Forum Suggestions & User Assistance - Gas Powered Bikes on Bike Forum

Like I am seriously pi**ed about the electric bike forum moderator who has a sticky on gasoline powered bicycles (http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=444988)

You guys live car free. Is a gas powered bike a bicycle, a moped or a motor bike?

I'm into this bike thing for the green, I have trouble with someone who shows up with a moped and says their green because they are not driving an SUV. It's like a deer hunter who says it's okay to hunt because they only shoot to wound.

Talk tome

Like I am seriously pi**ed about the electric bike forum moderator who has a sticky on gasoline powered bicycles (http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=444988)

You guys live car free. Is a gas powered bike a bicycle, a moped or a motor bike?

I'm into this bike thing for the green, I have trouble with someone who shows up with a moped and says their green because they are not driving an SUV. It's like a deer hunter who says it's okay to hunt because they only shoot to wound.

Talk tome

What the moderator states there is:

By way of an experiment I've decided to allow gas (petrol) powered bikes to be discussed here too as many issues around applying non-human motive force to a bicycle are issues in common; And by logical extension from that I would imagine that diesel, steam, wind, etc & etc could be discussed too. However when it comes to seriously technical questions about these sources of energy it might well be better to seek out a specialist forum in which to find the answers you might need.

The electric bike forum is NOT part of the CF forum. Although you may find readers of both here and there, they are two separate areas.

Chill out.... if you totally hate it - don't visit there. And, it is a bicycle with a motor.

an electric bike is no sort of green vehicle, unless it is solar powered, more than likely the electricity for that bike came from a coal fired power plant. So i would say a gas powered bicycle on a electric bike sub forum would be a moot point.

Does your screen name Electrogreen refer to your use of an electric powered/assisted bike?

So let me get this straight. You're upset about an off-topic thread?

So then you go to a completely different sub-forum, and make an off-topic thread to complain?

Maybe a mod will move this to Forum Suggestions & User Assistance (http://www.bikeforums.net/forumdisplay.php?f=160).

So let me get this straight. You're upset about an off-topic thread?

So then you go to a completely different sub-forum, and make an off-topic thread to complain?

Maybe a mod will move this to Forum Suggestions & User Assistance (http://www.bikeforums.net/forumdisplay.php?f=160).

P&R?:innocent:

Aaron:)

Not just this forum, he's hitting several.

Seriously dude, you need to learn to pick your battles. I really don't care to read about ebikes either, but here you are.

Az

an electric bike is no sort of green vehicle, unless it is solar powered, more than likely the electricity for that bike came from a coal fired power plant. So i would say a gas powered bicycle on a electric bike sub forum would be a moot point.



I buy green power, and pay extra for it. My electric bike is green. Internal combustion engines are not green, no matter how much you wish they are.

My bike's gas powered if I eat too many bananas. Whoa! Backfire!

Err... sorry about that last post. Been too deep into the rice wine.

Seriously, if it has a motor on it... of any kind... other than the two legged variety, then it's technically not a bicycle. It's a motor-bike, study hall daydream of 12 year old boys everywhere. Greener than a '60s Chevy V8 with bad piston rings, but not by a whole lot. When I was a kid, most gas powered cycles were two strokes. Really nasty things.

Still, some folks like 'em. Anything to get out of having to pedal, I suppose. I don't read about them because I don't care about them.

Try that, it'll keep your blood pressure down.

The only gas powered motor I was interested in never went into production. ;-(

https://www.revopower.com/the_wheel-specifications.html

They got mad at me over there because I think e bikes are un-needed for average people. I looked there for some info for a handicapped friend, and got nothing but grief. Gas powered, electric powered, no difference to me. If it has a motor, it is a motor vehicle and should be treated as such.

You guys live car free. Is a gas powered bike a bicycle, a moped or a motor bike?

One of my bicycles has a 32 cc motor. I think of it as a bicycle with a motor.

It has a motor mounted on a rear rack that uses a belt that turns the wheel via a spoke mounted pulley. Most of the time when I ride it the motor is running. There are many times I ride using pedal power with the belt detached. It weighs about fifty pounds.

At night time with a Dinotte headlight it is too fast to ride safely at speeds any faster than fifteen miles per hour. That is why I do all of my night time bicycling with my non-motorized bicycle (unless it has a flat tire).

