Motorized Bicycle - Episode 014

[05 July 2007]

It's taken a while for me to get around to anything.

I ordered a Worksman American Cruiser some time ago when the weather began to warm, but it took two months to be delivered. The options I chose were a 3-speed hub, a front drum brake, the heavy-duty crank bearings, blue paint, fenders and a large front basket.
Various notes follow below.

The bike arrived in three boxes: one contained the front basket and parts, another contained the front wheel and attached handbrake, and the third contained the rest of the bike and parts. The frame is held inside the box with the rear wheel already attached, but without the fork attached. The box containing the bike had holes in it where the rear axle nuts had poked through. The frame had a couple spots where it already had minor nicks in the paint.

The (threaded 1-inch) fork comes packed inside the box, with the headset around the steerer tube. The headset bearings come with a rust preventative on them but they need proper grease, and none is included so you will need to find that yourself. I put the bike together (without headset grease) just to test-ride it briefly and found that the front drum brake had barely any stopping power at all--and if the brake lever is squeezed too hard, the cable will pull through the included cheap cable stop. Also the coaster brake made sad grinding noises.

I went to remove the rear wheel at one point and it was REALLY difficult to get out. I kept looking at it thinking there was some other part holding it in, and there wasn't. Eventually I managed to pull it out of the back end and found that the frame was pinching the back wheel. The hub itself was about 4.75 inches wide, but the frame dropouts were only 4.25 inches wide.

After buying some Park's grease and a 15mm cone wrench, I could put what parts I had together properly. The headset bearings got a bead ofgrease around the races and reassembled. ...The front drum brake I took apart and looked inside, but all there was to do was wipe out the inside of the drum and the shoes with some solvent. When you take off the left cover, the bearings and axle stay fastened together. When I opened up the rear hub, there was definitely some white grease in it, but not much. Most places online tell you to pack the hub as full as possible, so that's what I did.

I went to put the back wheel into the frame again, to test with switching gears and braking with it just upside-down on the bike--and I couldn't get the wheel back in. I stand 6'2", and have no problems lifting 200+ lbs--but working alone, I couldn't do it in twenty minutes of struggling with it. I hadn't planned on bothering with it today, but at this point I decided to go ahead and try bending the frame.

I took the bike apart enough to put the drive ring on the back wheel, and had to cut a second set of spoke slots in the drive ring--eight of the spokes lined up perfectly, but the other eight were one-eighth to one-quarter inch away and there was no way I was going to push 11-gauge spokes that far out of line. I did get the frame chainstay bent enough to accomodate the wheel with drive ring, that part is possible--but it ended up being only a minor problem.

To try to see if I could make the frame work as-is, I had bought some taller handlebars and a tilted-back seatpost. Under hard braking the taller handlebars wouldn't keep from rotating in the stem, and the bent-back seatpost bent back when I sat on it and bounced! It had a little "reinforcing strut" at the bend, but wasn't made nearly as thick as the straight Worksman seatpost, and it bent right where it entered the frame seat tube. Even with the extended handlebars and the straight Worksman seatpost extended fully, I found that the frame was way too small overall to be comfortable for me. It felt like I was sitting on top of a ten-foot ladder - a rolling ladder. The largest size frame that Worksman makes is a 20", and I'd need at least a 23" or 24".

At this point I decided that I didn't want to deal with trying to find another frame with a riding position that I already knew I wouldn't be enjoying anyway. I did test-fit the engine mount onto the axle and it appeared that there was just barely enough axle length on the Nexus 3-speed to hold the motor mount yoke, but I never did bother to mount the actual engine to the frame and ride it. I first tried to find an easy way to attach the mount directly to the frame (to escape the common problems with changing flat tires that so many other people had mentioned) and gave up and decided to make an entire frame from scratch with measurements that would fit me.