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Chain drives serve a useful purpose or we would not have them. I have even flown in a HiVel chain driven airplane (between the chev 350 n the prop shaft, drive n speed reducer). But looking at the real world maintenance records of fleets of vehicles and industrial machinery they do not have the longevity or reliability of gears. Hey, I would sure rather have a timing chain than a timing belt in my engine! There are exceptions, I know a guy locally with a Saab 900 with almost 300k miles that has never had to be repaired. But a lot of them have had to be. I was not putting down chain drives, just saying that the inline drive motor would be better, in this application, in my opinion. Because I could not see him acquiring a HD cased chain transmission unit due to the cost. Salvage, maybe if lucky. Any DIY chain drive would be a major project in itself and I was just trying to apply the KISS principle. Since an encased unit seemed unlikly in this project the next possibility was an open/exposed chain drive and hence my comments on noise, wear, etc.
As per overspeeding the first thing I would install in such an application is an overspeed clutch between the sproket n the motor
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