It's been awhile since my last update, mostly because I haven't really done much on it lol. I've been mostly just accumulating parts in the past couple weeks. I'll try to keep up with it going forward.
I made a big change of plans and decided to steer away from the intek briggs build. My biggest concern is the crankshaft is only supported by a ball bearing on one side, and the other side is just a bushing. An actual animal block would have bearings in both sides. If I had to guess, that will be the weak point of the engine. If I am going to invest decent money into a engine, I would hate to have it fail prematurely.
What I decided on doing is a fully built predator instead. I know it's not all that original, but there are so many parts and the prices on everything seems to be way more reasonable compared to animal stuff. This motor came bolted to a DB30 I bought a few days ago, and only had a few hours run time. I yanked the engine off, bolted on an old 3.5hp flat head briggs and resold it for what I paid for it a couple days later. Who doesn't love a free engine? I'll start ordering parts in the next couple weeks for it.
I finally pulled the trigger on a torque converter for this turd. With the sprocket ratio I have, plus the 16in tall rear tire, it should do well over 65mph. I'm hoping I will still have some nice low end grunt with the torque converter installed. Should be pretty rowdy!
The gas tank came in and I did a little bit of hacking on it. Not sure how I am going to mount it yet, but I'm loving the look of it so far. The handle bars are stock bars from a honda grom that I found locally on letgo. Now I just need to find a seat that has the look I'm going for.
Free predator:
Wacked off the mounting tabs
Tank mocked up with the handle bars on
Bonus pic of the DB30 when I was done with it.