Build what you can, where you are with what you have. That seems to be the motto of more and more bikes popping up with some very creative combinations of parts and this super moto style jalopy bike is one great example.
Steven Lawver picked up a dirt bike frame, an X-Motos XB-30T from a local horse rancher. It was already set up with dual sport tires that looked like they would serve any intended use Steven had in mind, but it was obviously missing an engine. He found a 6.5 horsepower 200cc lawnmower engine with electric start and thought the two were just made for one another.
He slipped the engine into the frame and hid all of the electrical components inside the aluminum motor mount. The power goes through a go-kart CVT and he fabbed up the front fender from 18 gauge stainless steel. He even added LED lighting to give it a finished look.
Steven did all of the welding and fabrication himself over a month’s worth of weekends and everything together cost him the princely sum of $600 dollars. It currently tops out at about 40 mph, but he has his eye on some go-kart performance parts like a new flywheel and less restrictive exhaust, so we may see a quicker bike before long.
For all of you guys that don’t have a bike and don’t have much money to buy one, the examples we’ve been showing you recently should be giving you a lot of ideas. Just add motivation with a bit of hard work and stir.
Nice work Steven!
B50 Jim says
A very good job — several steps up from a motorized bicycle for about the same cost, and something he can ride on the street without worrying about legal details. Electric start, too! It’s a “real” motorcycle so it has good suspension, brakes, wheels&tires, etc. Sure, a 200cc motorcycle engine would run far better, but the lawnmower engine was cheap, and it will do anything he needs short of riding on highways. 40 mph from 6 hp isn’t bad — looks like there’s space for a bigger engine in the future, and 8 or 10 hp probably would make it totally practical. The manufacturers make some nice V-twins starting at 16 hp that would really make it scoot. I’ve read about scale Harleys built using them, and they run very well.
Jim Kunselman says
Doesn’t the Ridley mini-hawg use a Briggs and Stratton (or Koehler) v-twin? Just got my oxy-acetylene torch kit back from my kid brother, I need to get busy making new toys.
Kunselman’s Fourth Law:
Never tell anyone that you know how to fix/build things or that you have tools.
B50 Jim says
I tell them I only know how to fix vintage English machinery and that I have only Whitworth tools (even though I don’t; my bikes don’t go back that far) and that usually stops them.
todd says
The low speed is probably because of it’s gear ratio. My 5 hp Trail 90 will just reach 55 mph and that’s with the gears it has. I could probably gear it up for a tad more top speed but I have the benefit of downshifting 7 times if I need to.
Maybe he could rig up a Sturmey Archer shifting hub on a jack shaft…
-todd
B50 Jim says
If he ever could get that Sturmey Archer hub back together after taking it apart!
john says
Single cylinder pull start flywheel magneto motors are available up to 12 or 15 HP. That should be enough.
Richeffect says
Don’t forget a few hundred dollars in tools but you use what you have. Welding skills are a big plus.
B50 Jim says
For sure — take a welding course at a community college, buy an oxyacetylene welding outfit (spend the extra cash on 2-stage gages), arrange for your gasses at a local welding supply house and you’ll be set for just about any welding, heating or cutting jobs you’ll encounter.
JSH says
It isn’t that easy to take a welding class anymore. My local community college only accepts welding students that are interested in becoming certified welders. They don’t have enough room to accommodate hobbyist anymore.
Yeti2bikes says
I love kludge hack-togethers like this. My first dirt bike was a beast made out of six donor bikes. I called it the Yamakawazuki.
B50 Jim says
The 40-mph top speed probably is a result of the engine’s governor, holding it to 3,600 rpm. Remove the governor and all its attendant linkage, attach the twist-grip cable directly to the throttle and let the engine turn up. We did this with our Briggs 5-horse kart engines, and they’d easily spin up another thousand. Small engines can’t run fast enough to hurt themselves with stock carbs and heads; the governed top speed is a result of regulations and the limits of the equipment they drive such as rototillers and lawn mowers. Pull that governor, bolt the engine in a bike and let ‘er run!
Paulinator says
Did that to my little 3hp Briggs when I was a kid and it spooled up like a turbo. It was good for 40 in my go-kart.
