Around the late fifties, early sixties I bought a thing called a Cyclemaster. This was a 25cc two stroke unit built into a self contained wheel. You simply removed the rear wheel of a bike and put this in. The fuel tank, proper clutch and drive were contained in the centre of the wheel.
It was a sod to start and I recall you needed to pedal miles dropping the decompressor before it would fire. Fuel consumption was something daft like 250mpg and it cruised around the same speed as my present Mistral.
There were also a lot of French built units around that sat on the front wheel and drove through a friction wheel. Velo Solex I seem to recall was a maker of these. To this day you can sometimes see similar units in use around France. I recently came across the Cyclemaster wheel in a transport museum but at the moment I cannot recall which one.
Rod
It was a sod to start and I recall you needed to pedal miles dropping the decompressor before it would fire. Fuel consumption was something daft like 250mpg and it cruised around the same speed as my present Mistral.
There were also a lot of French built units around that sat on the front wheel and drove through a friction wheel. Velo Solex I seem to recall was a maker of these. To this day you can sometimes see similar units in use around France. I recently came across the Cyclemaster wheel in a transport museum but at the moment I cannot recall which one.
Rod