Motorized bicycles have a place in the transportation world. Wouldn't most of the people on this forum prefer motorized bicycles on the roads instead of big cars and trucks?

I have visited the electric bike forum once. It seemed unfriendly towards gasoline motors so I haven't been back. The forum www.motoredbikes.com has good information but the moderators are picky old men. Follow all of their rules and you will get along well there. Often it is difficult to read posts there due to several of the regular posters not using spell check or having basic grammar knowledge.

Well if the motor isn't running it is basically a bicycle with a motor attached. If the engine is running it is a bit closer to a moped. Also who gives a crap, I can't believe someone would get worked up over this.


They got mad at me over there because I think e bikes are un-needed for average people. I looked there for some info for a handicapped friend, and got nothing but grief. Gas powered, electric powered, no difference to me. If it has a motor, it is a motor vehicle and should be treated as such.

If anything you caused them grief with your unrelenting posts. No one cares what you think about electric bicycles because you never add anything productive to the conversations.

Like I am seriously pi**ed about the electric bike forum moderator who has a sticky on gasoline powered bicycles (http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=444988)

You guys live car free. Is a gas powered bike a bicycle, a moped or a motor bike?

I'm into this bike thing for the green, I have trouble with someone who shows up with a moped and says their green because they are not driving an SUV. It's like a deer hunter who says it's okay to hunt because they only shoot to wound.

Talk tome

Do you think that there is no crude oil involved in producing the food that you burn as fuel when you pedal your bike?.... you may be shocked to learn just how much oil you burn indirectly when you pedal, and you might even be more shocked to learn just how close the mileage you get using your biological engine (body) as a motor is to the mileage a gas burning motor gets on a bike, it may actually be more fuel efficient than you depending on your diet and source of food.

...might be time to climb down from that high horse, eh. :thumb:

If anything you caused them grief with your unrelenting posts. No one cares what you think about electric bicycles because you never add anything productive to the conversations.

That's not the impression I got. They are very insecure over there. No surpirse really. I would expect an average ( non-handicapped person) who chooses to put a motor on a bicycle to be a very insecure person.

I really like the idea of the motorized bicycle because in my state, although it's a tricky registration process, you don't need a license for one. Like ebikes, it falls into a grey area of the law. I imagine a generation of kids learning to go on the road with these things and becoming aware of what it's like to be invisible to drivers, so that when they do get their driver's license, they "see" two wheeled traffic more than most. I like the idea of kids getting into something that gets their hands dirty and out in the world. Tiered licensing will never make it here in the US, so motorized bicycles are a kind of loophole that actually works as a positive rather than a negative, in that sense.

But don't worry, if these things get at all popular, they'll be outlawed in the blink of an eye, just like pocket bikes were.

I like two wheeled things, have many bikes and one motorcycle. Anything that gets people onto two wheels does it for me, and if it happens to have an electric or gas motor, so be it. Also, just like with the kids getting their hands dirty comment above, it is not a passive consumerist kind of thing--you need to be involved plan and complete a project, maintain your ride in a way that can be more intimate than many other forms of travel. Bikes included.

Although now that I'm pedalling a 35 mi r/t commute, I really don't have a need for an engine powered bike now...

Having said all this, I think a gas engine bike thread would be much more at home in Alt Bike Culture.

I would expect an average ( non-handicapped person) who chooses to put a motor on a bicycle to be a very insecure person.

How do you figure that??? If I buy a new set of super-lightweight rims for my bike in hopes of going faster, am I insecure also? If I go out to buy a new car, and opt to get the performance version, am I being insecure?

One might put a motor onto a bike just for the pleasure of it. I know I would, if it wasn't for the gray areas of the law and the fact that I'd rather pedal for the excersise. It can be fun to tinker with things.

Also, what the hell does this thread have to do with living car free?

Gas-powered bikes in the electric bikes forum makes me angry so I'm going to voice my anger in the Car-Free forum.

Makes approximately as much sense as:

The fact that elephants do not fart bees makes me thirsty so I'm going out for pancakes in my canoe.

Who gives a crap? Gas-powered bikes are similar to electric bikes. What the hell does that have to do with being car-free, besides neither being very 'green'? Are you ranting for the sake of ranting? If you are, then hell, let's all get in on it! I'll go next;

What the hell is with those alt-bike guys? Seriously, they take perfectly good bikes and chop them up to make difficult to ride bikes. What the hell is the point of riding a bike that is 6 feet tall? Or one with 4-foot long forks that is nearly impossible for any normal person to ride? It's immature is what it is.






