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Cyclotracteur on Alcyon bicycle - 1918My Cyclotracteur auxiliary engine on an Alcyon bicycle from 1918 clearly illustrates how the name motorcycle originated. It is clearly visible that this concerns a bicycle, that has been equipped with a loose engine. The driving is done with a roll, which is pressed onto the front tyre. Probably the Cyclotracteur was one of the first engines that used this principle, that has (much) later successfully been used for the Dutch Berini "Egg" and off course on the Solex. Apart from these many other manufacturers have used roll driving over the course of time, sometimes also for an engine that was mounted underneath the pedal axis. A well-known example of the latter one is the Lohmann diesel engine.
The Cyclotracteur was sold as a complete set, together with the whole linkage system to mount it on a bicycle and a fuel tank to be placed above the handlebars. The whole is made in such a way that it can be installed without adaptations to the bicycle, and can thus also be demounted without problems Cyclotracteurs are often missing one or more of the parts that are necessary to install the engine on a bicycle. To facilitate copying these parts I have made a series of pictures of these parts with their dimensions written next to them. That it is possible to come quite far with a Cyclotrateur, despite its moderate velocity, has been proven by these 3 Frenchmen, by riding in 2019 in the Netherlands both the Horsepowerrun (total ca. 87 km!) and the "Around Gees" run:
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