Motorized Bike Mania

The first bicycle try was a schwinn mountain bike with the motor mounted over the rear wheel. The mountain bike doesn't have enough room in the frame to mount the motor directly above the peddles. The motor is the Honda GX35, a 35cc four stroke engine. We had to use a jackshaft configuration to reduce the RPM's from approximately 6,000 to a manageable 200. The problem with the rear mounted motor was that except for very tall people, it was difficult to mount and dismount the bike due to the height of the engine. Also, the weight of the high mounted motor made the use of a standard kick stand very unstable.

Finally I decided to scrap that version and move to a lady schwinn cruiser model. The step through design took care of the mounting problem, the cruiser handle bars made riding much more comfortable, and switching to a center mount-two leg kickstand made parking a breeze.

We also made the cadillac of motorized bikes, the motorized schwinn tricycle. We used a 50cc Honda knock-off engine and not wanting to use a wheel sprocket, we used two jackshafts to get to the needed 200 RPM.

As most projects turn out........ what was thought to be a month long involvement turned out to be 4 months..... and of course the expense (doing it all from scratch) was more than anticipated. But now that it's done, I think I can say...... it was fun.