Building a µGP racer. Day 1..

I teased some pictures at the end of the last post.  So lets dive in to building the first µGP bike.

The boxes that arrived today.  

Contained within the larger box is supposed to be a grey Sims Torch freestyle BMX bike.  The smaller box, is a motored bike engine kit.  Excuse me while I break out the boxcutters...

Uh. that doesn't look grey to me...  But hey, this is going to be a racebike.  Who actually cares?

Of passing interest, this is the second mail order bicycle I've unpacked and assembled in a week.  The packing job on this one is really quite good, and the carton arrived in good shape.  Good job Sports Authority.  

Five minutes later, lots of clipping of zip ties.  And the thing is nearly free.  

I missed taking a shot here.  I didn't install the front pegs, and I removed the crankarms.  We won't be needing either of those.  Technically, we won't need the saddle or handlebars either.  But bikes are quite inconvenient to move around if they're not at least mostly complete.  Even at my top build speed, this bike will still be BMX like for another week or two.  

Lets get to box number two.  

How about what's inside?

It came with some directions, but those aren't going to be very useful for us.  We're going to be driving the wrong side of the rear wheel, we won't have any pedals, and our frames won't even fit the motors.  I'd trash them, but they're color, and well done.  

Inside the largest box there's the motor.  Along with the handlebar controls, the chain, and sprocket.  

The skinny box at the top has the exhaust in it.  We're going to need that to do the mock-up   

I'm going to start with the bit that made me most proud.  Look at how well the drive sprocket lines up with the stock drive chain.

And then I messed up the settings on my camera, please excuse the blown out parts of the following images.  

Here's a view from the front.  The motor, mounted there, is almost exactly the same width as the footpegs.  

And here's what it looks like from the side.

It was 11:00pm, and I need to make a hardware store run.  So I quit for the night.  The next days work will be removing the bottom bracket entirely, and getting the drive sprocket in place.

So day 1: Built bike, mocked up engine.  

I really want to work on the fairing  but I need the mechanical bits sorted first.