I've seen some of you guys talk about e-bikes i was wondering if anybody has experience with the small gasoline engines such as what they market at BikeBerry ? I have zero experience with anything like that, but my brother has always been pretty mechanical (building dune buggies and such as a kid and he's basically the family mechanic now) and I think we could build what I'd need IF it's a practical solution. I live on a hill in a very hilly town with MUPs down in the valley along the river. getting down there is easy enough BUT it would always require a serious climb to get home. I can get a trailer from Tractor Supply to transport my trike for $600, i don't expect that i could put an engine on for that price but if it wasn't completely out of reach it might be a fun project... thoughts??

Bike don't have engines, mopeds do. Try alt forums or e bike forums here.

You could probably find a suitable used trailer on Craigs List for way under that $600 price. I agree that bikes don't have motors and, depending on local laws, it may be illegal to use a motorized bike/trike on your MUP even if the motor isn't in use at the time.

Hidden sub forum: https://www.bikeforums.net/electric-b...-bicycles.html

Thanks guys, i'll certainly check the laws, i assumed that as long as the engine was not in use it would be ok to carry the dead weight along on the path. I'm not a huge fan of CraigsList, mostly because when i look for it I always get the Pittsburgh,PA listings which is approximately 70 miles away and does not interest me even a tiny bit. however i WOULD drive down there for a good enough deal. the $600 TSC trailer was just something i know is almost always available. I've got myself about half convinced that the motorized tricreational vehicle(yes i made that up) would make more sense than throwing a ton of money at a complete overhaul/modification of the current drivetrain and very possibly still not be able to get home under my own power . I will seek input at the suggested sub forum Thanks again

Take a look at banggood.com for cheap Chinese-manufactured solutions. They probably have a "weedeater" engine that's made to mount on a bicycle and uses a splined roller to drive a tire.

Velosolex of France makes a moped with a friction driven front wheel.



https://sites.google.com/site/velosolexamerica/

This site has a sub-forum that is for gas engines, but it's not very good really.
Check out motoredbikes.com or motorbicycling.com; they're pretty much about only gas-engined bicycles.

The China 2-stroke kits are very cheap and have some issues right out of the box.

I had a gas-engined bicycle for a while just for fun; it was entertaining but had some big drawbacks as well (even tho it was one of the more expensive kits out there). It was not one of the China kits, nor was it a 2-stroke engine.

The setup that works best is the Staton/NuVinci one, because the engine drives the rear wheel through the NuVinci variable-ratio hub. These little engines make VERY little torque until they get pretty high up into their 7000-RPM ranges, and so they really need a variable-ratio transmission to work through. If you try to start up a slight hill or into a 15-mph wind, they can't do it. They don't have enough torque at low RPMs.
........
The NuVinci kit is the only one that has that feature--and they don't sell it any more. I'm not sure of the reason they stopped, you'd have to ask on the forums above. I know that it was the most-expensive gas-engine kit there was, when they were selling it. NuVinci hubs are still available for $250 and $350 but I don't know what other parts were involved.

If you have hills and you don't have to go far, then you'd probably do better with an electric set-up. Electric motors make their maximum torque at zero RPM, so they have LOTS of hill-climbing torque already. What they don't have is long-distance endurance, and buying big high-capacity batteries to help that ends up costing lots and lots of money. Getting 10~15 miles out of a decent battery pack is not impossible tho.

I think that gas engines can be way cheaper and more useful (just like with cars!) but the engineering required is a lot more complicated than it is for adding an electric motor to a bicycle.

As for "bicycles don't have motors!", well, some people are old and crabby and have no imagination.
Just because they live a bitter and humdrum life doesn't mean you have to.

Check your state laws. Here, adding a gasoline engine to a bike makes it a non-compliant vehicle that cannot be used on public roads.

I'm not sure I follow you...
You live up a hill.
You have a trike.
You want to ride down in the valley.
You're thinking about adding a gas engine to your trike, to help with the climb back up to where you live.
Correct?

Thing with combustion engines is that they don't scale down that well WRT fuel consumption, noise and emissions.
An engine small enough to only add a little power is hopelessly inefficient. And an engine big enough to be a decent engine is really too powerful to work well with an otherwise stock bicycle. By the time you have a bicycle that's beefy enough to do well with a sensibly sized motor, well, then you have a fairly sucky moped...
If your trike has a single front wheel, consider getting a front wheel with an electric motor in it.

Here is one squirrels can run thru ..

after doing some more reading I decided a gas engine is impractical for my application, I'm looking toward gathering info on electric, i need torque not long distance or speed, if i was to install an electric wheel it would most likely only see use to get me up the hill to home... yes my trike is a delta(single front wheel, currently20" i plan to change the fork and switch to 26" to match the rear)but I have reservations about front wheel drive, it seems to me that with the extreme load my heavy trike along with my fat ass(almost 1/4 ton total) provide that an electric front wheel would lack traction, i'm thinking all the weight would be rearward with that front wheel scrubbing off tread daily. i may be way off base but it seems to me i need to get power on a rear wheel, then i get to thinking "if i have power on one rear wheel and my feeble pedaling on the other(yepp it currently only drives thru the right rear wheel) will i be fighting to hold a straight line"?

