror stories about broken this and that associated with chain drives and frame mounted engines and I really can't afford to do this more than once. At present, the answer appears to be Dax's competition 47cc 2 stroke and his friction drive kit.
I looked at the Honda clone, and it weighs 15 lbs without a fuel tank or clutch. I looked at the Robin 33.5cc engine, but I'm beginning to think it won't have enough power to pull my 240 lbs up hills (it's pretty flat here, but we do have one hill and that's the reason for the motor). So it's down to either the DAX souped up mini bike motor or an underpowered Japanese motor... decisions, decisions...
