tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78546542080381456382024-03-13T13:02:49.564-05:00Fast, Cheap and Out of ControlMopeds ruining my life.Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-34861464007692077312015-04-13T17:00:00.001-05:002015-04-13T17:00:16.352-05:00'DAKAR' SHAIf you have ever bought a real SHA along with a few small screws and some jets you have probably had the same feeling I have had... you come home knowing your treats will be there, but nothing on your doorstep. You look in your mailbox and there at the very bottom is a tiny envelope which you open and spread out on your kitchen table. It looks like the proverbial handful of magic beans, a puny little garbage carb and a few trinkets and your heart sinks 'I paid 100 bucks for THIS?!'<br />
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I call it 'Del-pression' and it can now be cured. THIS fine DAKAR clone carburetor is the solution.<br />
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The finish is great... some of the casting is chunkier than the Del SHA but in a good way, more material where you want it. The bowl is metal, the top is metal, it has a real o-ring gasket, the slide is metal, the fuel fill banjo is metal, and best of all that glorious mid-range jetting needle. <br />
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These are so much nicer than 'real' SHA's and they can actually be tuned without a divining rod, handful of chicken bones, and a left-turn screwdriver.<br />
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They come with the 19mm shim you will need for your peugeot malossi intake, puch intake or just about any other intake (some tomos take 18mm don't know why? you can use a open end wrench to measure the intake size before you buy it if you don't have a fancy calipers or measurin' stick)<br />
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Seriously though, cant say enough good things about this little buddy. Drawbacks? Hmm if you are putting it on a peugeot you can't get at the adjustment screw. Not as bad as a dellorto which doesn't even have one... so there is that!<br />
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I dunno why this is even a discussion, huh? Its like half the price and better. If you want a bigger carb buy a mikuni or an oko, seriously throw that Dellorto junk away man, its obsolete!<br />
<br />Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-21648427340765671842014-09-16T11:54:00.001-05:002014-09-16T11:54:20.553-05:00Build your own 'free' pallet shedHey, woah, yeah its been a while hasn't it?<br />
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My storage situation has become dire. I'm up to 15 or 16 motos and peds that are complete, probably 5 or 6 more in pieces, and everything is jammed into a small one car garage. Don't get me wrong, i'm pretty happy with my current shop situation, best shop setup I've had in years, but the excess inventory has been getting in my way and the 5 or 6 bikes out back in 'cold storage' under a tarp have been getting surface rust and bugs and crap all up in them, which sucks. Every time i want to work on something i have to push 2-3 bikes out and on Saturday it was raining and i couldn't move around the shop... I finally got pissed enough to do something about it.<br />
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So i've been planning out this little 'shed' for awhile. It took me about 4 or 5 hours to build and cost exactly $0. Even if you went out and paid real money for all the hardware store type parts, you could still get it done for $20 or so.<br />
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Ever since i was in high school and got my first truck i've been building stuff out of pallets. They are sturdy and work great for all sorts of structures. Shelves, buildings, decks, tree forts, Best part they are free.<br />
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The first step in building anything out of pallets is to find a good source of pallets. I've been lucky to always have an ample supply anywhere i've worked. The best places to find pallets are people who regularly take large shipments of things and break them up into small shipments. Construction or home improvement stores are great, but sometimes they are sneaky and hide their pallets or return them to the manufacturer. A wholesale building supply place is likely to have the extra long pallets, because they ship things like roofing panels and siding on them. The long pallets are the best kind.<br />
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What you want to find are pallets that are all the same size. You might find one beauty that is huge, but ultimately its easier to work with a bunch of same-sized pallets, or say, all your 'wall' pallets are one size and your 'roof' pallets are another size.<br />
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It is ALWAYS easier and cheaper to find the right size pallets than it is to modify them or buy extra wood to make odd-sized pallets work. Thats the first rule of pallet construction...pallets are free so if you can save time/money by wasting pallets, always sacrifice the pallets.<br />
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The pallet shed that i'll show you how to build here is by all means not the best, cheapest, or most awesome thing you could build. It is however super easy to build and it fit my needs. You could spend twice as much time on it and make it really awesome, walls and doors, etc. For someone who needs to store 4-5 mopeds or motos along side an apartment building or rental house, its a pretty simple basic structure you can build in a couple hours with minimal tools and no skills at all.<br />
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Here are the tools I used. The screws are 2" and 3" and despite the 'store bought' boxes they are actually re-used screws i salvaged from a pallet shelf i built in my old shop. You could use nails, or a nail gun if you're REALLY fancy, but for a rental house the screws are nice so you can take it apart when you move. You can use a bowsaw, chainsaw, or sawzall if you want, but you should only have to make a few cuts so the hand saw in my case took less time than getting out an extension cord.<br />
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The level is kinda fancy, but i like my roofs to drain water in a predictable fashion, and you want to make sure the legs are up and down straight so it doesn't tip over.<br />
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The first thing i did was measure the pallets and figure out where my legs would land. I dug down to hard dirt and laid out these bricks to provide A) a good footing and B) keep the wood legs out of the mud. If water gets into this soft junky pine wood, it will rot within a couple weeks. If you want to get all pro about this, you can use some 1-gallon ice cream buckets and redi-mix concrete to actually pour little footings. Scrap pieces of broken up concrete are really good for this too!<br />
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I used the big hammer up there and a 2x4 scrap to pound the footings down so they settle flat.<br />
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I broke my cardinal rule. I had 3 pallets that were similar but one was slightly longer than the others. No big deal. I lined them all up on a couple long 2x4's and screwed them together with the un-cut edge all lined up. I screwed the adjacent runners of the pallets into each other. This is where the c-clamp comes in handy, the pallets are all warped to hell, so I had to pull them into alignment.<br />
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This is nice because it straightens everything out and if you have pallets with cracks or knots in them it strengthens them by doubling up on the runners.<br />
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I screwed down a long 2x4 stringer to the ends of all the pallets. The 2x4's that I used for this were all collected from the dumpster at work over the last couple months. Worst case scenario, you go out buy yourself some 2x4's, they are cheap. You could probably disassemble enough pallets to get the wood but that is a lot of screwing around. Lots of construction sites throw out 2x4's you can salvage.<br />
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Now that the stringer is tieing all the clean ends together you can cut off the uneven ends and attach the stringer to the other side. </div>
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This picture doesn't show it well, but i had to do some creative tweaking to get the ends to all line up perfecto, and pull the warpy 2x4 into alignment. <br />
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And then you trim the excess off the stringers, and your 'roof' is finished. </div>
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The next part was really tough to do by myself, now I know why the amish get together 20 of their strongest buddies to 'raise' a barn. I had to get the roof up on top of the legs somehow without killing myself. It took a couple minutes of puzzling, but what i finally came up with was lifting up the roof and propping it at a 45 degree angle, then i screwed on the legs at a 80 degree angle, roughly, to give the roof some pitch. I used some scrap wood from the pallets to attach diagonal braces to the legs. </div>