(For those of you with web-browsers that do not support sarcasm or if you have sarcasm turned off in your settings, I'm the founder of the Worcester chapter of Rat Patrol and my daily-rider is a tallbike named Assplant.)

Wow, I've lived car free all my life and I thought I really identified with this forum. Obviously there are a lot of secret ICE lovers out there.

Moderator, cancel this thread. I can't stand the haters.

Wow, I've lived car free all my life and I thought I really identified with this forum. Obviously there are a lot of secret ICE lovers out there.

Moderator, cancel this thread. I can't stand the haters.

Well, now you know the difference between living "car free" and "disagreement free" ;) don't start what you can't finish, that includes threads. :D

The title on the sticky thread being complained about is, - 'Gas powered bikes welcome here too?' Please note the question mark at the end. I'm also running a poll to find out what (your choice of power source here) assisted bicycle riders might think about expanding the E.bike forum into a forum that covers more than just the use of electricity to turn the wheels.
As a person who does their best to keep their carbon footprint small and recycles as much as she possibly can I'm somewhat surprised by all the fuss. That fact is at the moment an awful lot of folk are reducing their car use by using some form of powered bicycle instead. The local importer I deal with is having problems with keeping enough stock on the shelves due to the heavy demand for both gas and electric conversion kits for bicycles. My feeling as a BF moderator with an interest in alternative transport, is that it would be silly of me to ignore this trend.
To tell the complete truth I'm fascinated with the thought of converting IC engines to run with steam. My own wee Chinese two stroke may not be a blue smoke 'stinker' for that long once I'm able to gather everything together I need to build a monotube boiler.

http://www.lynxsteamengines.com/products.cfm

an electric bike is no sort of green vehicle, unless it is solar powered, more than likely the electricity for that bike came from a coal fired power plant.

Ever seen any info on the carbon footprint of food?

If you ride a bike and eat an average USA diet (i.e. plenty of meat & products shipped hundreds or thousands of miles)... you'd be better off riding an e-bike with coal-derived electricity.

Of course, maybe you only eat food produced & transported without fossil fuels.

That's not the impression I got. They are very insecure over there. No surpirse really. I would expect an average ( non-handicapped person) who chooses to put a motor on a bicycle to be a very insecure person.

Probably almost as insecure as someone who drives to work using a motor-powered vehicle (with 2 wheels or 4) that can't even be pedaled at all!

try this commute with no car, and then tell me that able bodied people have no use for electric bikes:
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Down-to-South-St
(this is slightly easier than my actual king of prussia bike / e-bike commute at the job I left recently)

try this commute with no car, and then tell me that able bodied people have no use for electric bikes:
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Down-to-South-St
(this is slightly easier than my actual king of prussia bike / e-bike commute at the job I left recently)

Does this commute really look that difficult to you? It is what 33K with one decent hill?

The biggest climb there is what 300 feet? Whoop dee do. My 5 and 7 year old daughters climb a 250 foot hill in a little over 1/2 mile to go to school.

That's part of the problem, you fail to realize what the human body is capable of doing. I am sure at your current fitness level this route may be pretty tough. Maybe even difficult to do without stopping to carry your bike up the hill (You should never ever push a bike up a hill, if you can't ride it carry it), but if you are starting with a healthy base, this route is do-able, on a decent bike for any healthy person.

maddyfish - What's the longest bike commute you've done day-in day-out, with weather sometimes outside of the 30degree to 95degree (F) range? And what were the grades on the hills? Would you guess that you have commuted in hotter weather than me? How 'bout colder, snowier, and icier?

Do you think you know what conditions e-bikers like me might have faced on our pedal-only bikes and our e-bikes well enough to judge us?

Or perhaps you feel you have been ignorant and rude? (yeah, right.)

Wow, I've lived car free all my life and I thought I really identified with this forum. Obviously there are a lot of secret ICE lovers out there.

Moderator, cancel this thread. I can't stand the haters.

*sigh* :hug:

Some folks probably need the extra power (disabilities, etc.).

A scooter/moped, etc. is better than one person hogging up the road in a Hummer.


