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“Tiller Bike” Perfect For Short Commute
Shawn Wengerd’s tiller-powered bicycle is an efficient way to make a daily 1 1/2-mile backroad commute from his home to his shop. It gets 50 mpg.
  “The front half is a regular bike frame but I built the back half to hold a 5-hp. rototiller motor that drives a 12-in. all-terrain wheel,” Wengerd says. A friend gave him an old rear-tine self-propelled tiller that no longer shifted and he bought the dual suspension mountain bike at a pawn shop.
  Wengerd removed the rear bike tire and replaced it with a platform made out of angle iron bolted together. The tiller engine connects to the bike with a 9-in. pulley on the wheel shaft.
  “The clutch is operated by a foot pedal. The old tiller had a belt tensioner-style clutch that’s connected to the throttle from the engine to the shifter on the bicycle,” he says.
  Wengerd flips up a frame stand in the back that holds the bike upright when he is ready to drive. He turns on the tiller switch, pulls the cord a couple times, revs the engine with the speed shifter, pushes in the clutch and the bike is ready to zip along quietly at about 33 mph. It only takes 1/2-gal. of gas to run the tiller/bike for up to two weeks.
  When he needs to haul something he pulls a small, inexpensive trailer behind.
  “It’s a dual-suspension bike so it’s very comfy,” Wengerd says. “Some people shake their heads a little when they see it. But I have just shy of $50 in the whole contraption. It was very fun to build.”
  Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Shawn Wengerd, 1080 Morgan Rd., Janesville, Ohio 43701.


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2019 - Volume #43, Issue #4