Minibikes may be fun little toys for most people, a serious hobby for others, and a novelty to most, but if you are anything like Cars and Cameras with a fetish for going fast and building stuff, then you should definitely watch this.
This isn’t the channel’s first “world’s fastest mini bike” build. The first project was not exactly “mini,” having been based on the American Motorcyclist Association’s (AMA’s) regulations. Now, is there any more doubt that it is a minibike? Any takers? No? Okay moving on.
In the first episode, the “land speed minibike 2.0” went from box to bike within the first few minutes and towards the end of the first episode the thing was ready to ride and out testing. The engine is not powered by gasoline, the fuel of choice for this project is methanol and with it, the bike manages up to 39 horses out of 236 cubic centimeters at 10,200 rpm.
Go Power Sports is the company that provided the minibike kit and the engine is a Tillotson racing power unit. As mentioned, it has up to 236ccs, and it can rev as high as 11,000 rpm. The team also went to work upgrading a few things around the bike to make it safe to run 120 miles per hour. Heck, there’s even a steering damper that will help prevent the dreaded high-speed wobble. Apart from that an extended frame was welded, a fairing was present, and even a set of 10-inch machined aluminum wheels were fitted with a 10-inch flat track tire as well among a host of other things. By the end of episode two, the bike has already come together nicely. It’s almost ready for its first real test.
Episode three, the big test. A 5,000-foot airstrip was used to test out the bike. On the first run and on the first speed trap, the bike was clocking in at about 80 miles per hour. The first run had the motor spinning at about 6,000 rpm, which is about 60 percent of the bike’s rpm range. Things were looking promising on the first run, but we’d later witness that there was more to go over a hundred miles per hour than a simple math equation.
With the first run in the books and the bike running well, the second run netted 91.1 miles per hour, about one mile per hour off the last mini-bike project’s record (about 92 miles per hour). Gearing was the issue as the bike had to contend with even more wind resistance. The gearing was too short for it. A trip to the shop later and a trip back to the airfield, the bike still wasn’t able to, going about 80 miles per hour once again.
It was back to the drawing board once again for Cars and Cameras. I can’t deny that it’s mighty impressive that a mighty little minibike was able to go that fast. However, as the team has come to discover, going above 100 miles per hour is no easy feat. The project is ongoing, and there should be more speed to be unpacked as the project continues. Be sure to check back with Cars and Cameras on YouTube and see if and when they will actually break the 100-mile-per-hour mark.
