Minibike enthusiasts make the most of miscellaneous metals

Although the many business restrictions put in place in spring 2020 to combat the COVID-19 epidemic put millions out of work and devastated many industries, some business segments thrived.

Lumber yards and home improvement stores were considered essential and remained open. Many racked up quite a bit in sales on weekdays and business boomed all weekend long. Homeowners who weren’t affected by the tsunami of job losses certainly weren’t eating meals in restaurants, going to the movies, or doing much else, so many had some extra time and money to take up overdue home improvement and landscaping projects.

It was also boon to metal vendors such as Metal Supermarkets, a company that deals exclusively in small quantities of metals. Comprising more than 80 brick-and-mortar stores in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., it deals in steels of many varieties, along with copper, brass, and bronze. The company also offers quite a few fabrication services, including cutting, shearing, drilling, punching, and notching.

Its customers run the gamut, from artists working on sculptures to entrepreneurs building widgets to homeowners repairing trailers or campers. Two of its customers are Gary Kittner and Rick Chatten, who often rely on the company for sheet, plate, and quite a bit of tube for a niche hobby they share with a small but growing group of like-minded individuals: refurbishing old minibikes.

Minibike Madness

Motorized bicycles, motor scooters, motorcycles, all-terrain cycles, and minibikes have origins that go back more than a century. The Indian Motocycle Mfg. Co. was founded in 1901, Harley-Davidson was founded in 1903, and Cushman Motor Works was formed in 1903. The first two rolled out two-wheelers that essentially were bicycles with engines; Cushman made a smaller version, a motorized scooter. All three landed coveted military contracts and delivered many motorcycles and motorized scooters to the U.S. Army as part of the war effort in the 1940s, which certainly helped to popularize two-wheeled motor vehicles.

A few hobbyists probably tried their hands at building their own scaled-down motorcycles or minibikes, but the commercial origin of the minibike era is said to have taken place in 1959 in Plymouth, Mich. Three brothers involved with racing, Ray, Larry, and Regis Michrina, added a motor to a scooter so they’d have transportation in the pit area. The pit bike caught on, and it wasn’t long before small, motorized bikes were common at racing events. Eventually the concept found a much bigger customer base, one that went far beyond the gearheads who loved racing. Recognizing the market potential, several manufacturers developed minibike designs during the 1960s and 1970s and, in doing so, helped to develop the market.

“In the 1980s there were 124 companies manufacturing minibikes,” Chatten said.

Keeping it Simple. Simplicity was the key. It was easy to find a suitable engine and put together a drivetrain. Making a tubular frame, adding some gussets and braces, and making a fork-and-handlebar assembly required little more than a sketch, some common shop tools, and a smidgeon of ingenuity. As long as the design didn’t include any castings or stamped parts, all of this could be done in essentially any manufacturing shop (and quite a few garages, for that matter). The Michrinas did it, and so did many others. The barriers to entry were so low that they were essentially nonexistent, so nearly any company that made lawn mowers, snowmobiles, golf carts, or any other motorized equipment could get into the market.

Keeping them simple had a second advantage. Like most activities, riding a minibike comes with a certain amount of risk. Simple designs lead to simple assembly; when the minibike is sold in kit form, the buyer assembles it, and some manufacturers saw this as an avenue to relieving some of the burden of liability.

A third advantage? A design devoid of stampings, forgings, or castings is a big help in repairs or restorations. Nearly any hobby fabricator with a few shop tools and a reliable metal supplier can make or repair most of the components needed to make an old minibike trailworthy again.

Kittner, who raced a Kaiser Henry J in the 1970s in Sacramento, Calif., used a minibike to get around in the pit area between races. Chatten, a veteran fabricator and longtime minibike enthusiast, has been so successful at making replacement parts that he makes them for sale to other hobbyists and even supplied parts to a minibike manufacturer for a few years. He and Chatten are walking, talking treasure chests of minibike information.

Many Minibikes, Many Styles. Although many of the minibikes were built to fit young riders, many models were something bigger than mere child’s play.

“Some were developed for farmers,” Kittner said. Farmers do much more than planting and harvesting over hundreds of acres; keeping a farm up and running comprises dozens, scores, or even hundreds of little projects every year, whether welding a broken tool in the workshop or repairing a fence at the far end of the spread. A three-wheeler equipped with a cargo area is ideal for hauling tools and supplies hither and yon, and some even had trailer hitches for the same reasons.

Others were designed for campuses, which would certainly ease similar burdens in running errands, ferrying supplies, doing landscaping work, and carrying out repairs in a university, hospital, or corporate campus environment.

Opportunities for buying or building a minibike were everywhere.

“I recall an ad in Popular Science for a set of instructions for converting a bicycle into a minibike,” Chatten said.

And, while every youngster ever scolded by a busybody neighbor for hot-rodding through the neighborhood would find this hard to believe, some minibike manufacturers took their designs right into the realm of respectability.

