I'm from DuBois, PA. It about a two hours drive north from Pittsburg and a hour and a half drive east from Ponoco Raceway. It a good size of a town. It remind me of Danville, Indiana where I was born and raise there.
LOL..... Well here the story. A month ago before I bought it, my buddy traded his racecar for this banshee. He was ridding it for weeks until the banshee stop running (it was running pretty good until this problem occur). He told me there is no sparks on both of the spark plugs. My buddy thinks it could be a cdi/coil problem. He don't want to fix his banshee because of the expense of buying a cdi and coil. So, he decided to sell it to me for $800. I take the banshee to my garage and do some diagonostic check on it. I found out that some of the main wires insulation are melted from the hot exhaust (causing a short) and the TORS malfuction. I fixed the main wires and remove the TORS and the spark plugs spark again. I installed the spark plugs back on the motor and try to start it up. I kick start the banshee for soo many times until my legs get tired. I sprayed a very small amout of starter fluid in the motor and kick start it again. This time it fired right up. It was running pretty good for about less than eight minutes until the motor made a very loud nasty chatter/racheting sound at idle then the motor lock-up. I removed the spark plugs and found out there are some metalic goo and crap in one of the two spark plugs. I took the head off and found no hole on top of the piston. I removed the carburators and reed valves to take a look in one of the jug through the intake tract. I found out that I have crack piston skirt that went into the crankcase and it went up to the combustion chamber. To see what the damageare, I took the motor apart. There is no damage or gouges on both of the jugs bores. The crankcase looks good. The crankshaft looks good, but I don't want to re-use it. I believe what happen is the starting fluid make a big explosion in the combustion chamber that causes a small hair-line crack on the piston skirt. Since the jugs bore is very worn out because of trouble of starting the motor, the piston move very sloppy and slap around in the bore causing the hair-line crack to become a big crack. Then the piston skirt broke off and went into crankcase and jam the motor. So, my $800 banshee is becoming a $2000 banshee! lol.
Yes, I'm planning to build my own motor. I already rebuilt three motors for my Blaster. I think rebuilding a Banshee motor would probably be a piece of cake. I still deciding how to build my Banshee motor - mild stock stroke motor or a 4mm stroker motor. I'm leaning toward to mild stock stroke motor because I ride mostly trails (open and close) and I'm not really interested in making my banshee to go any faster. But, I wonder if worth it to build a 4mm stroker motor than mild stock stroke motor.