When we bought this dirt bug the kids who owned it had removed all of the springs on the throttle linkage and governor and installed zip ties in their place..It wasn't working very well so I replaced the zip ties with pieces of wire linkage...It takes off decent now(compared to how it was) and amazingly with my son on it (75 lbs) hit 30 mph top end!...However after doing some reading on this site I see that some motors can be dangerous with flywheel or rod explosions..Is there any danger of this with the stock 2.8hp engine?
Locked out governor on stock engine
Yes there is still the possibility of danger. It depends how high of RPM's your reaching. Im not an expert on the topic but i think staying below 4000 is safe. Above that and your risk goes up for rod and flywheel failure. I got mine to do 30 stock with no governor removal. Same gearing as a more powerful engine. It just takes longer to get up to speed.
the rod on a 2.8 will go out the front of the block so you don't have to worry about getting hit by it. if the flywheel lets go (that's a big if) then there will be some problems.
as long as he doesn't keep it wound out for more than a couple of seconds it will be fine. you could always limit the throttle travel some way too.
as long as he doesn't keep it wound out for more than a couple of seconds it will be fine. you could always limit the throttle travel some way too.