In 2000 I voted for the Green Party instead of Al Gore. Bush won and our world was sent into a pit of endless drama. Per advice from a relative, I left SF and lived in Brazil for 10 months. Brazil is Socialist-- School is only for four hours, work is usually a short ride from home and people never change jobs. Beach Culture in Brazil is an organized Brotherhood and people take in surf-tourists with no questions.
SF has the best cold weather surf in the world, but the sport involves a lot of sit, wait and fear of being bitten by dinosaur-like sharks. After Brazil, I lived in Colombia and was threatened with knives and guns and had become phobic. I took a ten hour train ride to San Diego, traveled down into Baja and after being in the water for ten minutes I became completely afraid of sharks and went home.
Skate boarding had always delivered more adrenalin than surf because there’s no wait and plenty of time is spent charging and sliding rather than sitting and shivering. All of these aspects combined, the idea of a Norcal Brotherhood like he one in Brazil, the fear of water, the need for a constant rush and the drug tests I have to take for work in corporate security caused me to look towards motorcycles. (In Colombia, soldiers and security are an organized Brotherhood, hence the profession.)
Also the desire to make money on the side and not being able to buy an apartment to fix up and sell, made bikes a good choice. Electric bikes, my first interest, weigh 200 pounds and cost $2,700 dollars so they fell out of the running. Also, the design of electric bikes was one of the reasons I felt people were shying away from fuel efficiency even with the world running red with war.
So I sat down and started to draw stick figures of bikes until I found a design that I thought anybody would buy–something undeniable. Then after drawing bikes for a month, I found that Beach Cruiser Bicycle companies already make a bike similar to what I had drawn. Then when I bought a used Tim Roth Rat Fink, I was disappointed with the design. I almost felt as though the box-like shape of the cruisers were to scare people. The raised handle bars cause the rider’s back to raise up at 90 degrees and then the arms come out at 90 degrees so that rider forms a square shape. From behind, the design directs the onlooker to look at the dude’s butt. This can cause a guy to think about how the dude may have been in prison and what must have happened to the dude’s butt while he was locked up. Then the person get’s scared and looks away.
So with some help from the 14th and 15th Streets in the Mission, some brothers and I stripped off the motorcycle style, chrome forks and put on extended three and a half foot chopper forks with a twenty inch wheel. This raised the front end and gave the bike the pyramid shape that it desperately needed. The fork was made by Mike at Lo-Fi Customs.
Then after this initial impulse buy of the bike, I went onto the net and found a myriad of web sites, in particular, the links page at Rockx that show how popular the sport of beach cruiser bikes are in Europe. With new hope from Europe, I went and got myself ripped off by buying an engine kit from a store in Oklahoma. –Never buy the kit.
Then it was time to learn. With too much money into the hands of ancient Hells Angel affiliate Lauren from the Grant and Vallejo corner at Café Trieste, I learned the term, “Case Hardened Steal Saw.” 500 bucks after that, a returned kit, multiple separate engine mounts and ten different arc welds, many of which were removed and redone, I’m ready to explain to anybody how to make a motor-bike.
Honda makes three engines that are perfect for bikes. The GXH25, GXH35 and the GXH50. The 25 and 35 are great with pedal assist and the 50 doesn’t need an assist. The torque necessary to push a bike is too great for any of the three engines. Thus, on the engine you want to slip on a transmission. There are gear box transmissions made for motorized bicycles that can be bought on the web, but they cost more and aren’t really nice, especially when they’re new and squeak all the time. Also, many are designed to be mounted above the rear wheel and run backwards. Or you can use a Pocket Bike CVT Transmission or a Go-Cart Torque-a-Meter transmission. When you get the transmission, you want to make sure the cup is the right size to fit over the clutch. This can be read by how many cc’s the transmission is built for.
Then you want to make sure that it has a one inch bore on the shaft which you’ll mount your sprocket onto because you want to use a really big, eight toothed sprocket for a #41 chain. Most transmissions come with a really small sprocket made for a #25 chain. This is bad because you have to mount the engine down with factory-robot strength for the chain to be pulled tight enough not to come off.
Then in the back, under the right conditions, your wheel will climb to whatever speed your engine shaft will turn at. Even if you run a chain to a sprocket with no transmission, you’ll eventually climb to 49cc’s of speed, if the bike is on a slightly downhill slope. So the larger your sprocket is in the back, the better. Your take off will be slow, but if the sprocket is large enough you wont have to push off with your feet and you’ll be able to go uphill. Right now, I’m getting help with an arc weld and mount of a 73 toothed sprocket for a #41 chain onto a mountain bike freewheel. I’m going to run that to a ten toothed sprocket on a 2 to 1, 24 tooth Gear ratio inside a gear box transmission. Engine shafts usually run in reverse, so a 2 to 1 gear box, one small gear and then one large gear will run forward. The CVT and Torque-a-Meter transmissions have 2 gears, but they don’t touch and are connected by belts. A 3 to 1 gear box is the one that will run backwards, but the torque is spread out better.
Fuel emission and efficiency is controlled by the mount of the engine. The engine must be mounted solidly, preferably on all sides and bottom. The engine should be mounted to a quarter inch plate and then the plate should be mounted to the bike. The chain must also be tight to reduce the shaking of the engine. Idling the engine for too long will give cause for failure. If the engine starts to take in the wrong amount of air, the engine will begin to shake. The more it shakes, the worse the air ratio becomes and the more violent it will shake until black smoke comes out.
The chain must be pulled very tight to reduce the shaking. Pocket Bikes with the #25 chain are great because the a Chinese robot pulls the rear sprocket into place and makes the chain tight enough to cut off a kids fingers. A #41 chain pulled this tight with the Honda GXH engine should run quiet and clean.
Lastly and the most obvious problem is the throttle. Honda throttles don’t work and have to be altered. A spring needs to be added, mounted on the transmission to pull the throttle into an idle position. Also the mount for the throttle cable is terrible. The throttle hose must remain stationary for the cable inside to have the leverage necessary to pull the throttle lever. Right now, I’m using a wing nut, which I turn by hand to clamp down the throttle hose.
This can also be used to pull the chain tight. The engine can be tilted back towards the rear wheel and the chain can be applied to both sprockets. Then bolts can be pushed up through the frame of the bike and through the plate mounted to the engine. Then wing nuts can be used to push the plate down onto the frame and pull the chain as tight as possible, away from the rear wheel.
Honda GXH engines also have the problem of aesthetics. If you’re not a middle aged hippie trying to save the Earth by riding a fuel efficient bike, you’ll have no reason for trying to convince anybody that the GXH engines look cool. At least the 49cc doesn’t look cool. If you strip the engine covering to gain the cool chopper style engine inside, be wherry of the fan next to the pull start. If you reach down to adjust the throttle while the engine is running, the fan will hit your finger as hard as a twenty-two pistol. The first day out, I reached down and saw a rainbow of blood spray off of the fan and had no idea how many fingers had been cut until I got to a sink.