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The next part was tricky. Holding a support in one hand, i picked up the whole roof and hinged it upwards on the legs. It weighed 150-200 lbs so this was no small feat lifting it over my head, then balancing it precariously on the scrap 2x4. It took me a couple tries to get it right, but when it was finally perched on the stilts, i drank a beer and took a picture. </div>
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The next part was pretty easy, I had grabbed a pallet with really long 4x4 stringers just to get those big 'legs. I figured the outer legs would be most important as the whole structure would be kinda tipped into them so they bear the most weight. I disassembled that pallet, and slipped those legs through the slats on the inside of the runners.<br />
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Then i adjusted my stilts so the roof would be at the right angle, and screwed in the big legs.<br />
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I attached 2 more 2x4's to hold the legs together, then i removed the hokey angle braces.<br />
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It was time for the Packer game, so I threw a tarp over the roof and threw my bikes underneath. <br />
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So as it sits, it is pretty sturdy. There are a lot of big screws keeping it from going parallelogram on me and collapsing, but its not strong enough for my tastes.<br />
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Later this week, i'll add some diagonal bracing across the front and back, and maybe add a diagonal brace on each side.<br />
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I'm currently on the lookout for some metal or plastic roofing panels to finish the roof. I'll cut the 4x4 posts off even with the roof and lay that over them. Its important when you build something like this to keep all the support beams inside the edge of the roof. If you dont, and water drips off a corner and runs down onto some beams, it will rot them really quick and weaken the wood where your screws attach.<br />
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Anyhow, thats just a quick primer on building your very own moped lean-to out of pallets. If you have a buddy help you, you could probably get it done in less than 2 hours. I'll post back when i get some walls on the side of this thing, and when i find some nice roofing material to finish it off, but the tarp or poly film roof is plenty good and i've used that in the past.<br />
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The most important thing for storing mopeds is just making sure that water doesn't collect underneath them, and making sure that there is enough air flow to ventilate and dry them out when its not raining.Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-75765514085743345862014-06-06T15:30:00.000-05:002014-06-09T12:06:06.736-05:00Driving the DT50Trying to remember where I left off, I think I had torn down the DT50 and found the leaking shaft seal behind the clutch. Most of the engine was in super good condition, now that i've worked on a couple of these dirtbikes I'm even more impressed, as they get rode hard and put up wet, as they say.<br />
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First thing I did when I tore it down was tackle the top end, the paint was peeling and there was some minor corrosion. Someone was trying to fix it and had pulled the head, wrecking the gaskets, so it had no compression. I figured I'd do a proper job of it, so I pulled it all apart and took a box of grimey, crusty junk to the engine rebuilders next door for hot tanking.<br />
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Not the greatest 'before' picture but generally showing the condition of the parts.<br />
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Back from blasting and masked for paint. The total cost for the hot tank was $40 for 7 pieces, kinda high but way worth it to get everything back totally ready for paint.<br />
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And after 3-4 light coats of VHT caliper paint. Same stuff i use on heads, amazingly tough with a nice satin finish. Unfortunately my paint curing oven wasn't set up so i couldn't bake the paint. A tiny tiny bit of chipping occured at the head gasket sealing surface and now there is a little rust there... damn. That stuff works much better when you can bake it.<br />
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Since all the bearings, crank, etc. looked great, and there was no center gasket included with the rebuild kit, and it is a vertical split case.. and I didn't want to open a whole can of suck... I didn't bother to split the main case. Plus sometimes these vertical split moto engines can require special tools to reassemble correctly and i'm not feeling that.<br />
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I did have the clutch cover off, clutch out, replaced all the clutch-side-case seals including water pump, crankshaft, kick starter, shifter, and oil pump. Re-assembled all the clutch side parts with liberal application of red loctite, and replaced all the stripped out phillips-head screws with stainless allen head cap screws.<br />
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Cheap insurance, and since Yamaha is a company that is still in business (what a rare treat!) I was able to get parts from <a href="http://www.partzilla.com/" target="_blank">PartZilla</a> who took forever to ship them (I'm pretty sure they special order it in from Yamaha so it takes 2 weeks) but everything came in OEM yammie bags and was correct and complete. Very nice. Plus they have all those wierd rubber frame bits that you can't ever seem to get. And their prices were very good. All told the bill was just over $50 for all new seals and some tank dampers, and a couple oddball screw thinges.<br />
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The gasket kit came from <a href="https://www.treatland.tv/yamaha-DT50-RZ50-athena-50cc-gasket-set-p/yamaha-dt50-athena-gasket-set.htm" target="_blank">Treatland.tv </a> and it is an Athena brand gasket set. It was super complete-o with some bonus gaskets for different model year DT's and everything I needed, except for the oil pump gasket (which was pretty easy to fab) and the center case gasket, which, if you really need that badly you can just order from Yamaha/partzilla. The head gasket is my only gripe, the OG gasket is MLS (multiple layer steel) which lots of Jap OEM's use, especially for aluminum-on-steel applications (I.E. Mazda DOHC 4 cylinder, aluminum head on a cast iron block). The Athena gasket is a cheaper quality carbon/graphite composite thing with a steel fire ring. <br />
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I dunno a whole lot about this kinda stuff, but on the EJ25 Subaru motors, the OEM graphite composite head gaskets are trash and prone to failure, the fix is to use an MLS gasket... making me think that there is significant reason to buy the OEM head gasket, especially if you plan on doing performancey type stuff.<br />
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Not too shabby for a days' work. This is 95% complete. Main thing missing when this photo was taken is the airbox.. that was a tough one. Chad in Canada send me one along with the sidcovers. I was able to fill her up with 10-w40 moto oil and coolant and she fired right up, LITERALLY on the first kick. So cool.<br />
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Since it was already broken in, and running lean with no air box, I just let her warm up and make sure there were no leaks. Well, there were a couple leaks, the coolant temp sensor was dribbling, and 2t oil was puking all over the place because i was missing the M5 screws to hold the oil pump on.<br />
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But other than that success! Everything works as it should, adjusted brakes, and re-torqued the muffler bolts, the head bolts and the temp sensor, did a quick check to make sure everything was free and happy, and put her away.<br />
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The next couple weeks we were moving. Then my truck broke down so I got a fire under my ass to get this thing working. The truck still is running on 5/6 cylinders, but that's a different story.<br />
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I put on a new chain (420 Chain x 110 links- good to know because some places list 428x120 chain as the replacement ) Patched the front tire, put on the airbox and installed a homemade air filter cut out of window air conditioner foam sheet.<br />
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Oh what else? I dunno. Replaced quite a few little random missing screws, etc. Got the oil injector hooked up and working, but i'm still running a little oil in the gas because i don't quite trust it and there are a couple air bubbles in the line.<br />
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So yeah, its pretty fun. Still a few things to do, replace the rear brake pads, true up the rear wheel a bit better. The rear tire has a huge gash and everyone keeps saying 'hey do you know there is a huge gash in your rear tire' ... ha.. I have a gazelle to put on there but it would just be sooooo ugly.. maybe. who cares<br />
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The forks might need some oil. The clutch cable is wackadoo way too long and all mushy.<br />
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It probably needs to go up one click on the main jet and might not be the worst idea to have a front tube without 74 patches on it.<br />