“Some were street-legal,” Kittner said.

Rehab or Restore

Chatten is a purist, always interested in equipping a minibike with original parts if they are available, leaving the original paint alone if that makes sense, and always striving for an original appearance. His goal is to restore each minibike, getting it as close as possible to the way it looked when it was built.

Kittner understands that, but he and many others don’t subscribe to it. Some just want an old minibike that runs; Kittner does a few extra things, making minibikes that look really sharp and perform a little better than they did in the first place, the equivalent of a hot rod in the automotive world.

The former can take a lot longer than the latter.

“You can spend two or three years going to swap meets to find all the parts you need to restore one of these old minibikes,” Kittner said. “I’d rather just make the parts I need and get on with it.”

It’s a bit different in patience and price tag. Depending on the model, a restored minibike can sell for more than $3,000. A similar model, rehabbed as a hot rod typically fetches $1,000 to $1,500.

Beyond patience and price, comparing and contrasting Kittner’s approach to minibike repair and Chatten’s full-on restoration projects is like looking at two sides of the same coin.

Refurbished by Kittner, Restored by Chatten. Comfortably retired on a large piece of property, one more than enough for a few minibike trails and outfitted with a vast garage, Kittner has dozens of minibikes in his inventory. Using just a few metalworking tools and machines—a welder and a snazzy ironworker are the two primary investments, which are accompanied by a drill press and all manner of hand tools—Kittner keeps a couple of minibikes for his own use and has a few in various stages of rehab.

A 1969 graduate of Rockford East High School, Rockford, Ill., Kittner spent his years there in the Diversified Careers Program, learning the ins and outs of auto body repair and painting—the same career path his father had taken. On a vacation in California a few years later, Kittner ran too low on funds to return home, so he found a job and an apartment and put down roots in Ventura. He worked for a body shop restoring high-end cars and recalled an early project that was somewhat a preview to his current hobby.

“I restored a 1953 Bentley that was missing quite a few parts,” he said. “It didn’t have many castings or stampings. It was a coach-built car, handmade mainly from flat steel,” he said.

If his first few years working in Rockford were the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in auto body repair, his work on the Bentley was probably the equivalent of a master’s degree in fine craftsmanship. He wasn’t just restoring a luxury car, but also making many of the parts he needed to restore it.

A manufacturing veteran and native of Reedsburg, Wis., Chatten works for a plastic injection molding company, but this is just one small component of his expertise, which encompasses knowledge drawn from a lifetime in manufacturing. More than comfortable using many metal forming and cutting processes, and possessing a familiarity with the complexities of making tools and dies, he even has experience in some autobody work and finishing, like Kittner. More than a hobby fabricator, Chatten is a supplier, and his operation sounds just as organized as any other manufacturing operation.

“I farm out of lot of the work, having parts cut on a waterjet, sending steel parts to a plater for galvanizing, and so on,” he said. Most tubular parts that need bends are bent on a manual bender.

Mainstay tubing sizes are 7/8, 1, and 1-3/16 in. OD, all with 1/8 in. wall thickness, and one more size, 1-3/16 in. OD by 0.083 in. wall thickness. The last size’s ID is 1.0215, which makes it an ideal fork size; handlebars made from 1-in.-OD material slip fit nicely, and a coiled spring inside the fork tube helps to give the minibike a smooth ride.

Too Few Minibikes, Too Many Enthusiasts. Although many companies made minibikes, and many people bought them, the market was never vast. By one estimate, the peak in U.S. sales was less than 150,000 units, which is paltry compared to the 15 million bicycles sold in the U.S. in a typical year. This means that the number of old minibikes is small and dwindling.

“Minibikes are really making a big comeback, and we even see them at car shows,” Chatten said. A muscle car purist wouldn’t expect to see a 5-HP minibike anywhere near a 1968 Shelby G.T. 500 outfitted with a 428-cu.-in. Cobra Jet engine rated at 435 HP, but this is how far the infectiousness of minibike mania has taken this hobby.

“A few years ago, I’d see maybe 15 minibikes at the local car shows,” Chatten said. “Now, it’s in the hundreds.”

The growing popularity of the hobby is both a hindrance and a help. More enthusiasts joining the hobby means that original parts are in higher demand and harder to find than ever before. However, this tightly-knit and growing community thrives on the varied backgrounds and combined ingenuity of its members, some of whom help alleviate parts shortages.

“Ten years ago, you had to find original parts or make your own,” Chatten said. “These days, many more parts are available. For example, springs that fit inside the fork tubes are really difficult to find,” he said. After years of searches, many fruitless, Chatten happened to mention this scarcity to a new member of this brotherhood and showed him a typical spring. His reply? “Oh, I can make those for about $5 apiece.” This sort of thing doesn’t happen all of the time, but it happens often, making it a little easier to get an old bike ready for the road.

