Welcome to CycleMotors.com - My name is Iain Mackay, I am a fan of "Motor cycles" of all kinds especially ones with pedals. I am from Auckland, New Zealand, I operate my web sites from my home which is located in Auckland City's smallest suburb of Grafton. My main web sites are Moped.com & Mopeds.Com,  I am using them to incubate a bunch of other web sites and help them to grow. I have had a life long interest in small engine vehicles, and most of my web presence is dedicated to promoting their greater use for the benefit of the environment and future generations. I'm promoting cyclemotors as a viable, proven and fun solution to energy conservation. Almost anyone can ride a bike, and anyone can use a Cycle-Motor to assist their effort and vastly increase their bikes practical operating radius and overall performance envelope, hopefully encouraging them on occasion to replace a journey that might normally be made by car. I want to promote the use of small engine vehicles in the fight against global warming, pollution, and congestion, every time a car journey is replaced with a moped journey, the world is better off, less fuel is used, less co2 is released, and congestion is eased. What I'm talking about is Global Warming and Ozone depletion, and it's a problem that's not going away. We see it every year getting worse as the ozone hole over Antarctica gets bigger, its scary, and I want to do something about it. One of the best things for destroying ozone is HCFC's, or Hydro Fluorocarbons, they are still used in lots of refrigeration systems, I have worked in that industry and watched engineers dump a whole charge of R12 HCFC in to the air just because they couldn't be bothered recovering it, but we're seeing the effect of that kind of behavior now in mad weather patterns, and melting polar caps, fire storms and floods. Now don't get me wrong, I'm no expert, but this is something I believe in, and for the benefit of future generations and all the other life we share this planet with, I am doing my bit by promoting the use of small engine vehicles as a viable, proven and fun solution to energy conservation. I have a garage full of Motorized Bicycles, and I know better than most how they can vastly improve a bicycles performance without detracting unduly from its essence. If  I had it my way, I would make it legal for any bicycle to have an engine or motor of up to one horse power, (750 watts), without the complications and expense of licensing and insurance, the current legal status of motorized bikes is a very grey area, and is holding back an exciting new industry. There are some pioneers out there who have put their money where their mouth is in developing modern Cycle-Motors, companies like Revopower, and Morini, are using modern design and manufacturing techniques to reinvent the wheel, (literally).  It's not so hard to achieve, its the kind of product they're using in parts of Europe to combat congestion. Get more people out of cars and on to mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles, and it leaves more room on the road for the vehicles that have to be there, like buses and ambulances, couriers and taxis.

Apart from being a Motor cycle backwards, a Cycle-Motor is an early generation of moped, the moped evolved from the Cycle-Motor and Auto-Cycle. A Cycle-Motor is exactly what its name implies, any sort of bike motor, gas or electric, that fits on a standard bicycle for the purpose of assisting the riders cycling effort. Cycle-Motors were particularly common post World War 2, where simple economical transport was needed to mobilize the war weary nations of Europe and Asia. What could be simpler than bolting a small engine onto a bicycle, it's not exactly rocket science, but it was a period of competitive hybrid vehicle design where just about every type, location and configuration of engine was tried, including 4 stroke, and diesel. Early Cycle-Motors used small industrial engines driven by, belt, chain, friction, even driven pedals were used with great success by Suzuki. Most Cycle-Motors were sold separate from the bike which it is assumed the buyer already had, and for a while power assisted bicycles must have been quite a common sight in the cities of Europe and Asia. Unfortunately, as the economies recovered suddenly the Cycle-Motor was seen as a lower class product, people preferred a new purpose designed Moped. Many Cycle-Motor manufacturers who couldn't change went out of business, although there are also many stories of success. Suzuki and Honda moved into the Motorcycle business, by selling Cycle-Motors. I think its amazing to think that companies such as Honda and Ducati started out by making Cycle-Motors! In France mopeds are called Cyclomoteur, and undoubtedly the most successful Cyclomoteur ever was the French Solex, it's configuration placed the engines weight over the front axle, giving the Solex or Velosolex superb balance and steering. In the early days many engine types, configurations, and locations were tried, and with the advantage of hindsight we can look back and see which ideas survived. It's simplicity which made the Solex one of the  most numerous vehicles on the planet in its day. In Italy mopeds are called Ciclomotore, and Italy's most famous Cycle-Motor is the Ducati Cucciolo, (Italian for puppy), a small auxiliary motor for bicycles first sold in an assembly kit to be attached to any bicycle. In Japan, Honda were the early adopters, and Soichiro Honda started his Honda Technical Research Institute in 1946 by renovating small industrial engines used by the Japanese army, and mounting them onto bicycles, by the early 1950's Honda were making their own engines, and were supplying 70% of the market, and the rest as they say is history.