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But man, does this thing GET. It will pull a pretty stupid wheelie in 1st gear (up to about 7 mph) and hop the front wheel in 2nd. It gets up to 45 real quick and eventually climbs a good bit past 50. My commute is 16 miles each way of 60 mph 4 lane slab, and it handles that surprisingly well. The little engine loves 10, 11k and just sings along quite happy. Very well balanced and zippy.<br />
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If I have more time perhaps I'll do a better write up on all the research i've had to do to find parts sources and stuff for this. Its not as well supported as the AM6 motor, but there is pretty good aftermarket for it in europe and south america.<br />
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Its kinda funny, I'm not in love with the thing and i'm not sure why. It does everything pretty well. Its basically exactly what we all want our mopeds to be, good brakes, good suspension, stable, lightweight and plenty of power clean up to 10k rpm. Yet somehow its just not as much fun as a moped. You've always got to shift, you're usually either frustrated you cant go faster, or aggravated that you are being slowed down by traffic. If you don't wind the piss out of it, it dogs shifts, and if you do wind it out you, it blasts through gears so fast you are constantly shifting.<br />
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Its tough to say really what would make it better, if anything. It would be a real blast to have a 150 lb bike with about 2x the horsepower this has, or even just a little more torque. It would be a monster with a 200cc thumper like an xr200, but as it is, its just not that great to drive. <br />
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If i end up keeping it, I'll probably paint the horrendous rattle-canned plastics in a kenny roberts yellow paint scheme, to go with the black. Maybe even throw the cheap 70cc kit on it or put a pipe on it. Hard to say. Its the kind of bike that is so close to being awesome, yet mysteriously just not that good and I can't quite put my finger on it. At this point i've got a grand total of maybe 400 bucks into it, including fluids, so its not too hard to justify keeping it, but the 1500 I could probably sell it for could buy me a couple bikes that i'm more into, so its a tough call. Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-50703170225252170832014-05-21T10:38:00.001-05:002014-05-23T09:48:42.484-05:00Peugeot stock variator tuning - a story in picturesI did this about 3 years ago. After making some modifications to my stock Peugeot 103 to give it more top end (pipe, porting, SHA, reeds), I spent a couple hours removing, drilling, and re-installing the weights to tune it for better acceleration.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stock cylinder ported, very minimal</td></tr>
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My brother at the time was running an Airsal 70 on his, with a PHBG, and was happy with 2 M6 nuts on the swingarms, I tried that and my engine didn't rev high enough to stay in the powerband.<br />
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So this is, in pictures, how I ended up tuning my stock 45 mph peugeot 103.<br />
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In the end, I ended up going back to a smaller hole (I had a small pile of these weights laying around to play with) for my very conservative engine. I tuned the clutch with 3 balls and 1 star spring. Having a super high clutch stall and ripping high rpms before you variate sure sounds impressive, but for a stock setup like this, all that sound and fury doesn't get you going much faster. </div>
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The lesson here is that variating too slowly and revving out of your power band is just as bad for a stock setup like this... well maybe not just as bad, but not nearly as effective.. as variating too soon. </div>
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I'm not sure if i ever did measure the small hole + rounded ears, but i'm going to guess the weight was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20.5 grams. On a higher revving setup the 2x 5/16" hole may be the ticket coming in right around 18 grams. The numbers listed on there are cumulative meaning that each mod removed weight further resulting in the posted number.</div>
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The breakdown is like this: </div>
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Stock Weight ...... 23.8g</div>
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1/4" Hole ...... -.8g</div>
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3/8" Hole ...... -2.5g</div>
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Round ears ...... -2.25g (obviously dependent on how much you grind off)</div>
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5/16" hole (est) ..... -1.75g</div>
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Obviously there is going to be some variation in where you drill the holes and how much effect they have, the ears seem like they would make the biggest difference as they are farthest from the pivot point, the hole in the base probably not so much. </div>
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Also, dont forget to check and adjust your stop to make sure you are variating fully. You don't want to stress the arms, pivots and other parts by letting the slinging weights apply constant tension (this will smash the plastic guides by the way) but you do want to let the arms push up to almost completely closing the variator. In fact push up just a hair away from fully closing the variator. I didn't take pictures of this, but as i mod my stock vario on my TSM i'll be sure to snap a few pics of this adjustment. It is super important to getting full top speed. In fact, on the TSM i'm actually thinking about modifying the cheeks for an 'overdrive' function and letting the belt actually ride up to the full limit. </div>
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The other take-away is that the stock arms are about 1/2 gram imbalanced from each other. If you don't end up using them, you shouldn't have to worry about it, but on a ripper 10k rpm setup, that 1/2 gram could be enough to shake a carb loose, crack a bracket, or even contribute to crank failure. Get out your dope scale and dial these puppies in. </div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">DONT FORGET THE RED LOCTITE WHEN YOU PUT THE SCREWS BACK IN. </span><br />
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<span style="color: red;">IF THE SCREWS ARE KINDA STRIPPED OUT MAYBE GO AHEAD AND REPLACE THEM WITH SOME ALLEN HEADS, OK?</span>Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-7663476556008915792014-03-26T12:01:00.002-05:002014-03-26T12:01:44.674-05:0012 Step Process of Moped Ownership1) get a stock moped from craigslist or a garage sale<br />
2) get it running after posting 1000 questions on MA; JUST get it running, don't fix the forks or hook up a rear brake or tail light.<br />
3) you are now the worlds greatest genius mechanic, but your moped only goes 20, time to hit up treatland<br />
4) buy a bunch of performance parts and start taking shit apart on your moped, chop the fender, get some club-mans or just flip over your stock handlebars, cut some wires while you're at it. <br />
5) install the parts poorly, get them barely running, break most of them in the process<br />
6) post on moped army about how crappy moped performance parts are<br />
7) get your bike going 50- you are now a performance god<br />
8) seize your bike<br />
9) park your bike in the back of your garage or post it on craigslist for a rediculous amount of money as it 'needs some tuning but runs good, oh yeah and rear brakes still don't work'<br />
10) buy an enduro and ride it at moped rallies<br />
11).....<br />
12) profit<br />
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<br />Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-91668795192427299592014-03-23T16:49:00.001-05:002014-03-23T16:54:49.732-05:00DT Dreamin' Well, guys and gals, I hate to say it but fate keeps pushing me further down the rabbit hole of Yamaha Enduros... yikes!<br />
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This one came to me last Monday. I finally posted my CL100 on craigslist because, lets face it, I'm just not that into four strokes, and after moving it across the country twice I just couldn't stand pushing it around my shop and having it in the way any more. I posted it at $400 because i saw a couple other CB100 projects on craigs for 500-700$ but they weren't selling.<br />
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A guy offered me a trade for a basket case DT100... he said it was running at one point but he had gotten into a restoration and, surprise, lost interest. He already had one CB100 and was eager to take on my project. The pictures weren't good but hey, I'd rather have a 100cc 2T than 4T any day so whatever.<br />
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When he showed up, I saw this gorgeous red tank right away and I was elated. The tank alone was enough to get me a little excited.<br />
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The rest of the bike wasn't so impressive, it was mostly in a couple boxes. <br />
