This is a direct continuation of the article I wrote months ago about my motorized bike build.
It all started three months ago. I had been building a motorized bicycle for fun and to have a fun, reliable ride around town. I was hoping this would be a simple process. Buy the engine, assemble it, then go. Unfortunately, this was not the case. A simple wish for freedom turned into three months of pain. Almost every single thing that could possibly go wrong went wrong during this building process.
My engine blew up.
I stripped countless screws.
Broke a pair of diagonal cutters and pliers.
Spilled gasoline all over myself.
I quite literally blew a hole into an aluminum piston.
This was all pretty demotivating. In fact, I had completely given up on this motorized bike project until a few weeks ago. Honestly, I always wanted to finish this build. I just never had the motivation to start again. A few weeks ago, I finally caved in and decided to begin working on this bike again with a newfound passion and hope for success.
Resilience.
I figure that the name for this bike is fairly self-explanatory. This has been probably one of the most frustrating projects I’ve ever worked on. Is it the most difficult? Probably not. Is it the most complex? No. But this project had me branching out of my comfort zone as an electrical engineer and diving deep into the world of automotive tech.
In my last article, I wasn’t too fond of BikeBerry as a motorized bike parts distributor. The truth is, they sell overpriced parts. Almost everything they sell can be easily found on Amazon for cheaper. Now, there is something to be said about quality assurance – it’s true that BikeBerry parts are typically going to be higher quality than parts you buy on Amazon. However, despite me ordering my motorized bike kit directly from BikeBerry, I still had extreme trouble getting the kit up and running, and I noticed little to no quality difference compared to parts bought through Amazon.
Progress so far
In my last article on this subject, I talked about how I was able to get the bike running before it blew up on me. As of right now, I haven’t been able to get Resilience running ever since. I’ve gotten close – but not there. My electrical system is intact and I’ve even gotten internal combustion – there’s just a leak in the engine casing which greatly reduces the compression of the engine. Once this is fixed, I’m hoping the engine will run.
This has been by far my most frustrating project yet, and I’m really excited to continue working towards success building this motorized bike.
