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Picked up an old B&S motor a couple of days ago and....

Cranky

Cranky

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decided to tear it apart for some dumb reason. First off, it's been probably 55 years or more since doing this but had them apart a lot and couldn't remember if the flywheel 'nut' was right or left handed. Old timers kicking in and of course I went the wrong way until it was almost beat to death lol. Next thing I noticed was that this very low compression engine has a whopping 8 bolts on the head! It did bring back some old memories of 'milling' the head on my neighbor's driveway when some of us were messing with the slow go carts and mini bikes. Did end up sticking together a 50 mph mini bike though with one of these old turd motors....oh and the cops didn't like me or my friends too much either in the little hick town that we resided in. :D
 
Yep, we'd put the head machined side down on the cement and run along best we could holding the head against the cement to take some material off. Hi tech all the way. The first one I tried to take apart I hammered on the flywheel so much it partially demagnetized the thing and the engine wouldn't start after I did finally get it back together. My Dad had to diagnose the problem for me. He never let me forget it either!
 
peabodyracin said:
Yep, we'd put the head machined side down on the cement and run along best we could holding the head against the cement to take some material off. Hi tech all the way. The first one I tried to take apart I hammered on the flywheel so much it partially demagnetized the thing and the engine wouldn't start after I did finally get it back together. My Dad had to diagnose the problem for me. He never let me forget it either!
Click to expand...
I had to teach my dad a little bit about them but he already knew it all LOL
 
Small engines can be fun. A buddy of mine was a bit of a dreamer. He pondered the idea of using a belt driven "smog" pump to force air into the carburetor for a Supercharger sort of deal for a Go Cart. He thought of using an electric motor to drive the pump or maybe something driven by the wheels. His thought was that the boost would only be in effect while in motion. Like many of his ideas, it went nowhere.
I've taken apart a few small one cylinder engines. They are remarkably simple, even 2 strokes. Those are really strange to me. How the heck can oily gasoline be enough to lubricate the crank ?
 
Oh , the mini bike days. The Briggs&Stratton 5 HP engine was the Holy Grail back in the day. New they were $99.My first Go-Cart was homemade with a 1 HP Briggs from the neighbors reel type lawnmower. Then I got a well used Fox mini bike with a 3 HP Briggs,I thought was the cats ***.
Thanks for the memories !!
 
:xscuseless: I had a couple Continental's. They were cool ****. Especially on a mini bike.

continental.jpg continental2.jpg
 
My brother has a modified lawn mower with a bigger than standard engine.
Rescued from the trash, and he can mow his lawns a lot faster now. :lol:
 
Sahara said:
I’ve never encountered the Continental engine before. Looks cool as hell. What were they used on originally?
Click to expand...
I got mine from my Uncle. They were on farm weed mowers. 3.5 horse from what I remember. The go cart guys would shave the heads and hop them up and get 15+ horse out of them on alcohol.
 
Minibike good old days? Hell I ride some of mine all the time

4C3595AB-58C7-4585-85C5-5E5E9590A5A1.jpeg 3F04F340-4229-4E10-8B76-ADBB028AB45D.jpeg
 
Mini bikes: my 1st was a home made out of threaded black pipe with a bicycle fork welded on. No rake what so ever. Pretty touchy steering. Dad came up with a surplus aircraft generator engine after I had the bike. It was so tall I had to cut a hole in the plywood seat for the spark plug to stick through, then taped a thick piece of foam over the plug and be careful how I sat on it or I'd get lit up.

Thing was fast but borderline controlable. A buddy I let try it crashed almost immediately, pushing the forks back some and making it even more challenging to drive.

By then I was 14 and the Honda 50's were coming out. Hit the big time then!
 
A couple of old West bend “power bee” engines on an old kart I have.

291802AE-F9AA-47FF-A875-B2D99E27DA49.jpeg 307D67D0-4C3A-4DF7-A307-F8B88A539EBD.jpeg 051B283D-36C1-4B8B-88E8-F2C2BA067F0B.jpeg 55AB3C63-5F42-4089-A0BA-502D89F9EAC3.jpeg
 
My hot set up was to install the lighter vertical shaft flywheel on the horizontal shaft motor in order to get it to rev higher. Most of the stuff I built was direct drive but once I made this switch I had to use a centrifugal clutch in order to make it work.
 
A kid in the neighborhood had 2 Clinton's, direct drive Go-Cart with marginal brakes ! What a ride !
The things we did as kids.
 
I'm pushing mid 60's now, I look almost daily at old school mini bikes on line and kits.
But now they sure don't cost the $99 back of the magazine ads of old.
 
peabodyracin said:
Mini bikes: my 1st was a home made out of threaded black pipe with a bicycle fork welded on. No rake what so ever. Pretty touchy steering. Dad came up with a surplus aircraft generator engine after I had the bike. It was so tall I had to cut a hole in the plywood seat for the spark plug to stick through, then taped a thick piece of foam over the plug and be careful how I sat on it or I'd get lit up.

Thing was fast but borderline controlable. A buddy I let try it crashed almost immediately, pushing the forks back some and making it even more challenging to drive.

By then I was 14 and the Honda 50's were coming out. Hit the big time then!
Click to expand...
My mini bike was made from 1/2" galvanized water pipe and also had a bicycle front end on it but had enough rake to make it steer ok. One day the lower weld on the neck let go and that was a bit strange. Glad I wasn't going very fast and it came to a stop just as the bottom of the bike touched the ground.


Darter6 said:
A kid in the neighborhood had 2 Clinton's, direct drive Go-Cart with marginal brakes ! What a ride !
The things we did as kids.
Click to expand...
Direct drive (belt) and no brakes at all AND the throttle was hooked up backwards. Had to push start it and having the throttle open while pushing helped with that but one day i flipped it and got thrown off. The cart landed on all fours and took off and ran into a building. Glad that building was there to stop it lol. Bent a steering rod was all that happened to it.
 
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