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We did the deal... I told him the story about how I came by the CL and he thought it was pretty funny, he was about my age and had brought this DT down from Massachussets where he was from. Said his buddy had it and they rode it around till it died, then he started the restoration project. Didn't seem too mechanically inclined, but he did have the patience and inclination to take something and sort it out piece by piece, clean it up, and do all that stuff that bores the hell out of me. Exactly what the CL project needs! <br />
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First thing I did, of course, was hook up the coil and see if i could get her to cough. The wiring harness and coil were a mess, it looked like rodents had been chewing on them. The key is missing (guy said he found it) so I wasn't sure if I'd get fire. There was no CDI box either, but 78 might have been points? I dunno, either way I was able to find the wires and get them all connected. I checked the carb and I pulled the air filter to spray some gas in there.<br />
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This is what was left of the 'air filter' ha. It looked like it had grown in there more than been made by humans. Yeesh. The whole thing was soaked with oil and the foam had completely returned to its hydrocarbon component states... a disgusting mixture of gritty, sticky and oily all at the same time.<br />
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Lucky for me, a previous owner had creatively used this wadded up piece of organic material inside the foam... Is it a coffee filter? Paper towel?<br />
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Nope... its a 3M dust mask! HA! Certainly one of the most creative homemade air filters I've ever run across!<br />
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The best part is, the celluloid material held up to many years of fuel and oil without disintegrating, and it completely kept the disintegrated foam from contaminating the carb, reeds and eventually washing through the bearings and crankcase... which would mean a total rebuild.. I had a kawasaki that happened to once, and it wasn't pretty!<br />
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The crazy thing is, this is probably what ended up with me getting this bike in the first place. I always start this process by trying to figure out what parked the bike to begin with... the original 'oh shit' moment before someone starts tearing everything down. <br />
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With the air filter out, a couple squirts of premix gas from a windex bottle (way better for your engine than starter fluid FYI) had it pop to life and even run a couple seconds. Without the exhaust it sounded very healthy!<br />
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It only took about an hour and a half to put the whole bike back together. This guy did an awesome job of putting all the screws back in their place when he removed them, but he also did a really good job of stripping out all the screws. That's OK because I've been stopping at Fastenal on my lunch breaks (its about 5 blocks from where i work) and buying a lot of their cheap stainless SHCS's which are a lot better than the ones that 'hillman' are selling these days, and they have been running 30-50 cents a pop... which is damn good for stainless. <br />
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I decided since I was starting with a box of parts, the best policy would be to first loosely assemble everything that I had, and try to put the puzzle back together. This is a process that I've gotten pretty good at, having bought a lot of bikes in boxes, and its kinda fun at the puzzle stage, especially if you are starting with something that was pretty close to an operable motorcycle before being taken apart.<br />
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Stuff like the Bridgestone, its a bit more frustrating with tons of parts missing, broken, rusty, etc. This was a lot of fun. I only finger tightened everything, so next weekend or the next time I get a chance, I'm going to tear it all back apart again, note all the bolt lengths and go shopping armed with a detailed list. This worked out almost perfect on the DT50 and the engine reassembly process went swimmingly. I almost felt like some kind of fancy factory race mechanic slapping that engine together in record time, almost exclusively using a single M5 t-handle. <br />
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So that was the first half of an epic day of mad wrenching. Very satisfying! I still have to sort out a few things, in addition to the stripped fastners, the tank needs to have the rust acid'ed out of it. The seat cover is just a hunk of vinyl wrapped around the foam and screwed into the seat pan... its pretty ugly but definitely dubs sized. The taillight is smashed, the headlight housing was cracked but i glued that with plastic welder... need to find a 6" 6v bulb.<br />
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Fork seals, blah blah, wheel bearings, tires, chain. There is a lot to do but its one of the more 'complete' projects i've taken on for awhile. Hopefully next weekend I can take some time to figure out whats missing screw wise and do the tank, maybe 2-3 weeks and she'll be on the road.<br />
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The second half of the day will take another post! The DT50 is back together and lit right up on a spritz of gas as well. She needs antifreeze and trans oil, rear tire, tube and all the weird rando stuff that is missing. Good news is tons of compression and a very healthy feeling engine. It was so cool to literally bolt the engine in, plug in two wires, and get her to fire up on the first kick! I usually get engines to start on the third or fourth kick, but very rare (and extremely satisfying) are the times when it literally fires to life on the first rotation. She's so close to streetable that its hard to believe.<br />
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My mopeds are all waiting on bearings right now. Ordered them last week after a local bearing house was a bust. Good ol' allied bearing came through for me and I should be able to put together 3 engines early next week when this bearing order comes in. Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-48896217421511810262014-01-28T14:48:00.002-06:002014-02-19T14:57:17.677-06:00Dirty bike'n This one was too good to pass up. Yamaha DT50- $225.<br />
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I saw the add on craigslist Monday morning, it had been posted late Sunday night and I figured it was probably gone. I left the tab open and went about my day for 2-3 hours. I couldn't resist, finally I shot the guy an email.<br />
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He called me back on the drive home and I explained to him that I wasn't interested in Craigslist BS but I'd come get the bike tomorrow night if he didn't sell it by then. He liked the cut of my jib because he gave me first dibs to go out and pick her up.<br />
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Since it was already dark when I picked her up, I wasn't able to do much more than a cursory inspection. Didn't even get to check her out until the next day at lunch time.<br />
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Dang, this is a pretty sweet little bike.<br />
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So at first look its just a dumb little kids dirt bike. Except that its not little, its full sized, at least moped full sized. About the same size as a TSM, bigger than a Magnum. Probably in line with your average XR100 kinda thing. I had heard of these before but I didn't know much about them, to be honest. I just had seen this thread in MA, which I had ignored. So I went back and checked it out.<br />
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<a href="http://www.mopedarmy.com/forums/read.php?7,3581909"></a><br />
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It was the comment 'Cool dudes who steal lunch money ride DT.' that sold me on buying the thing. <br /><br />
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This is where the magic happens, this little powerplant is the same one yamaha put in the RZ50 and its a balls-out fire breathing 6 speed race motor. <br />
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The original color was sky blue, its a shame because its beautiful. Given the general level of jacked-up-ness I'd say it was really well cared for by its original owner. Probably ran great until something minor caused it to be parked. There it sat for awhile until some jerk bought it and decided he didn't like the blue. He proceeded to rattle-can it black, and loose a bunch of the body parts, rubber, and hardware. Someone fairly recently also managed to booger up a bunch of screws. Wreck the head and base gasket by opening it up.<br /><br />
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<br />This is the cylinder. Its in really good shape aside from the rust inside. Its a little worn, but nothing unusual. Definitely not been seized or cooked too bad. Even the rings are really nicely broken-in. The whole engine internally appears to be in great shape.<br /><br />
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<br />These ports are gorgeous. Seriously, like Terry Dean levels of gorgeousness here. I'm thinking a little bluffing on that bridge, a little port cleanup and maybe raise the exhaust a tiny bit. Its already maxed out on width.<br />
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This is the monoshock rear suspension. A battery is supposed to go in here, after some continued discussion on the MA performance thread, a friendly fella is gonna send me the stock airbox and some goodies he's pulling off his bike.<br /><br />