SLawver says
Spot on. The governor has not yet been removed completely (only the throttle portion has been bypassed). I will get around to it, but it’s not entirely safe to do so until after I’ve replaced the flywheel. This is a GX200 clone and the flywheels on the clone engines are known to not handle higher RPMs.
Once the flywheel and governor are sorted, higher RPMs and a slightly higher top speed are easily reached.
Higher RPMs are also likely to make my butt numb from vibration.
Nicolas says
gotta love it … prolly as fun to build as it is to ride around … for us pathetic souls 😉
B50 Jim says
Tons of fun! — remember, it’s far more fun to ride fast on a slow bike that to ride slow on a fast bike. And this one will be dead-on reliable, not loud enough to attract undue attention, and will go all day on a half-gallon of gas. What’s not to like?
MotorcyclePPF says
Radical. You can’t beat a hacked together beauty this this. Mad Max all the way.
Carolynne says
wow he built that out of a lawnmower engine very cool! I wonder what it sounds like
Klaus says
Sounds like a lawnmower, I’d say.
David Wally Cassar says
It’s great how we’ve got no-one whingeing about how its too low powered, looks crap, my hypothetical bike is better blah blah blah etc and so on and so forth . This guy just got him self an indestructo-bike for $600. Score!
john says
I just re-read the description. I’ve never seen a 6.5 horse lawnmower engine that wasn’t a vertical shaft engine. If he mounted a vertical shaft engine in there sideways and then altered the fuel system to function…I don’t think it won’t last. The oil sump is all wrong.
Bigshankhank says
Go to a kart track, many of them run 6.5 horse horizontal shaft engines. See also Honda GX160/200, most Honda clone engines, discount tool retailers sell the heck out of those engines. Very Very common.
john says
those aren’t lawnmower engines
mikesundrop says
Same thing brother. Mounting plate on the crankcase, not the oil pan. Different oil slinger. Done.
Rob says
Awesome.
'37 Indian says
I like this bike, and the fact that it doesn’t say Brough Superior on it. I had a mini-bike when I was 12 that had a McCullough Mac 6 engine on it, clocked it at 37 mph with my brother’s car. It had to spin around 13,000 rpm’s to do that. So how did Paulinator go 40 with a Briggs?
Paulinator says
When I was 13 I built a go-kart using a pair of mini-bike wheels in the back. I set it up with the engine driving the left wheel and a brake drum stopping the right one. It was not a live axle. My friend had a 5hp kart with the same set up. His father wouldn’t let us strip the air-driven linkage out of his engine, whereas my father gave me a (perfectly good) broken engine and said have at it. His kart would chirp the tire off the line, but ran up against the rev limiter at about 30. Mine was a pig until about 15 mph…then the engine note would change and things would get blurry. I guess I got 4600 rpm from the engine instead of the 3600 rpm where the governor was designed to stop the fun.
37, do you know what a burning clutch smells like when it slips? 13000 rpm? If you did that in one drop (max 7 to 1) you’d have needed 6 inch wheels. Anyway, my go-kart would’ve kicked your mini-bike’s ass and my dad is bigger, too 🙂
'37 Indian says
My clutch was a metal to metal Horstman centrifugal. Once locked in, it never slipped. The primary chain went from the clutch sprocket to a jack shaft, the a final drive chain went to the rear wheel. Wheels were 7 in, I don’t remember the tire size. The Mac engines were rated at a maximum 13,000 RPM straight from the factory. You must be too young to remember, smarty pants.
Klaus says
Great-looking bike, and congrats to the builder to have the idea! Careful with what you hit if the front fender is made of steel. Personally I’d change the handle bar to a higher and wider one, it looks like welded to the triple clamp. A smaller rear sprocket would give it a higher top speed in combination with above mentioned engine mods.
It looks right at home on the grass! 🙂
SLawver says
They’re custom aluminum clip-ons I made a couple years ago. The grips have an 8-inch long bolt inside them tightening the whole unit onto the top of the shocks. See website link for an older photo.
joe says
Like back to the future.Years ago before easy credit, guys used to build machines out of scrap parts and any bits of other bikes they could cobble together.Good to see a bit of ingenuity still exists.