FILENAMES: minibike.jpg DESCRIPTION: This is a picture of a mini bike posted by John Stevenson . John provided the following description: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is one of a series of small mini bikes I built in the 70's. This one called Baby Benthrop was built around 1975 from one I build a lot earlier but more utility.To get an idea of scale that's my son posing on it at age one. The frame is a Triumph Herald propshaft, all the small tube is electrical conduit and the Engine is a single speed Anka made for the ill fated Ariel 3 trike. The original engine had a centrifugal clutch but this was it's weak point so I fitted a manual single plate clutch from an Excelsior autocycle and this also gave me the chace to get an extra reduction range in through a counter shaft to the other side. Front chain guard is missing in the photo. The tank is off a NSU moped, seat is home made and the exhaust pipe is 17 pieces of conduit welded up and cleaned up so it looks like a bent pipe.The 8" braked wheels are from a WW2 paratroopers wellbike. Although it was very small, about four feet long and a foot high it was quite capable of carrying an adult, in fact it was built for doing just that at race meetings. In later years I also built two racing sidecar outfits with the racing platform chairs. These were based on Raleigh Roma scooters which were unique in that they were small motorcycles inside cowlings and not the usual unit construction single sided scooter layout like the Lambretta and Vespa.I have photo's of these somewhere but not to hand. These were 80cc and ran on 10" wheels through the original 3 speed gearbox. All that was actually done was to cut them down to size and build new forks as they had scooter type forks and I wanted motorcycle type. We also restricted the throttle and had a lockable top gear as nothing mechanical had been altered and they were still capable of around 55 mph possibly more with a lightweight six year old on board !!!