Tribrid Bike

After Sealing the tank I started to polish the motor and build the motor mounts.

I always wanted to build a Harley in my living room!  I guess I will have to settle for this.  The front motor mount in this picture was never used. I abandoned this style and went with a plate aluminum and clamp style.  The white material in the picture is the protective coating over top the stainless sheet I have wrapped around the frame.  This would have looked good but it wasn’t going to work as well as I had hoped.  Part of building these projects is being able to drop an idea no matter how much you like it or how much work has already been done and move on.

I went to a local paint shop and had them mix up a few cans of paint that matched the bike.  Very handy stuff.  Here I have painted polished and massaged the motor some more.  I haven’t even run the motor at this point and I am already putting all this work into it.  I think it is safe to say that I have confidence in this engine.

Polished and painted motor from the clutch cover side.

This is back in my living room but now with the polished motor and the motor mount I finally decided to use.  I have tapped and fitted the gas tank petcock at this point as well.  Everything still looks so shiny and new!  This motor mount has a hard rubber component between the motor and the mouting plate.  This didn’t prove to work very well and the torque of the motor caused it to pull down and to the right.  First time this happened and the drive chain got jammed between the sprocket and the frame so this idea was scrapped as well.

This is the bike just before the first ride.  I haven’t even fit the cables properly yet I was so excited to take her out for a run.  See the chain tensioner?  That won’t be there long.  I don’t think much of those.  Needless to say I was pretty pleased to start to see the fruits of my labor.

I was so eager to take her out I didn’t even put the chain guard on.

I know I have only scratched the surface on my description of my Felt Kingpin build here on my blog but the finished bike won a contest!

Needless to say I felt the need to write about it.

The Contest can be found here: Chinese in frame kit.

The semifinalist thread that everyone voted on can be found here: Vote! Chinese in frame motorized bicycle.

I was pleased to find I had made the semi-finals for the contest but winning was a pleasant surprise!  There were many great entries.  It is wonderful to have the admiration of my peers.

This is the picture that everyone voted on.

Winning entry in the 2009 Motorbicycling.com Chinese In-Frame Kit Category.

Some time had passed after building my first motorized bicycle and work moved me from Alberta to the coast of B.C. in the city of White Rock.  White Rock is a tiny but beautiful place.  It also has a great many very steep hills and I happened to find myself living on one of them.  It wasn’t long before I was wishing for my motorized bike to get me around and I decided to take the opportunity to build a new one.

This time I was starting from scratch and I had all the experience of my first build behind me.  I had spent so much time trying to get the tank integrated into the design of the first bike I knew that I wanted something like that for this bike.  I spent a great deal of time searching the Internet for an appropriate bike.   Then I came across this bike.  I thought it was beautiful and was just crying out for a motor.

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.I looked around for one but they were a bit pricey.  Also another thing happened.  Ghost0 and Pablo of SickBikeParts announced that they would be selling a new product.  A Shift-Kit for the Chinese 2 stroke motors!  I was very excited about this.  I had explored the possibility of building a jackshaft for the first bike but I had determined that it would be too much work for the benefit.  The terrain I rode the first bike in was pretty forgiving.  Now, my new home was surrounded by hills and some gearing was going to be absolutely neccessary!  Needless to say I was very excited by this development and I think Jim and Paul of Sick Bike Parts were probably a little tired of my attempts to secure one of the first Shift-Kits.

Early pictures of the kit indicated that some space would be required behind the seat post to make it fit.  As a result I was no longer certain that the Electra Indy would be a good choice as the seatpost comes very close to the rear wheel.  Then I came across this bike:

Modeled after the first Harley Davidson of 1903!

As you can see it also has a nice integrated tank and more importantly it has more space behind the seat post.  I had worked on many bikes and I knew that it was unlikely that the tank portion of the frame would be sealed from the factory.  There are always holes so that gasses can escape during the welding process.  I had planned to seal up these holes and use a tank sealant product to finish it.   With a little bit of searching I found a post by HBLocal on Motoredbikes.com that described how he had sealed the tank.  His technique was the same as what I had planned to do so I was pretty confident that it would work!  I was also happy to see that he had done many of these tanks already and had had great success.  Many people are not aware of how strong an epoxy bond can be.  If properly done epoxy is incredibly strong and resiliant.

I started looking for a Felt 1903.  I couldn’t find one in Canada so I looked at stores close by in the U.S.  I found a Felt dealer in Bellingham called Fanatik bikes.  They had a great website but they didn’t have a 1903 in stock   They did however have a Kingpin model on sale!  I immediately drove down and purchased the bike:

My new bike! At home in the garage. In one piece still...

First thing I did was take it apart, cut a hole in the tank and void the warranty!

My Kingpin with a sealed tank