Concerned about motoring up mountain passes with 60 lbs of gear.

s7pete

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greetings, I bought a Golden Eagle 33cc Tanaka setup and mounted on my Gary Fisher Tasajara. All this for one purpose - to ride the Colorado section of the Great Divide mountain bike ride 26 July to 10 Aug - 600 miles. There will 6 of us, the ride is on mostly dirt mountain roads, we will have several 11,000ft passes (3k elevation gain over 20 miles). We'll be unsupported and will have to haul about 50 lbs of camping gear, clothes, food, water. I'll be using a B.O.B. trailer. I'm 73 and while I 'could' pedal it, I'd slow up the other 5 riders on our 'team' unmercifully. Hence the motorized bike.

Full throttle/max torque is too fast to safely ride on rutted dirt mountain pass roads. I'm concerned about long durations with that kind of load and grade, throttled back - overheating the engine - burning out the centrifugal clutch.

Plan B is to incorporate a 2.2 : 1 speed reducer. Not a problem to build, but before tackling it I wonder if anybody on this forum has experience powering a loaded motorized bike up 3k ft at 8%.??
 
You have a GEBE kit, they have different drive gears listed on their site, would that be the answer? If it were me I'd be zippin up those passes on a klr650 and let the ponies do the work, your into pain and suffering huh?
 
Thin air at 11,000 feet. That would be about a 20% decrease in power output, right?
 
I'll be using a B.O.B. trailer.

The B.O.B. trailer design is an excellent design. I hope you are using the B.O.B. IBEX with swing-arm suspension and not the rigid axle B.O.B. YAK.



I bought a Golden Eagle 33cc Tanaka setup "[and...]" Full throttle/max torque is too fast to safely ride on rutted dirt mountain pass roads.

I find it hard to believe that with only 33cc you will have an excess of speed on flat ground. It's quite possible that with only 33cc you won't be going anywhere in a hurry, and certainly not fast enough for rough roads to be of concern.
When riding on dirt roads you need to reduce tyre pressures to give a more comfortable ride. The downside of reduced tyre pressure is that it consumes horsepower, furthermore, riding on dirt consumes horsepower in itself; reducing speed even further.

With only a 33cc engine powering the bike, and riding on dirt roads, and using low tyre pressures, you'll just about be going backwards before starting on your off-road journey.
I would be more concerned about finding a big-bore kit and some performance modifications to give that little engine even half a chance of powering you along a dirt road (slowly) let alone trying to push the bike and trailer up a hill.

My last journey that involved 3 alpine hill climbs had my 66cc engine working it's guts out; going nowhere fast (on smooth bitumen roads), and that included just about every performance option thrown at the engine.
I won't even talk about the speed of travel on dirt roads, and like yourself i have a B.O.B (IBEX) trailer with mine similarly loaded up at around 70 lbs of net weight.
 
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