200 MPG Carb discovered......It's from China

[Ken_Shea]

I'd bet that as long as they don't see tires burning and fish tailing you'd be safe.

Love that plate Evan,
Hard pressed to think of anything around here that is not taxed, however, the finger says it all

[Jim Shaper]

You just need a little camouflage. Remove the tank and replace it with an aluminum kerosene bottle in a regular water bottle holder on the front frame rail (the one my dad has looks like a sports bottle), then get one of those "bag" things for in the V of the frame to cover the sides of the engine. It'd take a pretty keen copper to notice the muffler from a distance. Unless your cops roll with the windows down up there. Ours always have the windows up and the air on.

[barts]

Way back when during the first oil crisis (I was 14 I think) I put a 2 hp Briggs on bike w/ a 3 speed Sturmey Archer hub... went 42 mph in high and would wheelie in first gear. That thing was a blast - small round lawn mower tank hose clamped to the top tube, twist grip throttle and it would just go and go.

The small Honda motors would be a good choice here; something like:

http://www.honda.ca/enginesEng/model...50/default.htm

or even
http://www.honda.ca/enginesEng/model...22/default.htm
http://www.honda.ca/enginesEng/model...31/default.htm

- Bart

[Evan]

I would love a small 4 stroke but they are too expensive to buy new right now. Also, it's very hard to beat the power to weight ratio of a two stroke. This one includes a dry plate clutch and about 8 to 1 helical reduction gearing on roller bearings to the output sprocket.

[dp]

All it needs is a front disc brake. They work 10 times better than the caliper brakes.

They've been known to bend the light weight forks on a bike and heavy spokes are a good idea, too, to keep the wheel from potato chipping. There's been a number of attempts over the years to transfer the hub braking energy to the frame but it's tricky - especially if you have any kind of live suspension on the forks. Anti-dive linkage keeps the forks from bottoming under high brake forces.

The springer forks on my Schwinn beach cruiser are a good example of the wrong way to do it. I have drum brakes from Sturmey-Archer on that bike. The problem of braking (and breaking) may be why Harley is dropping the springer fork from production.

[barts]

If you need heavy wheels, consider some from Worksmans Cycles; I've had excellent luck with them on my Burning Man mutant vehicle:

[Evan]

On the trike the front won't be doing much more than steering. Most of the weight is carried by the rear wheels. For those I am using a pair of 20 inch 36 spoke wheels from a pretty high quality child's mountain bike. Because we have a super quality bike shop here there are a lot of used high quality bikes around and I have permission from the bike shop to dumpster dive their scrap pile. The trike rear end will have both disc braking and dynamic braking of two kinds. It will use regenerative braking to recharge the batteries and if they are full it goes to eddy current braking. Eddy current braking is absolutely reliable which is why it is used on trains, planes and many other machines.

Since we have some long and steep hills here I must have brakes I can depend on.

[edit] I might even add a drag chute to go with the turbine noise generator. I have a surplus radiosonde chute around here somewhere...

[Steelmaster]

When I was a kid in Holland my old man had an add-on moped engine, Berini if remember right. It was 49cc, hinged from the headstem of the bike on to the top of the front wheel. The front wheel was driven by a roller within the little engine assembly and you could either have it lifted up off the wheel and pedal along or drop it on to the front wheel and go along quite nicely.

Found a link, see about halfway down the page for the front wheel version.

[Dawai]

I may add a small sound system with a digital recording of a turbine spooling up..

I was thinking along the lines of a flamethrower exhaust like on a old streetrod..

BURRPPP out comes a 12 foot flame from the exhaust.. Normally the traffic that passes you is the normal traffic in the area.. once or twice and they give you a wide berth.

[Evan]

I was kinda thinking about some rear wheel covers for the bicycle wheels that look a bit like this..