You'll get more response if you re-post this latest query in the ebikes section. But unless you're going up wicked-steep grades or you're doing this on unpaved roads, you'll have plenty of front wheel traction for a typical 250W hub motor. With bigger motors you might run into problems, but I really don't recommend going any bigger than 250W for most pedal-assist applications.

But expecting to only use it for returning up the hill and ignoring it otherwise ...has one problem. You'll be hauling around significant added weight for battery and motor while not using it. Pretty sure you won't be totally ignoring it.

I'm not a weight weenie, I weigh 350 pounds, the trike itself already weighs over 100. ignoring electric except for the homeward climb is EXACTLY what i would do

Well, among the "old and crabby" are most state's DMV's that consider motorized bicycles, particularly those with gas engines, a motorcycle and subject to the same licensing, registration, driver's license endorsements, etc. Also, most states are old and crabby enough to forbid motorized bicycles on MUPS.

Not experience, but I've looked into also and have a couple of observations.

Using a small gasoline engine makes practical sense since it's cheaper, and a gas tank carries a lot more energy than a battery. However, the cheap 40-50 cc engines have a reputation of wearing out quickly so I think it's a false economy. The noise and heat are drawbacks. Engineering it is a little tricky because you have to mount it somehow down around your feet, and it seems to me that there's not a lot of room there if you want to retain comfortable pedaling, with pedal assist being pretty much out of the question, and finally I have to wonder if most bike frames are going to handle the vibrations long term.

In short, it appears to be a short term novelty modification. In fact, if you read message boards where people have done this, the guys bragging about the durability have gone 400-600 miles. I don't know about those folks, but 500 miles is a month's worth of riding for a cyclist, so that's not really a good application. So, personally, I've never really been tempted by the idea.

If it matters to you those little 2-stroke engines put out fairly high levels of pollutants compared to cars even and why they are banned in larger production motorcycles for the street here and in other countries. Links for reading here. https://www.google.com/search?q=2+st...utf-8&oe=utf-8

Decent 50 cc two stroke can go over 20.000 km before needing a rebuild.
Full rebuild cost 50 euros here, for my 50 cc scooter.

For the OP's use - low mileage, so no worries about autonomy, I'd go electric.

Or HTFU and ride a regular bicycle up hills!

Out of curiosity, what is the ballpark price of a good 50cc two stroke that lasts 12,500 miles? Buying a kit engine or even decent engine from Harbor Freight, I wouldn't expect it to last anywhere near that.

I'd go electric also, chain drive if I wanted to spend the $$ or one of the wheel kits for convenience.

no input on building....but my observation is that the cheapy chinese add on setups are noisy, smelly, don't seem to have enough brakes , are generally obnoxious and in my area generally ridden by people with a general lack of regard for any one else on the road.

Electric seems best fitted to the OP's needs and this is the forum Electric Bikes - Bike Forums

My second hand one cost about 300 euros with all the taxes.

Decent second hand ones are below 500 euros. Not sure about the new one pricing.

If there's no higher taxes, or licence requirements for over 50 cc in your country, I'd recommend a 125 cc four stroke. Use less fuel and have a higher top end speed.

Ah. The gas motors that DIY'ers have been using cost $60-$100.

I think that a 50cc bike would be a "scooter" here, but a 125 a motorcycle requiring license tags, registration, drivers license and so on.

??? A trailer to transport your trike? That is very unclear. As to the rest of it... I'm with the posters suggesting electric propulsion. I'm thinking you need 500Watts (or more) and 250W is a waste of time. Especially if you want to increase the wheel size to 26". But a wheel is not an entity unto itself. Wheels function as part of a system with the fork, fork rake, headtube length, head-tube angle... ... you just can't change a front wheel from 20" to 26" without some significant effects on handling. What was the trike designed for originally? A poster made the observation that small 2 and/or 4 stroke engines are smelly and polluting, and this may or may not deter someone who doesn't give much credence to the effect that small things have on the environment, but there is this: small bike engines put the cyclist (if you can still call them that) in intimate contact with gasoline, 2 stroke oil and their exhaust products. They will kill YOU, the user, slowly for sure, but you will die sooner using one than otherwise and not just because you will be missing out on beneficial aerobic exercise. FWIW.

I briefly owned a Bike Machine tire-drive gas engine but found it clunky and not user friendly.


I knew a guy with a front-mounted gear-driven one and he'd built his front wheel on a Sturmey-Archer 3-speed hub. That thing rocked but I don't know about durability.