(WOW! Look at that thing! I think my heart skipped a beat!)
Check out this little Tmax mod. Andrew Gibbens and Royce Creasey have been working for some time to make the ultimate in comfort and practicality. I mean, the thing has room for 3 full face helmets! In his site, Andrew says he’s “been investigating the production of a kit to convert the Yamaha Tmax to a Feet Forward (FF) bike.” But “It hasn’t been possible to establish a commercial project…”
I think the thing is awesome. A great commuter vehicle! Look around his site and you can see the building process. These guys have put a lot of effort into this machine… What I would give for a test drive.
***UPDATE***
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Had a little email exchange with the brainchild behind the project, Andrew and here’s what he had to say:
TSS: Is that YOUR design?
ANDREW: Yeah, mostly. Royce Creasey worked on a lot of Feet Forward (FF) motorcycles including probably the best of them, the Voyager, and he noticed that the Yamaha Tmax had been designed with just air (oh, and the fuel tank) under the seat and so was ideal for conversion to a FF. I funded Royce to buy one and see if a conversion kit (a bit like the kitcar idea) could be created. Basically it turned out to be too expensive to look to be viable so I got the prototype bike and decided to finish it off.
I got it to the state you see in the photos and rode it for a while, but I realised that I didn’t actually need a motorbike, however good an idea it was – nowadays I do more miles on a pedal cycle than I do on a motorbike or car. So I sold it a few weeks ago to Monty, an FF enthusiast who is hard at work grinding away the edges of the centrestand, to judge by his reports on the FF group.
I think the conversion was a great success, though like all ‘first shots’ there are a hundred ways it could be done better! The bike steers really fast but is utterly stable – an impossible combination on a normal bike. And it is a good deal more comfortable over a long distance than the Gold Wing I used to have and yet is really sporty. In other words, it’s an FF – the right way for a bike to be!
Check out the FF web site http://www.bikeweb.com/. Amongst other things, I’ve posted there the drawings used to make my ComforTmax at http://www.bikeweb.com/node/856 . An open source bike!
Andrew
(must have took everything he had to not smile while riding it)
Thu, Aug 18, 2005
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