When my wife and I got married we made a special trip to Reno, Nevada to see this machine... a 1920 Briggs and Stratton Flyer. My dad worked for Bill Harrah back in the 1960's and he told me about the Flyer. Melissa ( my wife) encouraged me to be build one and this is how it turned out... The first picture above is what we built our 1920 C W Flyer from (we knew the size of the wheels so we figured a scale and used that to scale it to full size). Pretty darn close to the original. Everything on it is hand built at our shop. This was my first, I guess you might say, Hot Rod project. The Briggs and Stratton Flyer was originally built by A.O. Smith & Co. (believe it or not they are still in business making motors for water heaters and HVAC systems) as early as 1914-15. The concept was to promote the motorwheel, which was intended to power a bicycle (Merkle and Wall autowheel designed and started producing motorwheels in England as early as 1908 for bicycles)and ended up being marketed as cheap transportation for college students. Briggs purchased the rights for the Flyer and produced the odd ball 5 wheeled machines from 1918-25. In 1925 they sold the rights to a company called Auto Red Bug and they redesigned them for electric power. Auto Red Bug built their electric flyers through the first part of depression till the company went bankrupt in 1933 and sold the production rights to Indian Motorcycles who built them as amu*****t park rides in 1933 and then ceased production for lack of sales. The Briggs & Stratton Flyer was cheap transportation (could be purchased for $125.00) very economical to run (80 miles to 1/2 gallon of gasoline) simple to work on (2 HP motor, direct drive off the camshaft in the motor, and no gears and no reverse you just lifted the wheel off the ground using the hand lever in front of the seat. To go, with the motor running you then push the lever forward which drops the motorwheel on the ground and give it throttle your nuteral is when the hand lever is pulled back which lifts the motorwheel off the ground, your motor is always running) and quite fast (between 20 to 25 mph). This year's summer project was to switch ours from friction drive to chain drive. We are using a 5 Hp Wisconsin industrial motor and with friction drive it would eat the tires up so fast that it was not economical to run through the show season. Darned thing ended up sitting around our shop way too much for my liking!! We are not done with it, but getting close. With this gearing we can do almost 30 -35 mph...and with the 3/4 gallon tank we can almost go 70 miles on one tank of fuel. I had a smaller gear (80 tooth) on the wheel side before switching to the larger gear, shown in the picture above (now 112 tooth, There is a 15 tooth gear on the engine side) and I was followed down our rural road by a friend of mine in his pickup truck at almost 45 mph!! Shortly after we took the above photo Clayton and I tried it out. We probably went about 200 feet before the chain fell off. Needless to say we needed to change a few things. We welded the bicycle frame to the engine plate, added a small hand crank on the tension adjusting bolt to ease in fine tune adjustments, changed the mounting locations for the bicycle rim and added a hinge to the fender bracket to allow us to remove the wheel ***embly better. Too see some of the other changes you'll have to compare these above photo to previous ones on the top. One of the hardest thing to do was to make a solid disc wheel for the drive wheel, because the spoke where not strong enough to take the force of bouncing against the ground and turning an a burning to get the flyer moving. We used an English wheel from Harbor freight to make 2 - 16 inch diameter discs that where dished about 1 inch. We had to build a custom face plate to mount the discs in our lathe to machine them to fit snuggly inside the bicycle rim and also we machined the center to fit over the bicycle hub I had previously modified. This afternoon I welded up the drive wheel and with a little more grinding and some final paint work I should be able to scoot down the road about 30 mph. So with any luck next weekend I'll be able to try her out for the first time this year, wish us luck!!! I am looking for an actual A.O. Smith Motorwheel or Briggs and Stratton version if anyone knows of one available. I have a complete set of plans from A. O. Smith dated to 1918 to build an original. Which I hope to do some day. I am also looking for the electric drive-train details for the Red Bug as I would like to build one of them too. Any info would be awesome! Thanks guys, Chris Becker
Wow, that's great. you know, Briggs, Te***she, Clinton, Wisconson, and Honda all make "mixer motors" in the 3.5 to 6 and even 8 HP. Meant for mortar and cement mixers. They have a 6 to 1 gear box attached to the drive end. Which at 3600 engine rpm, gives you 600 shaft rpm. that way you can eliminate the crazy big gear, and probly run almost 1 to 1 off the gearbox. and they only add about 2 inches to the depth of the engine. Frank
not a bad idea. maybe next time I redo it in about 50 years I'll try it. I think the gear ratio now is more like 20:1 which we figure is about 35mph. this crazy project gave me the confidence to build my 1917 model T speedster. Thanks, Chris Becker
Great project. Maybe we should start a new division (buckboards or motorwheels!). Like you, I always admired the looks, so when I discovered the basic dimensions on the A.O. Smith website, I just had to make a close copy. I used a Zipper bike engine to drive the 5th wheel, and tilted the kingpins backwards to ***ist on-center steering (instead of the spring arrangment). I am attaching some pictures of my attempt. Tom Bartlett
That's really cool. I work for A.O. Smith, which is still in buisness building electric motors and water heaters. I was searching the web for "A.O. Smith". Last thing I expected was to find something on the HAMB. I guess I should have expected it though, you can ask any question on the HAMB and it gets answered within 2 mins. Any updates on this?
I have a smith motorwheel (1916) sitting in my garage. Was curious what it might be worth. It's original Paint , tire is dry rotted, isn't frozen. Anyone out there have any knowledge / info on one of these things?
mcfive- lots of collectors for those. they bring decent $. check ebay and ask here: www.thecabe.com lmk if you want to sell, I've always wanted one.
I am 16, and I needed an extra credit ***ignment for tech school. I picked this out because it just looked awesome. I need to build one of these and my teacher said it's up to me to get the blueprints. After I build this, I plan or driving it. Is there any type of special license or registration needed to actually drive it? Or is it Illeagle? If someone could direct me to some blueprints, that would be mighty kind. Thanks, -Jon
Aw, HECK Chris, you should follow Clayton out to Bonneville in that- it'd make for a doozie of a story You night even break a record in it... wonder what cl*** it'd fall into?
Chris, Love the injenuity in this recreation of the vintage vehicle. Your eye and craftsmanship are very spot on ! Dave
Not very street legal but a heck of a lot of fun. Mac I think Clayton' new motor will out run me in this thing Clayton's been trying to get me to take it out there. This one is kind of rough compared to the Special Dave. This little machine was my very first attempt and my welding skills were pretty bad I had a lot of fun building it and the history I found was way cool. Thanks for the compliment. Clayton's got the better eye but I can fabricate stuff better then he can!! Jon, I sent you a PM Call me when you get a chance. I amgoing up to Hood River tomorrow to drive a friends 1911 Overland so I'll be by my phone all day tomorrow. Call me... Chris Becker
Many small towns now allow golf carts around town so long as you stay off the highway through town. Hang lights on this and you would be legal. Cool!!
hi You said you had the 1917 plans would you share that info with me I want to build a replica pkoomen@shaw.ca
The Jalopy Journal
