European lightweight Motorized Bicycles

Bike with Puch Maxi engine

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German NSU with a Rex engine

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A nicely done old English delivery bike and a Chinese 4 stroke

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A more "authentic" version

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Italian. Looking at it, it could be a bit overgeared

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Everybody was either bouncing ideas at each other or copying, or just finding the limited number of ways to put things together in those days. It must have been an exciting time to be an engineer. I think it will have been joyous to be at the forefront of a technology that was still understandable to ordinary mortals.
 
The marks Company sold out to California-Yale about 1902. The mark did not utilize a carburetor. Lots of different bikes here if you go through the pictures

Yep they all kind of looked the same with just a few changes.........Curt
 
97cc Dresch with Aubier-Dunne engine

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1953 50cc Bianchi Aquilotto, Italy

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1952 40cc Typhoon belt driver, Holland

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1950s Danish Skylon ad

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1950s Rabeneick belt driver, Germany

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Here's an interesting bike.

A 1939 HEC. "Hepburn Engineering Company", London. 80 cc 2 Cycle made by a company called "Levis".

Introduced in 1939. Well received, according to oldbike.eu. The factory was bombed in early 1940. Production never resumed. Instead HEC and Levis merged and built air compressors.

A nice looking bike, all around. What I find most interesting, though, is the intense similarity between this engine and the Russian "D" series.

Makes you wonder if the D series also had a direct ancestor.

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Being British, the primary drive will have been by chain. I think the D motors were heavily influenced by Sachs and ILO myself.

The compressor factory was a 10 minutes car drive away from me, they ended up adding an extra S to stop people ringing up about Levi's products.
 
Mobylette BG, friction driver; an odd and retrograde decision even by French standards

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French Peugeot Bima friction driver

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A Némausa with an Italian Itom friction driver

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Belgian Flandria friction driver

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1924 124cc Moser, Switzerland

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?1922 125cc Viratelle, France. The drive looks like a reduction gear to a sprocket running on a captive motorcycle chain on the back wheel. Most interesting.

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Viratelle with friction drive only

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I am interested in the concept of a large ring gear in some suitable plastic with external teeth on the back wheel, and a driving gear in metal, or at least a harder material. Helical teeth would cut noise down, and a shoulder on one gear would eliminate side thrust.

I'm not going to try it, at least until my 2 builds are out of the way though.
 
Was just thinking about that ring sprocket deal and was picturing somehow combining a roller chain with a sheave or something like one, where the sheave it is affixed to the spokes and the chain is affixed to the sheave. How? The chain would have to end up the same diameter as the sheave it lies against and what, perhaps be tack welded to the sheave (or bicycle rim acting as a sheave)? There is a way...
SB
 
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