Great progress, but that chain tensioner will not live long, i can guarantee that. You have a fine line with the CVT belt tension and chain tension with that setup, I will be interested to see how it works out.

You "broke in" the motor at idle for 4 hours?? That's not a good idea to seat the rings in my experience. Hopefully you didn't glaze the cylinder walls.

Thanks! We shall see, winging it has been working out good thus far. Im not too concerned about belt tension as the engine can slide forward and backwards about +/-4 inches, so I have wiggle room to tweak tenstion. Once its good you just bolt it down. We will see, its a sturdier chain tenstioner than any motorcycle I have ever driven. If the rubber melts off the wheel, Ill just swap ut with a denser wheel.

As far as the break in, I actually did it in multiple small time frames, most of it at idle, with the occassional throttle pull, adding up to 4ish hours. Nothing is smoking, and it starts right up, so im not concerened. One of the main reasons for running an off the shelf hardware store engine is that they are pretty cheap anyways. I paid $600 for this Predator 670cc V-twin. Its only 4 bolts to swap the whole thing, so if/when it dies, I'll be more prone to just putting a new engine in as opposed to spending half my free time trying to fix it.

I hope it all works out great, it's been fun watching the build.

Almost ready for a test drive, all I need is one fuse and a double check on all bolts, keyways, and lock rings. I drained the oil and no sparkles/flakes from the break in, so thats good news. Brake and handbrake are good to go.

Hell yeah! Let us know how that goes.

this, damn cool build

I took it for its first ride a few weeks ago. Overall I am very pleased, the thing has a ton of torque, and my guestimation on gear ratios worked great. Max speed with the high torque gear ratio is about 50, plenty enough. I am very glad that I installed a second break caliper with the handbrake. One caliper would not be enough, but the hand brake picks up whats missing. She is stout, feels like a little tank driving around. Alternator works, chain tensioner works, and doesn't show excessive wear. Ill work on painting over the springtime. Also, I picked up a mini mill/lathe to start practicing making parts, I coukd have used this a while ago.

Great job dad! You have some skills.

Agreed, Nicely Done!


Great pic!

Hmmm. Great update, but the smoker wasn't mentioned.

Thanks folks!

Ah yes, the smoker, I made a mount so I can also put it on the truck too.
The family van is next!

The winning doesn't stop with this guy!

Blam! Press mounted. I put it on the back in case the embers from the smoker want to get spicey with my powder while loading. Safety first! I'll weld a few bolts on the bottom of the plate to hold a spare tire while offloading (no press for that). Zapping on last minute stuff before paint.