The Vintage Mini Bike Family Photo Scrapbook


"My dad built this bike for me around 1967. We didn’t know bikes like this existed, only knew about the typical 3HP minibike. Not to be outdone he decided 8HP would be better for his kid and purchased a brand new B & S recoil start engine. Then he built a heavy frame in the same shape as the little bikes, just bigger. An engineer, he duplicated the single coil spring front end that many of them had. We had a couple of Piper Cub wheels and tires laying around his “junkyard”, so those became the minibike wheels after he welded a huge sprocket on the back one. A heavy duty chain went to a jackshaft on the frame, then he engineered the ultimate “transmission”, a foot controlled variable ratio belt drive torque converter. Slight pressure on the pedal gave low gearing for fast starts, then you gradually increased pressure for higher gearing. The 0-35 mph time was about a half second."

-Fred W
 
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