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Such a cute miniature cooling system, its just the bare minimum. The burp tank is made out of blow-molded polyethelyene that is ever so slightly thicker than milk jug. 80's jap motorcycle tech was so sparse and efficient.<br /><br />
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<br />The thermostat was missing and lots of the outer gaskets and phillips head screws were good'n trashed. Lots of black RTV silicone all over everything. Even if the previous mechanics (to use the term loosely) were able to get this to fire, it must not have ran very well at all without the thermostat in there. <div>
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<br />The head gasket is toast. That is the primary reason for no compression. Someone obviously took it apart, didn't replace it.<br /><br />
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Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-37257855787540268372014-01-23T13:03:00.004-06:002014-01-27T17:31:38.815-06:00I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could! From the moment you cross the border, rolling west on I-10 into Texas, you know things are different here. Crossing the border the first sign you see is for exit 878.<br />
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As in, 878 miles from this exit to the next state line, wherever that is. Over a day's drive away.<br />
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It might not register immediately but to see a number like that on an exit sign strikes you as odd before you notice the giant American flags waving, the increase in industrial activity and the fact that everyone has suddenly started passing you at 80 mph.<br />
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Texas is certainly a different country. We crossed into Texas on the 5th of December with the family minivan full of Caitlin, Lyle and Myself, and my dad close behind driving a very overloaded and underpowered 26' box truck, towing my F100 behind. It took about two days pushing hard from North Carolina to get to Austin. After moving just over a year ago from Wisconsin to NC, I was prepared for the sucky-ness of moving cross country with an entire house full of junk and more shop stuff than any reasonable person would bother moving across town.<br />
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Nonetheless, I got rid of lots of stuff once again, packed for a whole week prior to moving, and thought that I was hedging myself against repeating the mistakes I made last year. Only to find out, there are so many new and terrible mistakes to discover. No way around it, moving across country sucks sucks sucks. The hardest part was probably getting rid of the project cars I had acquired in NC. My escorts, both of them, had to get sold at a hefty loss. Then the Subaru had to go... this was the tough one. The short version of the story is that I ran around trying to get rid of this thing for a whole week prior to leaving, Finally coming down to $1000 and nobody would buy it... they aren't popular cars in NC especially with rust and 250k miles... Finally I threw in the towel and parked it at my co-worker's house and told him to sell it if he could (just heard from him that his wife got in a bad car accident and now he can use the car and is going to pay me for it, so it all worked out in the end).<br />
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Either way, sometimes, when you're as dense as I am, you have to learn things the hard way. In this case the REALLY hard way. I spent god-knows-how-much on my red escort rebuilding the engine, only to never hear it start and sell it for 300 (100 less than i paid for it) and I spent a very long hard night on the Subaru replacing head gaskets and sealing the transmission leaks (and 3-400 bucks) only to have it be 'worthless' and sell it for 1000 less than i paid for it, after investing over $4000 in the car over a 2 year period.<br />
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The lesson to be learned here is this: don't throw money into a car you don't plan on keeping. Even if i had scrapped the Subaru when the tranny started leaking, i would have been miles ahead. I got attached to it, because it was/is a good little car with a lot of life left in it, but that clouded my judgement. Same thing with the Escort... never should have bought it, never should have put the money into it.<br />
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The bigger lesson is to prioritize those things that you think are important and that make you happy. I wasted way more time than money on cars this last year thinking i'd get rich off them, then thinking that i had to recoup what i had wasted and throw good money after bad. In the end, the best purchase I made was my truck, every minute of working on it has been enjoyable and I know that i'll be keeping it forever so it is worth making it the way i want it. Get rid of the stuff you don't care about before it drags you down. I moved 14 bikes to Texas, and now i'm spending 200 bucks a month for a storage unit to keep them. Several of them I no longer have any attachment to. I'm still telling myself that i just 'have to get them running' and i can sell them for more money, instead of focusing that time on my son, family and projects that I do care about. Stupid.<br />
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So why am I writing all this? I'm not sure, as a reminder perhaps. Something for posterity. I'm getting back into the blog thing again. North Carolina was like mental hibernation for me, my job was dead-end and depressing, my life was stressful (partly because of these stupid projects) and we had no friends (except for Chris who moved after a couple months) I stopped the blog because I stopped doing work I was proud of, because I wasn't mentally creative or socially fulfilled.<br />
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Coming to Austin has been an awakening. We have friends already here. I got to spend a night with ACR, most of who I had never met, and it was like getting together with new-old friends. Lester and Austin mopeds is fantastic, and my new job is great. All my stuff is finally together under one roof so I can get work done when i do have free time, and I'm more excited than ever for a couple big projects that are coming together.<br />
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The Truck- is my 1968 Ford F-100. Its fantastic. I was calling it 'Buck' after my dead granddad who had the same truck, but the more I drive her, the more I'm convinced she's named Caroline. 1968 is OLD compared to what i'm used to working on. Its shocking to think that this truck was made the year we landed on the moon... or was that 69? I dunno... either way same time frame, these guys at ford couldn't figure out how to make an electrical connector and dudes were getting blasted across the universe by NASA. Anyhow, the 'build thread' is on a forum for '67-'72 "bumpside" ford trucks here: <a href="http://fordification.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=71650" target="_blank">http://fordification.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=71650</a><br />
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THE new 'shop' is a 10x25' storage unit a couple miles from my house. It costs $200 a month, which is outrageous but there isn't much else available in Austin. We're living in a 6 month lease apartment right now and trying to get into a house with a garage but the Austin housing market is bonkers. The population growth is staggering here and I really feel bad for the folks who have been here 20 years or more, who've seen the tech boom (IBM, Dell, Intel, Texas Instruments, National Instruments, AMD and a bunch more tech companies that blew up in the last 20 years are located here) completely decimate what was a nice small town and turn it into a raging metropolis.<br />
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Its hard to explain to folks who haven't seen the growth in Texas firsthand, but its basically like everyone from chicago moved to Madison over a 10 year period. And since most of the jobs here are good, engineer-type jobs, everyone has crazy money laying around. Plus a lot of the folks have moved from places like california and made millions selling their homes there, and can afford to buy anything they want.<br />
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That leaves regular middle-class folks like us out in the cold. The only affordable neighborhoods are kinda rough, and even what would be nice little average middle class neighborhoods have seen property values skyrocket. 1800 bucks a month rent for a 2 bedroom house is not uncommon. Even small and average sized houses are renting for well over $2k a month in nicer neighborhoods... bummer.<br />
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The Peugeot TSM project is really just getting fun. I spent an entire saturday piecing it together out of boxes and trips to the hardware store. I always said I'd only get a TSM if i got it cheap and if it was ratty enough that I didn't feel bad about chopping it up.<br />
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This is how she came to me: (nothing is bolted down, just kinda sitting there)<br />
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After a day of reassembling the bike with Lyle.<br />
