Sophomore Elijah Thomas carefully follows the next steps to building his dirt bike from scratch. Thomas methodically pieces together the engine in order to make everything else fall into place. He slowly tightens the bolts to secure the wheel tightly into its specific place. Learning the skills needed for this project could guide him down a pathway to building other complex vehicles far more advanced than the dirt bike.
“It sounded like a sort of nice and easy introduction to motorsport and 2-stroke engines,” Thomas said. “But, truthfully I was just bored and had money to spare.”
Thomas chose to build his bike all himself from the ground up.
“As much as I’d like to say it’s cheaper, it’s really not,” Thomas said. “I paid $900 for my bike and the parts and time to get it fully running, while not enough to buy a brand new bike, would be about the same if not more than buying a running bike of the same year and model.”
Thomas made this dirt bike to be more independent and more industrious.
“Two-strokes [engines] are everywhere, for example your lawnmower is more than likely a 2-stroke,” Thomas said. “Knowing how they work simply puts me in a spot where I don’t have to call my dad or someone else to fix something for me, I could just do it myself.”
Although the prices are high for machines like this, there will be challenges that he needs to overcome such as money, and doing it entirely by himself.
“I bought the bike body in November of last year. Right now I don’t know when I should be finished making it,” Thomas said. “My biggest limit is money. Frankly now it costs a lot so money will be a struggle.”
Thomas has had experience with these mechanics. But he had previously worked on a different type of engine, so there is some different knowledge required to mend this engine type.
“I’ve flipped a few cars that required pretty basic knowledge of engines, and of course those were four-stroke engines, but not two-strokes,” Thomas said. “The main difference between the two is how many strokes a full ‘power stroke’ is.”
The dirt bike has been very overworked, so when Thomas bought it, he knew there was work that needed to be done.
“Currently, since the bike has had plenty of different owners, just dealing with the past mistakes and questionable choices of the previous owners is my main concern. Stuck bolts and terrible aluminum welding are a few things I’ve had to deal with,” Thomas said.
Some days can be slow with parts not coming in and other roadblocks, but Thomas still figures out ways to advance the project.
“When I’m waiting for parts, there is not much that I can do,” Thomas said. “I try to go out shopping around once a week to see if I can think of something to do.”