But if a motorized bicycle is using a two-stroke, it's not doing anyone any good.


The first cars were steam and ran on coal power with a huge plume of black smoke coming out the top.

maddyfish - What's the longest bike commute you've done day-in day-out, with weather sometimes outside of the 30degree to 95degree (F) range? And what were the grades on the hills?

My commute is very short. 1/2 mile up a 250 ft. elevation hill, all weather of course. I am lucky (smart?) I live very close to everything I want. Shopping, schools, my volunteer job, entertainment

My daily (maybe I shouldn't say daily, 5 days a week) training ride is 10 miles of hills of various grades to this

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/6416/hillbb7.th.png (http://img255.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hillbb7.png)

then 10 miles of various grades home. The profile is of one hill, which I repeat 6 times. It started as one time, it is now up to six, soon it be will be seven. I do this all weather(excluding snow) 5 days a week. On snow days I do the best workout that I can with my mountain bike in combination with the trainer ( I hate the trainer).

My commute is very short. 1/2 mile up a 250 elevation hill, all weather of course. I am lucky (smart?) I live very close to everything I want. Shopping, schools, my volunteer job, entertainment)

My daily (maybe I shouldn't say daily, 5 days a week) training ride is 10 miles of hills of various grades to this

Clearly you devote a lot of time and effort to keeping yourself in shape. If only everyone cared for their physical health as much as you. Did you also mention that you take care to choose environmentally friendly food? That's wonderful. Perfection is unattainable, but if people would try as hard as you anyway, we'd be better off...

Personally, I don't have a problem with anyone posting about powered bikes on LCF. The focus here has always been mostly on the car free lifestyle. If a powered bicycle enables someone to be more car free, I'd be interested in reading about it. That would also be true for stuff like kayaks, burros, chariots, zeppelins, rocket sleds and rickshaws. Most of us ride plain old bicycles, but variety is the spice of life, right?

c'mon people. Of course electric bikes are part of the LCF culture. When the Stokemonkey finally ships again, this forum is going to ejaculate gushy prose all over everyone. Most of that, admittedly, will go down in the Utility forum, but you can't tell me folks here won't be purring.

I live in SF these days, so give me a Brompton Nano, the electric bike you can fold and take on a MUNI bus, and I'll be your new best friend. This would be a completely different city if I simply didn't care how steep a gradient was.

Like I am seriously pi**ed about the electric bike forum moderator who has a sticky on gasoline powered bicycles (http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=444988)

You guys live car free. Is a gas powered bike a bicycle, a moped or a motor bike?

I'm into this bike thing for the green, I have trouble with someone who shows up with a moped and says their green because they are not driving an SUV. It's like a deer hunter who says it's okay to hunt because they only shoot to wound.

Talk tome

Technically, a gas powered bicycle is a motorcycle, not a bicycle.

However, as far as being "green", a clean running, quiet-muffler moped getting 100 mpg is clearly better for the environment than a huge 12 mpg SUV. If you were to replace half the automobiles on the road with mopeds, think of the extra space on the roads and the reduced need for parking.

Of course, anybody who has ever been to Taiwan knows what moped world looks like; noisy, dirty, chaos. This might sound crazy, but I prefer Car-congested USA streets to the madness of the Taiwanese streets with those noisy, filthy, angry little mopeds clogging up intesections. It would be a huge step backwards if we went in that direction.

http://static.flickr.com/48/149324292_fe5bf36104.jpg http://bp1.blogger.com/_api-VQFLpfA/RpkHl7Wr-8I/AAAAAAAAAPg/Z0SIJZEzfYY/s400/054.JPG

Wouldn't part of the problem there be the population density?

I've thought about a moped or motorcycle to help for the few odd times a bike isn't doable.

Technically, a gas powered bicycle is a motorcycle, not a bicycle.

]

Wouldn't any motor powered bicycle be a motor-bicycle? An shortened would be a motorcycle?
It is word games. What matters is, do regular bike people occasionally have questions about electric/gas motor-bicycles? And the answer for me is yes.

So let me get this straight. You're upset about an off-topic thread?

So then you go to a completely different sub-forum, and make an off-topic thread to complain?

Maybe a mod will move this to Forum Suggestions & User Assistance (http://www.bikeforums.net/forumdisplay.php?f=160).
Well, the admin decided to do it.