Everything Else

Thanks to the Hurricane Ike I have been without internet service at the house for about half of September. For most people this would not be a problem, but the website you are reading this from and my email are hosted from my home. This means when my internet connection goes down so does this website and my email capabilities. Fortunately, I was on vacation when the storm hit and did not have to suffer with the rest of the citizens of Houston. At any rate, we are back up and running.

From: Sep 01 2008 12:00 AM (US/Central)
To: Oct 01 2008 12:00 AM (US/Central)

1. www.prestonmoore.com
- uptime: 41.528%
- downtime: 17day 13hr 00min
- outage: 4

Thanks to our neighbors Charles and Jennifer for allowing us the use of their DSL connection during our outage. Charles supplied us with the WPA encryption key for access to their wifi system.

I was browsing the aisles of Harbor Freight a few months ago and noticed 6.5 horsepower engines for a little over $100. I had no idea what I would do with it, but I went ahead and purchased one anyway. I got the motor to the house and it sat on my desk for a week before I decided I needed a mini bike. Why a mini bike? Well, because I never had one as a kid and I had a motor on my desk.

I did some research on the net and found several sources for mini bike kits, but the prices were a little too high. I browsed over to craigslist and found a "Lil' Indian" rolling frame advertised by a local seller for $100 bucks. I responded to the ad and the frame was in my garage in no time. The frame was nice and straight with no bends, but needed a good cleaning and another coat of paint. I completely stripped the frame of all parts and re-painted it in an afternoon.

I can never keep anything in "stock" configuration. My new engine was no different. I completely dismantled and "hotrodded" it before I even put oil and gas in it. I obtained most of the modification tricks from a few karting websites that use the same engines for kart racing. I won't go into how the mods were done, but here is a list of what I did to my engine.

- Governer/limiter removed
- 1.2:1 rocker arms
- ARC billet aluminum flywheel
- flat-top piston
- GX160 ported 14cc cylinder head
- Mikuni 22mm carbuerator (jetted 130main/12.5 pilot)
- Briggs and Stratton "Animal" intake manifold
- Mikuni pulse-type fuel pump
- 8 degree timing advance
- Exhaust header
- 18 lb. valve springs

The listed mods are pretty standard for the GX200 style engines running in the karting world. The compression ratio is raised from the factory 7.9:1 to around 11.3:1 with the smaller combustion chamber of the GX160 head and the flat-top piston thus making premium fuel a must. I was lucky and experienced no detonation problems with 93 octane fuel. I highly recommend the following websites as they greatly assisted me in this project.

Affordable Go Karts
karting.4cycle.com
oldminibikes.com
GFRT

Click here for photos of the build-up

Update 8-4-2008
I decided the paint job was not holding up as expected. I completely stripped the paint down to the bare metal and re-shot it in bright yellow. Also, the seat was upgraded.

Yeah...your iPod is cool, but does it have 160 gigs? This MP3 player is not exactly homemade, but just about. The mainboard is a kit from Natiem Electronics I picked up in my travels. The firmware is based on an old program by Nasif Akand called ZipAmp. I can no longer find any information or working links to the ZipAmp project. If you want to see what the ZipAmp code is all about click here to download the zip file. The manual can be downloaded by clicking here.