I’ve been beating the hell out of the DB30 for months now. I initially grabbed this bike for $100 from a friend of a friend and it was basically unused, but had been sitting for 5-10 years. So I cruised over to Harbor Freight, picked up the Predator 212, ordered a few parts to get it bolted on and running and that’s been about it. The early mods included a straight pipe to annoy the neighbors, an air filter for more air and some jetting to keep it running smoothly. Oh and over the winter, I removed the governor and that opened it up quite nicely. At that time, I didn’t touch the crank, valve springs or any of the other suggested upgrades. I basically figured I would attempt to limit how often I got WOT.
So I built the thing for a potential mini bike gambler, but the dates have never lined up great for me or they’ve just been straight up cancelled due to acts of god like #covid19. In the meantime, it’s been a great means of transportation for grabbing six packs from the gas station or ripping around the mountains out at the river property (more on that place later). It’s been surprisingly reliable, albeit a bit sketchy at times. And the thing about ripping around the mountains is the roads are usually gravel, dirt or worse.
Where am I going with this? Basically I’m trying to say in the process of running up some roads to get some cell reception and do some shooting, I rattled three of the six bolts holding my oil cover on the predator 212. Two of the remaining six were finger tight. I definitely put some torque into them when I removed the governor and have ridden it quite a bit since then as well. All I know is I was riding back and was feeling some pretty insane vibration when giving it some throttle. When I got back to camp, my entire left leg was coated in oil, hell, most of the bike was coated in oil. I had no intention of going back for the bolts and mostly hoped I could get it back up and running when I got back home from our trip.
Fast forward a couple of days and I’m back home and ready to dig into the mini bike. I thought about removing the cover entirely and making sure all was well on the inside of the engine, but in true backyard mechanics style, I went and bought the five remaining socket cap bolts from the local hardware store (M8-1.25×35 Grade 12.9), applied some red thread locker to them and then torqued all of them back down. I left the one original bolt without thread locker as a bit of a test.
I then drained the oil, or at least attempted to. Nothing came out, not a drop. Fair enough. Put the drain bolt back in. Wiped off as much of the oil as possible and added in the 1/2 quart (16oz) of 10w30 oil through the fill hole and started the bike up. It ran great. Took it for a fast rip around the neighborhood to let everyone know the bike was alive and well. Got it back home in one piece and yeah, it’s seemingly running great. It seems like I might have messed up the gasket, but we’ll see. I’ll probably give it a few more hot laps to the gas station and back and then change the oil, just in case any shavings were introduced into the mix.
Looking into the future, mod wise. The brakes are now obviously in rough shape. Guessing a bit of oil got onto the brake pads and they’re not doing very well. I’ll look into either replacing the pads or seeing about a hydraulic upgrade. Both tires are getting pretty slick. I would like to wrap the up pipe and already picked the wrap up, just need to, ya know, do it. I lost the spring for the kick stand and will have to acquire that because kick stands are actually kinda cool. I also wouldn’t mind getting the front fender back on. That’s it for now, see you for the next adventure or mod.