I take exception to the statement “The drawings are practically self-explanatory.” That statement is totally belied by the next statement: ” The main shaft is of 3/4? cold-rolled rod. One friction disk is secured rigidly to this shaft. The other disk is locked to a tubular shaft made of 1? iron pipe which turns on the main shaft and also in its own shaft hanger.” You don’t see the 1″ pipe in the drawing, there’s a vague mention of one pulley being turned by it. The idea is that one friction disc is merely an idler when the car goes forward, and I think I see the suggestion that this one SUPPOSED to provide the reverse, but I don’t see how the 1″ is engaged while the 3/4″ is disengaged.

The article says there’s also supposed to be a detail drawing of how the end cams work for the clutch, but I don’t see it.

If you could move the friction wheel forward and backward, you would have a “Continuously Variable Transmission.” Those were the original automatics, and they’re making a comeback. A CVT doesn’t just have 4 or 5 gears, it has the full range of ratios inbetween. The idea is to have a centrifugal clutch engage at a minimum rpm and then the friction wheel moves from the outside of the discs to the center as the car picks up speed, with the engine actually maintaining a constant RPM rather than varying up and down with the shifts. Electric and gas engine carts that they run around the mall on, snowmoblies, many things work on these, and there’s even a few cars on the market with them again.

But I doubt this car was built even by the writer or the magazine staff at the time. There were many ideas put forth in how to magazines that proved half baked and unbuildable once in print. Read the article on the ‘Speedball Special’ elsewhere on this site, and you see they attempted 5 unsuccessful designs before succeeding at building the 6th. I doubt any kid ever had the chance to race around at 40mph in one of these. If Dad ever did complete something inspired by this article, I’ll bet it was largely his design by the time it was finished. But picture if the dad DID build it with the rear wheels going opposite directions, and didn’t catch it before the testdrive.

And a 3hp pocketbike at probably less than have the gross weight with rider struggles to get to 30mph. Even if you build in the proper reduction into the drive train for the car to be capable of 40mph, at 2-3hp it will take a long time to reach that speed. From a standing start it would probably lose a dragrace with a good bicylist.