Police Seize a Pushbike with Dangerous Modifications

I was up in London with a nun once and a load of people came down Oxford St on bikes in the nud.I tried to distract her but difficult not to catch glimpse of what I later found out was the Naked Bike Ride.

But maybe the builder is the UK's answer to Elon Musk

From the picture the bike doesn't look like it was well maintained. Although, I'm bit surprised the police were 'shocked', as a variety of bicycle conversion kits have been around for a while. They can be purchased online, for example - www.amazon.co.uk/Stroke-Petrol-Motorized-Engine-Conversion/dp/B07F82NKFY

You can get such conversions legalised for the road and modern bicycles can often stop better than older motorcycles thanks to hydraulic disc brakes. Here is a video of someone who went through the legalising process. These 80cc petrol engines are not as powerful as ebikes which 14 year old children can take on the road with no training at all completely legally. Those would typically have more torque and acceleration. Yes petrol is dangerous but I'd rather deal with a petrol fire than a lithium ion battery fire. When you convert a bicycle to a low weight, low capacity motorcycle it has been compared to early motorcycles from the beginning of the 20th century which were similar just using a bicycle as the basis of the motorcycle with a small capacity engine fitted. In fact some people have made their bicycle conversions look very similar to such motorcycles in British racing Green or maybe they have gone for the old style military look like this;

That news report shows a very rusty example with both the motor and chain looking less than ideal condition so I suspect that motorcycle conversion had been used quite a lot before the Police were involved. It certainly doesn't look like a fresh conversion. I've seen a video on youtube where a person was riding his engine conversion bike along the canal paths illegally. No one cared as far as I could tell. Also I saw a video where someone had adding electronic engine sounds to their ebike conversion so it sounded like a motorcycle, a bit like what BMW has done with some of their cars to synthesise a better sounding engine than actually fitted or you get on toy sit on electric cars. Sam Pilgrim has tested such conversions a few times and I don't think they are that impressive compared to a ebike. A bit like a 70s supercar is no match for even a cheap EV of today. The old supercar might do 0-60mph in 6 seconds but some cheapo Chinese MG EV is doing around 4 seconds, 50% faster.

I watched the video B and it was very interesting

Some of the things mentioned that are needed to make this road legal are a reg plate, an MSBA exam first like an mot, but it still needs an actual mot every 3 yrs , a VIN engraved professionally on the frame, brake handles need to have a 7mm curve, and it needs narrow motocycle tyres that are hard to get hold of

He said he gets 40 to 60 miles out of his 2 litre tank, and it equates to about 120 mpg

To build and legalise it cost him about £1600

I understand why not many people would bother doing this as you can buy an EV bike for about the same , but then its if you feel safer with petrol than lithium batteries as you mentioned

It was quite nostalgic for me when he mentioned the BSA Bantam, that was the second bike i owned , the first was a Francis Barnett and my third a Triumph TR6 Saint , as i went for classics at first before changing to the more modern Honda CB before morphing to cars

The boys are talking bikes lol.My dad used to cause uproars with my mum when he used to fix all his mates motorbikes in the kitchen at night!