While walking around the swap meet and bike display area at the AHRMA Vintage Bike National at Mid-Ohio, we saw all kinds of neat, exotic, rare and strange bikes.  After a few hours, nothing phased me and my old buddy Tom any more.

Then we saw something that stopped us in our tracks!  We literally were slack-jawed!  I tried to say something rational and it came out as "duh", or some other babbling dribble.

There, in front of us, was a three cylinder 490 Maico.  Yep, three huge 490  motors all  hooked together.  We walked around the "thing" and tried to take it all in. 

Think about this:  a stock 490 Maico puts out about 52 horsepower.  Three of them hooked together would crank out somewhere around 156 crazed ponies.

When we tried to get more information about the bike, all we could glean was that the unit was built for sidecar racing and while it actually ran in its current configuration, it had never been ridden in any sort of a complete package.  There was no way any sort of kickstarter would work on the bike, but there was a big socket attached one end of the motor and it could be started by putting an electric powered lug wrench tool into the half-inch drive socket.

A large socket is hooked to the end of the motor for starting.

Well, there you have it. An exercise in experimentation. But when all things are said and done, quite frankly, it's a waste of three perfectly good Maico 490 motors.

Clamp-on air cleaners ride on Type 54 Bing carbs.

Stand in awe of the 1470 cc Maico. There's just a bit of overhang on the sides...