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Well, thats what happened. I think i gave the guy like 200 bucks for it or something, might have been 150. He started the 'restoration' and did a lot of the grunt work... it had been used as a dirtbike so I certainly appreciate him cleaning it up and painting the frame (rattle can but very well done) everything else was in boxes and lots of random hardware was missing, plus dumb stuff just mis-assembled. Either way its getting a Doppler 50 kit and i'm doing something cool with the pipe.<br />
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Yep, that's a dirtbike pipe. From the measurements I've made (really sloppy) its short and fat. Its also made so much better than anything on the moped market. Its going to mount really easy, I have to do some cutting apart and re-welding, but really minor compared to what i thought i was going to have to do.<br />
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The best part is that its going to swing with the engine so it should be pretty sturdy. My goal was to have the only joint be exactly where the engine pivots so it only articulates a couple degrees. That is exactly what will happen, plus the pipe will be mounted in like 4 different places, and its made really well, so it shouldn't break.<br />
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BUT WAIT THATS NOT ALL! Holy crap there is tons of ground clearance under this guy. Like miles, i can totally roll curbs, ditches, sidewalks. It was really killing me thinking that i'd have to loose clearance running a big french pipe, but this should have plenty.<br />
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Cool cool, i'm also building a MERA 80 to go on my general... maybe more on that this weekend if i can get it all together.Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-46090649515670811732013-03-21T19:30:00.000-05:002013-03-21T19:30:01.540-05:00How to Hack'n'WeldThis should be short but sweet, most of you who have been around mopeds for awhile already know this so you can skip this one and tune in to the next post. If you're a newbie or have limited fabrication skills, you may find yourself needing this. People on the forums and elsewhere will tell you that for your Sachs, Batavus, Kriedler, etc you need to 'hack and weld' a pipe, its not exactly rocket science but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. The right way leaves you with a nice finished pipe that fits and flows well and the wrong way leaves you with broken cylinder studs, poopey welds that leak, grease and black smut all over your pipe, or a exhaust gasket air leak.<br />
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What we're gonna do here, basically, is take the header of a pipe from a stock bike and weld it to the chamber or muffler from another bike. In this case, I'm just modifying a stock M56 exhaust to fit on the M48/56 hybrid motor that you can put together with the MopedFactory batavus cylinder shim. (Treats/1977). For this example I'm only using a stock M56 exhaust, the stock m48 muffler would work, but the M56 muffler works too, and I dont need to chop up 2 exhausts for no reason. This would be the same application you might want to use if you are going to put a 2hp cylinder on a magnum and keep the stock pipe.<br />
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If you want to use an aftermarket pipe, you will have to buy one. It always helps to get a pipe that mounts on the same side, in roughly the same place. When you are doing this sort of thing, you want the header length and diameter to be close to the same as the un-molested performance exhaust you are using. You also want to try to use the stock mounting bracket as much as possible because it is probably a lot stronger than whatever crazy crap you're going to make out of zip ties and hose clamps. So figure that out first.<br />
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Once you have your donor pipe in hand, and you've figured out how you're going to mount it, you can cut the header off the donor pipe. You'll want to have a pretty good idea at this point of how the two pipes are going to come together. If you can get your header on there and let both pipes clear that's great, if you cant, just cut them off so they have as much extra as possible. If you are trying to save the header off the donor pipe or the muffler off the stock pipe, think about that too. Sometimes you'll get lucky and have one pipe that can fit into the other one in some place, like a A35 tecno estoril which as a big section in the header... say you want to put that on an A55, you can cut off at the big section and weld the smaller A55 header into it or something like that.<br />
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If you can cut one pipe off in such a way that you leave a ton of overlap between the two, that's the best. You can then line them up with both pipes in place, holding them side to side of each other, and look along the curves to see where the two line up fairly close.<br />
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Now this is where you want to get impatient and whack the thing off where you see it. You gotta take your time and go slow, first tape off where you want the cut to be. When you tape it, the tape will line up and make an even planar cut, as in, it will all be in the same plane instead of some wacky stuff. When you get the first pipe taped, cut it carefully along the tape line. I prefer an angle grinder with cutoff wheel because you can follow the tape more accurately. Using a saw to cut straight through is harder because you have to pay attention to two cutting zones at the same time.<br />
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Once you have one side cut, you can start working on the other side. This is where the tape is really nice, you can put it on and take it off a couple times to get the angle just perfecto to line up. Move the pipes back and forth, side to side and up and down from each other and look past the cut one to make sure the tape line is in the right place so the angles match perfect. When you cut the other one leave, maybe, 1/8-1/4 of an inch extra all around the tape line. Sometimes I will take and draw that gap out with marker and cut the marker line.<br />
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You will need that extra material in case the mate isn't perfect. If there is a gap or a high side you will want to mark the high side opposite the gap with 1/2 the thickness of the gap, so when you cut it off its perfect. At this point you should probably switch to a grinding disc, or flap wheel like this one.<br />
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If you have a big bench mounted belt sander, those are the best, but if you have one you probably dont need to be reading this. The key being, both sides need to be planar, as in, when you put something flat against them they have a flat surface all around. You cant have any gaps in the seam or your weld will push in and block the flow through your pipe.<br />
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It should look like this when you're done:<br />
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Once you have a perfect mate, you can clean up the material for a good weld. I don't care how good of a welder you are, especially with this thin stuff, you wont get a good weld if it isn't clean. You've put in this much work so far, so do it right and get a nice result ya dummy!<br />
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The flap wheel is your best friend for this kinda thing.<br />
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If your mate isn't this good or better, keep at it until you get it right.<br />
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At this point, if you have a welder, you can just weld it yourself right in place. If you don't have a welder you have a few options:<br />
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A) Mark the weld with lines across the weld, the lines will line it up when you take it to a shop to have them weld it, and you will know the orientation of the two pipes. Before you take off, make sure that when you hold them together and line the lines up, you can tell where it is supposed to be. If you are doing a slip fit where one tube goes inside the other, draw the mating line around the edge of the big tube on to the small tube, and some cross lines too.<br />
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B) Put a rubber clamp over the two and ride it to the shop and have them weld it in place.<br />
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C) Drive it to the shop in the back of your car or truck.<br />
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C is probably your best bet, as you are sure to get it right the first time. If you do A, you might want to have them tack weld it and take it back home to test fit before finish welding.<br />
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If you take it to a shop they will probably know to do this, but if they dont, ask them to.<br />
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If you weld it yourself:<br />
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First tack weld the pipe in place on the bike. Be careful not to light your bike on fire, i've seen it happen to a beautiful mint condition white Cimatti city bike and it was heartbreaking. The guy who did the welding was a friend, and the guy who owned the bike was a friend and it was like 'sorry i started your bike on fire dude' ... awkward.<br />
