Grandpa's Braggin' Again.

Every grandpa brags about his grandkids... so here I go again. 

Just before I left Modesto to return to Argentina a couple of months and exactly 61 preaching engagements ago, my 15 year old grandson, Evan, was trying to convince me if he could get a gasoline powered weed-eater motor... he had figured out a way to make it power his bicycle.  He is always loaded with wild ideas so I listened and said, "Maybe."  Now his dad just sent me this message and video.

About 3 months ago or so Evan mentioned to me that he wanted to get a little gas powered weed-eater motor, modify it, and mount it on his bike.  I thought it sounded a bit tricky, and we really don't have that many proper tools for that kind of stuff.  But he kept insisting, so one Saturday we went looking at garage sales and found this perfectly good Homelite 30cc gas powered weed-eater for only $20.   It was in such great shape that I almost hated to see it destroyed, especially since I really had my doubts about the possibility of any success in this endeavor.  But Evan started tearing into it, chopping off this and that and mounting a steel peg to the drive shaft.  Then he took some shelving rails that I had in the garage and hadn't used.  He cut and bent and drilled them to make a motor mount that would hold the engine over the rear wheel.  Unfortunately, we forgot to make sure we knew which direction the motor spun before disassembling it, so he mounted it on the wrong side of the bike.  We couldn't figure out why it wouldn't start.  So after a number of tries, we decided to push the bike backwards and then lift the rear-end and, sure enough, it fired-up just fine and spun the rear-wheel full-speed backwards.  It didn't take him long to modify the motor mount and put the engine on the other side.  And off he went! 

Please Check out the 2 1/2 minute video... just click on http://vimeo.com/54736014 and enjoy. (You might have to copy and paste the URL in your browser.)

Proud Grandpa Ralph