Like nearly all the other original minibike components, old engines are becoming increasingly difficult to find, but this is among the easiest problems to solve. Many equipment manufacturers make modern engines that fit old minibikes without too many modifications.

“Some people use engines from snowblowers, and for many models, these are really close to the original engines,” Chatten said. A main difference is the throttle linkage, but no matter—Chatten found a minibike rebuilder who makes reproduction throttle linkages.

Another ongoing challenge for restoring minibikes with wide tires are the handlebar-and-fork assemblies. The forks are wide at the bottom to accommodate the tire, and handlebars are wide at the top, but in the middle of the assembly, where the handlebar and fork meet, meet, the two tubes are close together. In the transition from widely spaced to closely spaced, some forks tubes had severe bends that are difficult to replicate, but after an extensive search Chatten did manage to find a supplier that makes a good replica.

Chatten’s multifaceted background came into play in a big way in the latter days of minibike manufacturer Power Tech, which formerly had been known as Kits by Heald (see Sidebar). After contacting the company for some information, he struck up a rapport with owner Ron Kimball, who had bought the company from its founder, Carl Heald. Chatten’s knowledge was so great, and his parts so exact, that Kimball began buying parts from Chatten.

Eventually Kimball closed the company, but it wasn’t the end of the line for Chatten. His body of knowledge about Heald minibikes expanded exponentially when Kimball agreed to let him clear out the factory.

“I got my hands on a lot of photos,” he said. He also picked up some tooling and literature, including some of the service bulletins. He doesn’t have everything that Heald had—some of the tooling and die sets for making some of the parts had gone missing, including the dies for the forks—but at this point, he’s the closest thing possible to Heald Inc.

Molding a Stamping. What about those stamped parts? First, they’re rare. Of all the companies involved in manufacturing minibikes, perhaps just one, Honda, was big enough to make stamped parts. Second, replicating such an item isn’t as difficult as it sounds, as long as a concession or two are acceptable. Chatten found that getting his hands on a stamped part is the only real difficulty. From there, it’s a matter of using plaster of Paris to make a mold of the part and using the mold to make a replica part from fiberglass.

Start Your Engines!

Mankind’s interest in competition knows no bounds. Racing takes all sorts of forms, from gravity-powered pinewood derby cars, which can hit nearly 20 miles per hour, to the ThrustSSC, which holds the land speed record of 760 miles per hour.

People race everything in between these two extremes, including minibikes. Some are built for speed and compete in a dedicated racing class for souped-up minibikes. Such minibikes have been known to achieve speeds up to 80 MPH over the stipulated 1/8-mile distance, which is probably a little terrifying considering the short wheelbase, small tire diameter, and low round clearance.

Beyond racing, some minibike enthusiasts get together to just cruise around on trips that vary from a few miles to, well, great distances.

A few decades back, three movies—"Cannonball!” (1976), “The Gumball Rally” (1976), and “The Cannonball Run” (1981)—provided a snapshot of the travails of long road race, 4,000 miles coast to coast, in a no-holds-barred competition. The race itself, if it actually existed (or exists), apparently was named for Erwin George "Cannon Ball" Baker who made 143 cross-country motorcycle runs, and handful of automobile runs, to promote various two- and four-wheeled vehicles in the early decades of the 20th century.

Minibike enthusiasts aren’t to be outdone by Cannon Ball Baker or anyone else, for that matter. Some participate in a run from one Portland to another, the 3,200-mile route from Portland, Maine to Portland, Ore.

The Heald Heritage

A primary driver in the minibike market, and among the most successful minibike developers, was Carl Heald. An electrical engineer, he was a key contributor in developing the first analog computer sold by Heath Co., the longtime manufacturer and distributor of Heathkits, a perennial favorite of electronics enthusiasts interested in building their own home audio systems, television receivers, amateur radio transmitters, and test equipment.

Rather than build and sell minibikes in retail stores, Heald was one of many who sold minibikes in kit form. Instead of taking on the whole enterprise, he worked up an agreement whereby Heath Co. distributed Heald’s design. Officially designated by its model number, GT-18, it was better known as the Boonie bike. Designed with wide tires (a 6-in.-wide front tire and an 8-in.-wide rear tire), it was marketed as a go-anywhere bike. It was intended for poorly paved roads, trails, mud, and sand.

The Boonie bike was a success, but the agreement between Heath and Heald didn’t last. After just two years, the ball was in Heald’s court. Heald’s company, Kits by Heald, rolled out the VT-1, an updated Boonie bike; the VT-2, a scaled-down model; the Heald Hauler, a three-wheeler intended for light cargo; and a few other variants.

“Some were equipped with a dump box, and the farmer could add a sprayer if he needed to, so they were far more for utility than sport,” Kittner said. “Some models, like the Bronc and Superbronc series, had much more horsepower than the small minibikes and could top 40 miles per hour with the throttle wide open.”