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So yeah, tack it, less chance of you starting your bike on fire. Use wet cardboard all over the place to keep sparks from going into the carb or whatever. Keep a fire extinguisher handy. Dont be stupid.<br />
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Yep. Tack welded.<br />
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Now you can take it off your bike and its a lot easier to hold and manuever so you can seam weld it.<br />
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Start of the seam welding, looking good so far. Its probably the easiest to do it in 3-4 small passes.<br />
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Not the prettiest weld ever, but its what's on the inside that counts. Much better to have your weld ugly on the outside and smooth on the inside at this point because once you're done you can grind the outside.<br />
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Like this<br />
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Dang, that looks nice.<br />
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Don't forget to spray paint that. If you have chrome and you want to keep it looking nice you can mask off the ground up area and just paint a band of black or silver hi-temp paint on it. The little band is hardly noticeable.<br />
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Looky that there! Batavus with an M56 cylinder on it. What'dya know. In this picture with stock encarwi and stock M56 pipe, she was going about 32-33 mph, with plenty of torque.Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-14030991864054983622013-03-20T19:30:00.000-05:002013-03-21T12:23:12.264-05:00Fallin' off the mapIf ya didn't hear, I kinda fell off the map at the end of last summer when I took 5 classes to finish my ME degree, got married, went to North Carolina and started a real-life adult job as an engineer. Whew! Its been a crazy last few months, but as my friends and I who write each other letters like to say, 'no guilt in letters' meaning that instead of feeling bad about not getting letters out, or in this case blog postings, just pick up and get on with it.<br />
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Moving down here, of course, was a pretty major disruption to all sorts of projects. Moped Factory went into hiatus for a few months while I restructured into a more 'hands-off' and hopefully more sustainable format. My brother Noel is now facilitating manufacturing in Milwaukee where my friends, the machinists who were letting me make parts in their shop, are making the machined heads. Its been a little difficult for me to give up the reins, partially because I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to Q.C. and partially because so much of what I was doing was just stuff I knew but couldn't really teach someone. The other thing I realized pretty quickly is that the last two years I've basically been working for next to nothing, and oddly enough, nobody else wants to work that hard for no money.<br />
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The bad news is so much stuff is out of stock and its been really hard to get it made, but the good news is that we're moving towards a more sustainable and hopefully predictable manufacturing strategy. A lot of parts are going up in price because the people making them have to get paid more than I was, but thats just the way it works, if you don't like it, buy your custom engineered high performance moped parts from someone else who is willing to work for free. I still don't make any profit and loose a lot of money compared to my real job, which is now a lot more lucrative, but I do it all for the twisty-spitties, so whatever.<br />
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In other moped business news, I bought out a moped/scooter dealership barely a month after moving down here. I ended up with a huge storage unit full of scooter junk and take-off/used moped parts. The high dollar scooter stuff is going through ebay, its nothing anybody in mopeds is interested in and I need the money to fund some mopedfactory R+D so I'm gonna try to get top dollar. Plus its a pain in the butt to store and get rid of this crap, so I gots'ta get paid.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Liquid cooled Kymco Super 9 cylinder... who wants to put this on something cool? </td></tr>
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The best thing to come of all this is the huge stash of 'on hand' scooter parts i have for modding, hacking, and adapting to mopeds. I have about 20 stators and 50 cdi boxes that i'm testing for moped applications. One of the first projects, that will probably end up as a marketable product, is a modern scooter flywheel and stator adapted to moped use. These seem to be pretty reliable, dirt cheap, and they will get you mega power 12v lights and CDI. Some of the DC boxes I'm hoping to adapt for total-loss racing ignitions.<br />
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It took me about 2 seconds to realize that a very cheap, very common stator brand is a direct fit to a bosch flywheel, so i plan to have the first one of these sparking- if not running- in a couple weeks.<br />
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Speaking of running things, the biggest impediment to that lately has been my terrible garage situation. When we moved down here we quickly found garages are slim pickin's in this part of the country. Everyone has car ports except for crappy townhomes, and i don't get along very well with the kind of people who usually live around me in town homes.<br />
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We found a really nice little house in the college neighborhood, but the garage is in a pretty sorry state. It doesn't have a door yet, has a dirt floor, and no power/lights/anything. When I went to hang a door I realized the whole thing was literally one sturdy shove from falling over. The foundation was disintegrated and the wood around the base was heavily termite damaged. The footer boards along about 1/3 of the base of the garage are completely gone.<br />
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I've begun the frustrating (especially considering everything else going on right now) task of re-building the brick foundation in small pieces. Jacking the garage up with a floor jack, butressing it with boards, rebuilding the foundation in situ, and setting it back down on the replaced part of foundation. When i'm done with that I'll be hanging doors, putting down a 'floor' probably made out of craigslist used paving blocks, and building out my workbenches... gosh that's gonna be a lot of work.<br />
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So that, more or less, brings us up to speed. All my mopeds are in storage, half my tools, all my parts and a whole second storage unit full of dumb scooter parts are scattered within a 1 hour radius of my house. Nonetheless, I've managed to get some projects worked on here and a fairly useful little engine building lab set up in my office. I'll put up posts in the next few days/weeks/months with updates on individual projects and some of the cool non-moped stuff I've been busy with.<br />
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<br />Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-39441368356753072442012-06-18T15:35:00.000-05:002012-06-18T15:51:29.027-05:00Summer in full swing!Woah yeah, so after that last post, I swore I'd start getting posts out every Monday. Usually I do cool things on the weekend so Monday seems like a good time to tell y'all about them. The last couple weeks have been way too busy to blog but I have made some serious progress on a number of fronts:<br />
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<b>Black Batty VA:</b><br />
Finished modifying M56 exhaust to fit on M46 engine with M56 cylinder. Sounds like a mouthfull but I'll be writing this whole project up soon. This has been the test bed for all my crazy M48 performance parts and it hasn't been complete and running since last summer. The M56 cylinder was installed last summer but I haven't had time to weld up the stock muffler until now. This write-up may come in two parts as I took a lot of good pictures to serve as a 'how to hack'n'weld an exhaust pipe' tutorial.<br />
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Long story short, the M56 cylinder alone with stock M48 carb, reeds, intake, and stock M56 pipe is good for 32 MPH out of the box. The air filter for this thing also disappeared somewhere in the last few months and so that was 32 mph with me holding the choke closed... pretty impressive!<br />
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I wanted a benchmark with all the stock goodies, so now that I have that I'll be putting the moped factory upgrade kit back on with a 12:10 SHA from a Vespa that I happened to have laying around. We'll see how that goes. If it is as fast as I hope, I'm going to sell this sweet 170 mile machine to a lucky collector looking for something pristine and cool lookin'. You really cant beat the classy lines of these early Batavus, but the 20mph stock speed is just too slow to ride comfortably in traffic. This whole M56 setup really makes the bike a practical rider keeping the character and reliability of the stock machine. <br />
