I made this motorized bike for my Third Burningman adventure. I called it the Hardley Davidson. That’s Hardley with a ‘D’. Get it?
Even though this was scratch built, the Department of Mutant Vehicles wouldn’t grant me a license.
The butthead laky I was dealing with felt it looked too much like a motorcycle, so I zip tied on some barbies for a parade look and tried again.
Again they refused to grant me a license. I gave him attitude. He whipped out an instamatic camera, took my picture and told me to scram. I asked a real cop what he thought.
He liked it a lot, but he wasn’t handing out licenses. So I ripped off he Barbies and drove around with no license playing cat and mouse with the Buringman wanta-be cops for
the rest of the festival. I felt like the Marlin Brando character in ‘The wild one’ movie.’ I was the original Burningmandito! Screw the playa law.
With a top speed of 35 mph and a straight pipe for exhaust, I was a loud, obnoxious holy terror that whole week, and everyone loved it!
I took it one more year, then it sat outside for many years. One day I drug it inside, changed the chain, fired up the motor and decided to do some mods.
I changed it around a bit going for the speedster look.
It as fast but not very comfortable, so I modified it once again.
Here’s my old tenant Wayno posing on the new rendition.
When I moved into my home I found this 1947 ‘Twin City’ wood box in my shop. It came from the local frozen pea factory. Had to have it on the bike.
I added a cushioned seat back and bent up a length of EMT electrical conduit for the handle bars.
It’s a hoot to ride around my neighborhood. It’s illegal as hell but so far no cop has pulled me over.
I used bronze bushings for bearings on both rigs. I used turned down roller blade wheels for idler wheels. The clutch handle and rod came off the original edger.
Notice I borrowed the same drive-train design as my first Burningman trike below. The 13 tooth 1/2″ shaft sprocket is salvaged from the rare chain-drive self-propelled lawn mower.
I found the big pulley at my local hardware store, but these days both the pulley and sprocket are hard to come by. Maybe Amazon?
