Meet Chris. Even though Chris is in a wheel chair, he rides a motorcycle to work almost every day during the summer. His motorcycle has a side car and after transfering to the motorcycle, he lifts the wheelchair into the side car and straps it down.

Cary and Craig work with Chris at a small travel trailer manufacturing company. All three work on motorcycles and cars in their spare time. They all like attending car shows and swap meets, looking for ideas and parts for their various projects.

One day at work, Craig asked Chris, if he had ever thought of putting a motorcycle engine on a wheel chair. Of course he had thought of it, and other people had asked him the same question countless times before. The problem was how to get the engine to power the wheels and how to steer. This time was different…Craig liked inventing things and soon came up with an idea of how it might work. The biggest challenges were how to start the engine and how to shift the transmission.

As luck would have it, when searching on the internet, Craig found the perfect engine. It was compact, had electric start and an automatic transmission. After this discovery, the design advanced rapidly. Chris, Craig and Cary all evaluated the design and tried to come up with reasons why it wouldn’t work. After a few design changes, they ran out of reasons.

They decided the only thing left was to build one and test their ideas. Chris had an old wheelchair frame with a few parts missing, that was a good start. They ordered an engine and various parts. They cut and welded and assembled their first motorized wheel chair.

Believe it or not, it worked! Granted, it had a few issues that needed to be ironed out, but it definetly worked.

After several days of refinements and adjustments, they decided that it was time to put it to a real test. Chris, Cary and Craig all went to the “Back to the ‘50’s” car show at the Minnesota State Fair Grounds. This show is one of the largest street rod shows in the country with over 10,000 cars and covering 320 acres. The fair grounds are about one mile north to south and ½ mile east to west. There are about 5 miles of paved roads, so if you go up one side and down the other, it is easily over 10 miles of cars and booths.

Chris had attended this show before and because of the distances, had only seen maybe one fifth of the show. There was no point staying for a second day, since he was too exhausted to bother.

This show, Chris could easily go as far as he wanted. Craig and Cary had a hard time keeping up. Cary and Craig had to take a rest and Chris went off to explore by himself. By the end of the day, Chris had logged over 9 miles. He decided that he would go home, not because he was tired out, but because he had seen everything he wanted to see.

The funny part was that Chris didn’t think he was drawing that much attention, but there was a cluster of people following him, taking pictures. We talked to dozens of people, and it seemed like everyone we talked with, knew someone in a wheelchair that they thought would benefit from a chair like Chris’. That is when we decided maybe we should try making it into a small business.

Since then, we have worked on refining the design so we could make them in larger quantities. It is easy to make one or two, but 20 or 200, that’s different. Now we are ready to build them in quantity.

That was our Motive for building this chair.

Do you have a Motive?

Thanks,
Chris, Craig and Cary