Forever Young: An overgrown mini-bike with a Yamaha snowmobile engine
The last time we heard from Sean Skinner, he’d just built a Yamaha XS650-powered replica of the 1960s Schwinn Stingray Orange Krate bicycle. The oddball creation was a far cry from the tidy restomods that his shop, MotoRelic, is best known for?but it was no less awesome.
Once that bike was sold, Sean had an itch to unleash his inner child again, so he set out to build something even wackier. Best described as an ?overgrown mini-bike,? Sean’s new whip features a bespoke frame and a two-stroke Yamaha snowmobile engine. Yes, you read that right.
Inspiration for the build came from Sean’s youth. ?As a kid, mini-bikes were always in the stable,? he tells us. ?Either a Honda Mini Trail or some 5 hp, friction brake death trap.? When this nostalgia collided with a sudden interest in vintage air-cooled snowmobiles, Sean figured that using a traditional motorcycle engine would be too easy. So he scoured his local classifieds for a 1982 Yamaha SRV 540 unit?a compact two-stroke, pull-start snowmobile engine, with almost 60 hp on offer. He soon found a complete donor sled, yanked the motor out, and sold the rest of it to recoup some of his budget.
The engine was rebuilt with new bearings, pistons, and rings, and a fresh bore. In snowmobile form, the SRV 540 uses a CVT system to transfer power to the track?but this build called for a traditional manual transmission. So Sean had to devise a workaround.
?On the crank, there’s a nice tapered shaft to attach a B...
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