“Why ruin a perfectly good Honda,” you might ask. Before I answer that question, let me give you the back story of this hair-brained scheme.
I’ve been on paternity leave on and off since early September. Having such a needy new roommate requires me to sit still more often than I’m used to. As it so happens, when I sit still for too long I get pretty bored. That combined with too much YouTube led to my discovery of this idea. One of the channels I subscribe to, Mike Festiva, had an old cut up Honda lying around his property, as well as a brand new Harbor Freight Predator 212 engine in the box. He figured he might as well make good use of both and make a running dirt bike. It was an entertaining build series as well as an entertaining thought. My brain ran with it, quickly trying to add up the numbers. Before too long, I figured I could probably make the same project happen for around $500. This seemed like a pretty reasonable price for a new little family dirt bike, as well as a good thing to occupy my time whilst the new roommate took her naps. Not to mention I’ve been wanting a minibike the last couple years and you can’t seem to find a decent one for any less than five or six hundred bucks or more in my area these days.
Within a week or two, I found a very lightly used Predator 212 in Kingston on Facebook Marketplace. The old man that sold it to me initially bought it to fix up a broken pressure washer. After trying to swap it, he found the water pump was bad on the pressure washer and decided to sell the engine and buy a new washer. That’s where I swooped in and grabbed the Predator for $100. The project bike hunt eventually led me to a 1972 Honda SL100 in Gig Harbor. I ended up getting it with a non-running engine, no title, and basically no history. The engine lacked an exhaust, carb, points cover, spark plug/ignition wire and kickstarter. On the plus side, the tires held air, the tank was almost rust-free, the front and rear brakes worked, and it had the basics of what I needed to make the swap happen. This was good enough for me for $150.
So here I was $250 into it and I had a new neglected old bike and a new heart for it too. Here began the work. I decided to go in on a couple new parts I new would help for fitting the new engine. The stock Predator exhaust, carb and intake, and gas tank were all coming off. Since the original Honda tank was still clean and had a much higher capacity, I would be using that as primary. The intake and exhaust assemblies were gaudy and in an awkward place on the engine that would not do any favors for fitup to the bike. That being said, I ordered a new carburetor kit, exhaust, and torque converter kit all from Amazon since I was working on a budget. I know there are better options than what Amazon has to offer, but I also had a financial goal in mind I wanted to hit. These parts all added up to put me at a grand total of $375.48 into the project.
Kaylee and I put in a few days of disassembly, cutting, grinding, fitting and welding to finally get it all together and running. I will say, however, it was not a smooth and straightforward project. In fact at one point I made such a big mistake that I put a hole in the engine block before I even got to test ride the thing… thankfully my lovely wife gave me the idea to patch it up with some JB Weld. Thank you my love!
After all was put together and fixed up, it was time for a test ride. I made it about 3/4 of the way around my block before the chain fell off. This was how I discovered the new chain was not perfectly compatible with the original SL100 rear sprocket. I ended up just using a couple links from it to extend the original chain. No more skipping… so far. It was also running real rough with the choke off. Anytime I got on the throttle with the choke off it would sputter out. Additionally, the straight pipe exhaust that came with my carb kit was also WAY too loud. As something I want to rip around my neighborhood, I felt like an asshole running that thing. Out of insecurity, I “splurged” and bought another exhaust with a muffler. Once arrived, I put it on as well as tuned the carb’s air/fuel screw mixture. Since then everything seems to be running as it should! All in all I’m in it for a grand total of $434.29 at this very moment.
That leads us to where we sit now. The bike is parked and ready for adventure. So to answer the original question, “Why ruin a perfectly good Honda?” It did its job of occupying potentially too much of my time these last couple weeks, and it was a fun fabrication project and taught me a handful of good lessons. Outside of giving my hands something to do, I wanted to prove to myself I could make my own bike for cheaper than I could buy one. Not to mention I doubled its displacement and gave it way more torque with the Predator. I digress. If you want to see more about what I did, go check out my YouTube channel below and watch some videos. I hope you enjoy! If you do, feel free to subscribe and hit that bell for alerts to when I post new videos. Thanks for stopping by my World for a few minutes. Take it easy!