I got this bike motor direct from the Italian manufacturer, and it has now survived 2 years very hard use, including a touring holiday all over the South Island. I wanted to find  a Modern Cycle-Motor that I could buy over the net, I found quite a few, many based on friction drive industrial engines. But I wanted something purpose built, and the one that caught my eye was the FM128 Bicicletta, mine is number 916 off the production line, here's a picture of mine on the first bike it wore out. After 2 years of hard use on and off road the back wheel rim was in need of a rebuild, and the free wheel had given up, so I decided to do a tear down review for the web. Its design is based around replacing the rear wheel on virtually any standard bicycle without modification, and I believe it could be fitted to any bike. It weighs only 6 kg, yet puts 1 h.p. at the back wheel whenever you need it. That's enough power to coast up most hills, and conquer any hill by pedal assist. The bike engine on this page is what you might call my long term test engine, it's on it's second wheel rim, and the Marin mountain bike is the second bike it's been on. That's the beauty of this idea, it fits on virtually any bicycle right out of the box. It does have one design flaw which can only be minimized, not eliminated. Although it's weight is only 6 kg, it really is in the worst place possible, because all that 6 kg weight is right on the back axle, and is there-fore "unsprung weight", which is bad. I've found a way around the unsprung weight problem by using a big fat high profile, Maxxis 2.5" Kevlar downhill mountain bike tire, the tire is the bikes suspension, and protects the engine/axle unit from damage. Say you find yourself going over insanely high jumps, or showing off, each time you land the back wheel hits hard, the big tire soaks up the first part of the impact but can't always protect the rim, so the the rim eventually gets damaged, but the wheel hub and axle live to ride again after the bike shop wires you up a new rim. And that's another cool thing about these little engines, you just take the hub to any bicycle repair shop, and ask them to wire up a 4 cross spoke wheel for you, they will almost certainly need special spokes made, but this isn't unusual. So the FM128 is a pretty bomb proof little Cycle Motor, is rugged enough to go off-road, and even do jumps, and the reason mine is so rusty is because it's a hoot on the beach, but there is a problem, and it's why I'm writing about the FM128, rather than trying to sell you one. Before I can tell you what the problem is, I have to explain a little about how the FM128 works. The 2 stroke 28 cc engine is heavily restricted to give 1 h.p. at only 6000 rpm, its carburetor is smaller than some model airplane engines I have. For me however, 1 h.p. is sufficient, and any more power would defeat the original purpose, that being to assist the riders effort when necessary, also in stock condition the FM128 is capable of really impressive economy figures, something like 200 miles per gallon. The transmission is compact and uses 2 clutches, the first is on the crankshaft and is a wet centrifugal type which basically allows the clutch to slip for extended periods, but one time I was towing my brother along the beach on a bmx bike, the clutch must have got too hot, it made a bad smell so we stopped, that's the only time I've had a problem, and I was obviously abusing it. The second clutch is a freewheel type in the drive train which allows the rider to disengage the engine and gearbox simply by pedaling the bike faster than the engine is driving it, the freewheel disengages and the bike then rides like any other bike with no more resistance than normal. It's the freewheel clutch that makes this little engine so good at what it is designed to do, i.e. convert a bicycle into a moped and back again as simply as possible, and without losing any of the inherent benefits of a pure bicycle along the way. Unfortunately the freewheel clutch on my unit developed a fault, after about a year it froze solid and hasn't disengaged since, this now means in order to coast I have to wait for the engines centrifugal clutch to disengage by slowing the engine to an idle, it also means the gearbox is always turning, which adds to rolling resistance, I haven't reported this problem to the manufacturer, because I'm hoping the problem is a one off.  To be fair, when I first got the engine I forgot to put oil in the gearbox, I test rode it around the park before I remembered, this might have been the reason the freewheel failed prematurely, in any case the bike still goes just as well as ever under power, and the point always was to run this one to destruction, then tear it to bits and put lot's more pictures and stories on Cycle-Motor.com.

