The plastic the internal gear is made of can and will grenade.
Lem was a little pissed.)ĭefeating the governor externally is possible, but not recommended. The con rod and flywheel are both cast metal, and I’ve personally shot one of those pieces out of a block at a high rate of speed from overzealous tuning. There is a governor on these engines for a reason: You can only have so much fun from a little engine before someone loses an eye.
My plan to make this bike scary-fast mostly is based on pulling more revs out of it. Stock, both engines crank out about 6.5 hp at a governed 3,600 rpm. Cheapest bore and stroke job I’ve ever gotten my hands on. It’s got more bore and more stroke than the GX clones… for $116.63 right off the bat. There is some crossover between parts for the two, but if one is seriously going to modify these bikes, one has to pick a path and run with it. As it turns out, since I was a kid, modern go-karts and minibikes are usually powered by one of two powerplants: Honda GX-series engines (or clones) or the Predator series, distributed by Harbor Freight, which is sort of a loose Honda clone. It turns out, though, that those are kind of desirable these days, and worth some money. Minibikes used to be powered by flathead engines made by Briggs & Stratton, Tecumseh, and a few others. With my Colemans? I literally could not keep people off them, which is fine by me. (At least until you shove way too much motor into one.) Normally, about one person a year politely hints that they’d like to ride one of my choppers, which I dutifully ignore. They’re stupid-fun, scary in a not-super-dangerous way, easy to work on and build, and about as cheap as a motorcycle can be. Minibikes are motorcycles boiled down to the essential ingredients, maybe even purer than the chopper or streetfighter. Joe Zito, ZLA's mechanical wizard, is in front of me. Of the people I talked to who seemed to understand why I wanted to do this, some said, “Man, I wish I still had my minibike.” The other half of people who “got it” said, “Man, I always wanted a minibike!” I think most people either completely understand why I am doing this, or they can’t even begin to fathom it. I’m glad I scored mine when I did this project at that price starts launching up into “real bike” money. Just a little over a month later, that price on Amazon has jumped to a whopping $718.97. I bought mine for $481.03 before tax on May 24. If it does not, then I’ll be welding up A) the frame when it breaks, B) additional gussets and C) a set of wheelie bars if I built the engine right. I scored a Coleman CT200U brand spankin’ new from Amazon, which apparently has a 200-pound weight rating, meaning I should not ride it and probably not jump it and it will not put up with the stresses of a full-grown Lem. No transmissions just a lawnmower engine, wheels, and a completely rigid frame.ĭang, this tariff business is serious stuff! I also know Comet Torq-a-Verters exist, but to me, a minibike should be a simple affair and kind of deathtrap-y. I know modern minibikes have swoopy frames and top-mounted tanks, and they have rudimentary suspension. I also knew that for my own satisfaction, two things had to be true of this bike: It needed to have a one-speed centrifugal clutch, and it also needed to be a fully rigid bike with super-sketchy brakes. I wanted something built in the spirit of a 1950s car or race bike: a hot, hot motor shoved into a chassis that’s totally overwhelmed by it.
Many bikes nowadays are just too valuable to hot rod, and deep down, I am not a “stock bikes” kind of guy. I needed a break from building bigger, more expensive bikes. Remove the engine, buy expensive parts, leave money left over, rebuild the engine much hotter, use leftover money for copay. A minibike seemed like a very good medium upon which to put those ideas into practice. I bought it with the intention of returning to modifying things with reckless abandon of performing dangerous open-heart surgery of pumping up power output with little or no regard for one’s own safety or the wisdom of such tinkering.
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