Dennis the Lifan's make about 7 & 3/4 hp and are pretty smooth running. I had issues with the auto, we were pretty rough with them to be fair, but the 4 speed manual held up much better to the abuse...this was in off road carts driven by teenage kids, more weight & I'd hazard a guess here; more bad behavior than you would ever subject a moto bicycle to.Thanks Rick for the reply and I am wondering if I have the room in that extended stock frame for a Lifan? That would be
a concern. We are getting a couple of inches of snow this AM and the fellas with the bean fields might be in trouble if
the weather goes into a deep freeze. The corn can wait and can be combined with several inches of snow on the
ground.
I've had less problems with the 212 engine and bike versus the 49cc on the other bike. Granted, the 49cc has to work
harder than the 212 since the 212 just loafs along on the road. Need to be living in a area of the Country where a
person can ride year round in good weather. I need to look up the size specs on the different Lifan engines and
decide if a semi automatic versus a manual transmission would also be the choice if I decide to change over.
Keep warm over there...
Dennis
They are long motors, but this keeps the bikes center of gravity quite low when mounted in a proper motor cradle. I'd think a major frame stretch would be necessary for most frames. I have seen several nice bike builds with duplex tubes used to replace the single down tube and the engine jug going through these two support tubes. The engine base plate fabricated to connect the twin down tubes to the bikes bottom bracket, but a simple stretch of the frame is easy with this engine because there is no need to change frame height to clear a big vertical motor. All the tubes lines remain the same, if you want.
The Predator is a good motor & CVT a good transmission device, it all depends on what you want. I'm just filling in some blanks for you to consider.
Rick C.