I tried to find out just how many bicycles there are on the planet, my research indicated there could be up to 4 billion bicycles in existence world wide. That's a huge market for anyone who wants to make some kind of universal bicycle engine, bike motor, or Cycle-Motor. In the best Kiwi tradition I decided to build my own using garden tools and an old Specialized Rock Hopper mountain bike. I wondered how to build a motorized bicycle?, so I looked for a motorized bicycle kit, or motorized bicycle plan on the Internet. It turned out I'm not the first guy to bolt a string trimmer engine on a bicycle, they are an awesome power unit for any motorized bike project. I found a number of motorized bicycle conversion kits on the web, but they looked so simple it seemed silly to put good money on something I could make from scratch. My first bike to basically test the concept and location of the engine has proved very successful and reliable, its just like riding a bike with something on the rear carrier, it raise's the bikes center of gravity slightly, but adds about one horse power to the back wheel. I used the method of driving the front sprocket of a mountain bike, with practice you can go through the gears and go very fast, although whenever the engine is in use the pedals are turning, which can take a bit of getting used to. If you want to build one, buy a trimmer with a clutch, and look for the Ryobi Mini-Tiller gadget at your hardware store, it has the perfect reduction and is the one pictured on my bike. I used a 25 cc Homelite engine, and instead of hacking it about, I simply mounted it on the shaft of the mini tiller. The only modification was bending the mini tiller shaft into a kind of S shape so the the engine was suspended in space above the rear wheel. The gear box is uses a worm reduction, so the output is at 90° to the engine drive shaft enabling the engine to be mounted on the center line of the bike. I decided to buy a homelite string trimmer simply because it had this cool little gas engine, then one day I found the mini tiller attachment on sale at the hardware store. It had a cool worm gear box of about 160:1, and I figured that it could drive the front sprocket of a 21 speed mountain bike on at least one of the 3 rings, and use the other 2 rings for riding. I bent the gearbox shaft so the worm gearbox was ahead of the pedal spindle, and within the frame of an old specialized rock hopper mountain bike. I welded and riveted flat steel sheet mounts to the frame holding the gearbox securely in the frame as I knew the torque from the 1.5 h.p engine would be substantial. I used a standard freewheel sprocket driving the largest front sprocket,  this meant I could pedal the bike without trying to turn the gearbox, which being a worm gear is impossible, it also enabled the bike to be pedaled faster than the engine can drive it, and that worked well. The gearbox shaft had a flexible drive the same size as the trimmer it came off, so mounting the engine required nothing but a file to cut a groove in the gearbox shaft for the location dowel. The bottom of the range homelite trimmer has no clutch, so neither did my first power cycle, but with the engine at idle, and a 164:1 gearbox, the the bike only moves along at walking speed. So for the big test, using the rear brake lever as a throttle, I rode the bike slowly while reaching around for the pull starter cord, the engine went first pull and immediately accelerated the bike effortlessly up the hill outside my house. Anyway to cut a long story short it actually worked quite well, it was so powerful it eventually warped the cycles back wheel with its immense torque, but not before hours of use proving the usefulness and sheer fun of motorized bicycles. Its hanging in the loft now, and the wheels are on something else, but I bring it out once in while for a laugh.

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