My First Mini Bike

 It started life as a small Baja Racer with a little 2.5hp motor, which at the time was enough to get me around.  As I got older I began to want more speed and power.  What I did was buy a 6.5hp engine that just barely fit in the bike.  It was brilliant for the first few months, but then I decided to try and take off the governor,  it ended, and there's only one way to put it, horribly.  After that I gave up for a while and the bike just sat in the garage.  It didn't move from where I had put it until one day my dad said that we would fix it.  So we went to work and a few hours later it was fixed.  While sitting in the garage a few part were lost chief amongst them was the air filter.  For the time being we simply zip tied a piece of foam to the carburetor.  With the air filter being so simple we were worried about riding on the trails.  So one day, to save money, I made an air filter by taking what I could find of the old one and fitting it to the carburetor.  The air filter that I made didn't fit very well so I left the piece of foam that I had originally put.  The bike felt very down on power though, it worried me but, being me, I ignored it.  Then one day while riding with my brother the bike ran out of gas while he was riding.  When he came up the drive way pushing the bike I thought that the bike had broken but he told me that it had run out of gas.  Then he told me that there was good news, he said that right before the bike ran completely out of gas that there had been a huge increase of speed and power.  When we though about it we realized that the bike must not of been getting enough air.  So I took off my air filter and cut a hole out of the middle of the piece of foam that had first put on so that it would allow more air flow but still fill in the gaps between the filter and the carburetor.  It was a complete success, the bike had loads of power now and we managed to even hit 40 mph before we chickened out and let off the gas, but the bike still had more to give.  Since then the bike has broken many more times but every time it brakes we fix it.         

Mini Bikes

Mini Bikes aren't that popular, if you ask most people what a mini bike is they'll probably think that you're talking about a pocket rocket.  Which, to be fair, is a mini bike, but it isn't a true mini bike.  Mini bikes were very popular in the 70's, and from what I can tell it's because they were cheap and not horribly dangerous. I have 2 mini bikes, one is newer and I have modified it heavily and the other is a Columbia mini bike from the 70's.  I absolutely love both of them even though half of the time there is something wrong with them.  My dad had a few mini bikes when he was growing up and he's told me stories about how some times he would snap his chain an fix it with so wire.  That, I think, is one of the best things about a mini bike.  They're so simple that even if you're like me and you aren't a great mechanic if something breaks it's pretty easy to fix.  That is also one of the problems with newer mini bikes, plastic is used in places where metal used to be.  Thats a problem because plastic just isn't as good as metal when the part has to stand up to being slammed into rocks and stumps and other such thing that one might hit will riding on woodland trails.  My old Columbia is a beast when it comes to reliability, it's only been broken 3 times.  That might sound like a lot but for my bikes that's amazing.  What's even better is that is that 2 out of the 3 times it's been broken it was something that I had done or replaced on the bike.  Sadly the same can't be said about my other bike.  It started like as a small Baja Racer with a little 2.5hp motor, which at the time was enough to get me around.  As I got older I began to want more speed and power.  What I did was buy a 6.5hp engine that just barely fit in the bike.  Not even counting the time that the bike has broken because I've done something to it, it's probably broken down anywhere from 15 to 20 times.  This just goes to show how much better the quality used to be on these bikes.  Besides that mini bikes are much better and more fun if you want something that's pretty fast cheap and easy to fix.