Hello everyone.
This is my first post, but I expect there will be many more to come, since I am starting my first motor bike project! Here is how it all happened...
My father-in-law has a hobby of restoring old bicycles. Personaly I haven't ridden a bike more than a handful of times since my BMX days as a teen. When visiting him over Thanksgiving I got a look at a beautiful old Schwinn Phantom that he had stuck a motor on. Away I went down the road - what a blast!
The next day I find a website with motor kits on sale for the thanskgiving weekend, so I impulsively order up a Skyhawk GT5 setup. Kit arrived last week and in searching for bike ideas I stumbled across motoredbikes.com and it has turned out to be a great resource for me. I wanted a simple black cruiser and bought a Schwinn Delmar last night. Between cheap chinese motors and cheap chinese bikes, this could turn out to be my least expensive hobby yet...
I have some very busy weeks ahead of me for work so this will likely only get a few minutes here and there, but I've got all winter ahead of me. Here is my plan / thoughts as of now:
- Once I get the bike running, I want to add a front brake in addition to the coaster
- I want to keep the front fender but will be replacing all brackets to sure that thing up.
- I understand I will need to enlarge the kit's sprocket to accomodate the coaster brake's dust cover, correct?
- I also understand clearance can be an issue with the sprocket bolts and the coaster brake's arm. I saw suggestions to either bend the arm or to put both pieces of rubber inside the spokes instead of one on each side. I picked up some rubber conveyor belt material that is a very dense, reinforced rubber like that provided in the kit except half the width (or less). I am going to replace the outter rubber ring with one from this material and see if that gives me enough clearance. Thoughts?
- I dont like the plastic idler. I saw an awesome looking alternative on this site - a spring loaded tensioner with a hard rubber idler wheel and bearings. I bought one and plan on using that for a quieter setup.
- Motor mount. I am either going to drill through the steel frame or fabricate something out of u-bolts or muffler clamps and a cut up hockey puck (awesome idea I saw here or on another board).
- One question on motor mount philosophy - insulate with rubber or metal-on-metal? My thought was to use a thin piece of rubber gasket material to wrap the bike tubes before clamping the motor mounts on. I have also heard this can cause even more vibration as the motor's mass alone must resist the vibration; and a solid mount to the bike can actually reduce the vibration by giving more mass to resist the vibration. Thoughts?
All feedback and suggestions are welcome. I hope to start putting this thing together later this week.
Jason
This is my first post, but I expect there will be many more to come, since I am starting my first motor bike project! Here is how it all happened...
My father-in-law has a hobby of restoring old bicycles. Personaly I haven't ridden a bike more than a handful of times since my BMX days as a teen. When visiting him over Thanksgiving I got a look at a beautiful old Schwinn Phantom that he had stuck a motor on. Away I went down the road - what a blast!
The next day I find a website with motor kits on sale for the thanskgiving weekend, so I impulsively order up a Skyhawk GT5 setup. Kit arrived last week and in searching for bike ideas I stumbled across motoredbikes.com and it has turned out to be a great resource for me. I wanted a simple black cruiser and bought a Schwinn Delmar last night. Between cheap chinese motors and cheap chinese bikes, this could turn out to be my least expensive hobby yet...
I have some very busy weeks ahead of me for work so this will likely only get a few minutes here and there, but I've got all winter ahead of me. Here is my plan / thoughts as of now:
- Once I get the bike running, I want to add a front brake in addition to the coaster
- I want to keep the front fender but will be replacing all brackets to sure that thing up.
- I understand I will need to enlarge the kit's sprocket to accomodate the coaster brake's dust cover, correct?
- I also understand clearance can be an issue with the sprocket bolts and the coaster brake's arm. I saw suggestions to either bend the arm or to put both pieces of rubber inside the spokes instead of one on each side. I picked up some rubber conveyor belt material that is a very dense, reinforced rubber like that provided in the kit except half the width (or less). I am going to replace the outter rubber ring with one from this material and see if that gives me enough clearance. Thoughts?
- I dont like the plastic idler. I saw an awesome looking alternative on this site - a spring loaded tensioner with a hard rubber idler wheel and bearings. I bought one and plan on using that for a quieter setup.
- Motor mount. I am either going to drill through the steel frame or fabricate something out of u-bolts or muffler clamps and a cut up hockey puck (awesome idea I saw here or on another board).
- One question on motor mount philosophy - insulate with rubber or metal-on-metal? My thought was to use a thin piece of rubber gasket material to wrap the bike tubes before clamping the motor mounts on. I have also heard this can cause even more vibration as the motor's mass alone must resist the vibration; and a solid mount to the bike can actually reduce the vibration by giving more mass to resist the vibration. Thoughts?
All feedback and suggestions are welcome. I hope to start putting this thing together later this week.
Jason