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I've agreed to take on the Cranks raffle bike for the rally this year, which is a top tank Starflite with some minor cafe' mods. We'll be doing the same things to that one, maybe keeping the M48 cylinder, i'm not sure, and trying to get it fast enough to hang with the big boys. If you come to Milwaukee to the rally, you'll get a chance to ride this bike and feel the pure power of Batavus!<br />
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<b>Puch Polini ZA</b><br />
To say that the polini'd ZA is coming slowly would be an understatement of incredible proportions. It seems like every time I get closer to finishing this thing, I find that there is something else that needs to be done on it, or another part I need to save up to purchase. I was able to get the M7 studs tapped in there but they were too long, and had to get cut down and ground down twice. I chose to do this at the machine shop because I dont have a bench grinder and there is nothing more annoying that bodging the end thread when you are reaching nuts down into the head pockets to install them. Now I need to find hardened M7 nuts which i haven't been able to source anywhere. Even McMaster just has shitty low grade hardware for M7... back to the drawing board on that one.<br />
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<b>Peugeot 103</b><br />
Ach, the poor Pug! It has been getting me to and from work every day now for almost the entire summer. I've completely worn flat the Kenda tire I installed when I bought the bike. A combination of poverty (impacting my ability to fill my car's gas tank) and a bad voltage regulator that was damn impossible to trouble shoot, has precluded me from driving my daily driver ford escort 'pickup truck edition'. That little Pug has been a reliable little bugger, but 36 mph is just wayyyy too slow. With the help of my friends at Treatland, I've begun work on a new Peugeot exhaust for the 'stock' crowd. Right now there is just nothing decent on the market for stock ripper 103's. The pipes fall into 1 of three categories: Stock (which is pretty good), Joke pipes (like the Faco and mini circuit) which don't really do much and in many cases are worse than stock, or mondo gigantor loose your pedals and kickstand swivel ball joint 10,0000000 rpm pipes, which are totally awesome but not well suited to people who just want to get their stock bike going a happy 40 mph.<br />
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(sorry no photos yet, I want to get this tested first) <br />
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To fill in the massive hole in that market I'm developing a mild circuit pipe. It will be pretty obvious when it comes out that it is just a hacked-up common pipe for a different moped, but the genius (and a lot of R+D) has gone into the hacking, trying to take something that is already well suited to a peugeot layout and powerband, and making it work better by adding a bigger, shorter header (for variator revvin) and making it more compact. Plus I'm trying to create a bracket that will hold up to abuse and keep this thing from cracking. Finally I'm looking into some heat treating that will take this to the next level making it even better than the commercially produced import pipes. That all combined with being precision jig-welded in the good-ol' U S of A will hopefully blow this market wide open.<br />
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Oh, and did I mention the pipe is designed to work with both flange and screw mount cylinders?? Yeah, its gonnna be rad.<br />
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If anyone feels like they would be interested in testing one of these let me know, prototypes should be out next week. I want at least one person with an airsal or similar 50cc kit, carb of your choice, and one person with a completely untouched stock gurtner bike. <br />
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<b>Regular MF production</b><br />
Its a terrible time to be out of stock on so many MF parts, but I've been hella busy trying to get stuff re-stocked and huge $hipment$ will be going out in the next couple weeks. Good thing 'cause i'm broke!<br />
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Made a pile of engine stands, Tomos and Minarelli too! <br />
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Hobbit rollers have been selling fast as heck too. I cut up 4, 6 food rods of material over the last two weeks and have literally hundreds of rollers waiting to be assembled. They should be done soon and back in stock as well.<br />
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Heads will be coming, I know a lot of them have been out of stock for a long time, but it has been hard for me to come up with cores. I'll be buying up cores soon so email me if you have some you want to sell or trade for other parts. The more heads i can find, the more i can make, thats good for everyone!<br />
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<br />Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-22660503368938746922012-06-06T14:26:00.000-05:002012-06-06T14:55:04.229-05:00Sea-Bee outboard tuningThis one is from the files, I was digging through some old SD cards that were in my desk the other day, making sure i had all the important DATA off them, and I found pictures I thought I'd lost or forgotten to take of my outboard project.<br />
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About 2 years ago Caitlin told me her grandpa promised her his old fishing boat at one point in time. Its an ancient 13 foot aluminum thing that has been sitting upside down behind a shed up at his land for the last 10 years since a notable incident where he almost drowned and decided to stop fishing from a boat. He's 90 now, and probably was in his late 70's when he last got in it, and almost never made it back to shore.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Johnson QD - my ideal outboard (from oddjobmotors.com) </td></tr>
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I decided that if we were going to be getting this boat I should probably find an old outboard of the same vintage to compliment it. Luckily I live in the home of Ole Evinrude, a few miles from Mercury and within shooting distance of almost every notable outboard manufacturer in America. Craigslist is literally littered with antique outboards in need of a carb cleaning, and most can be had for about scrap prices. Its a shame because I'm sure wisconsinites send dozens of these things to the shredder every day, and they are a real unique part of our manufacturing and sporting history, as well as being some of the most interesting industrial design pieces of the 20th century.<br />
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I found a kindred spirit who runs the website <a href="http://www.oddjobmotors.com/" target="_blank">Oddjob Motors</a> .A fellow Moped and subaru fan, he has one of the most complete outboard sites on the internet chronicling dozens of beautiful vintage outboards, and his love of them. I was infatuated and probably looked through the entire site getting all excited for a summer of boating. I even emailed the fellow and discussed what to be looking for in a candidate for restoration. I concluded the QD Johnson above would be about perfect, and let a few slip through my fingers that were priced too high ($40+). <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mercury marine were some of the best looking outboards of the day</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Goodyear/Gale SeaBee I thought I was getting</td></tr>
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Long story short, I finally settled on a Gale 5 hp, marketed by Goodyear Tire as a 'Sea-Bee.' I bought the engine sight unseen from a friendly guy who offered to deliver it to my work for $15. I gave him a $20 and had him keep the change.<br />
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It ended up not being the model I wanted, I was looking for the later model with the transmission, but regardless this one was pretty cool. The styling wasn't my favorite at first but since having rebuilt it, has kinda grown on me in its overly flourished 40's garishness. Obviously they expected this to be going about 80 mph to need such elaborate streamlining!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The 1948 SeaBee as I got her</td></tr>
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Cursory inspection revealed that the pull starter, while somewhat operational, was pretty mangled. The tank was still partially full of gas that probably had lead in it. A sealable gas cap was used, presumeably so you could put it in the back of your vista cruiser sideways without gas spilling out, and that cap preserved the incredibly varnished gas for many years. I was soaking the tank with MEK thinking 'this gas is probably older than I am.. crazy.<br />
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Obviously the engine would need a thorough cleaning, new gear oil, maybe a seal or two here and there, but by and large looked mostly complete and turned over smoothly.<br />
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I thought it was going to be a quick saturday project. I started off puling the tank, starter, flywheel, carb, reeds off the power head. Everything was going along smoothly when I got to the part of pulling out the drain plug to check on the gear oil in the gearbox. The screw was kinda stripped coming out and behind it was a pile of rust dust. damn. That is never a good sign.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yup, there's the problem. </td></tr>
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Turning the propeller by hand in relation to the power unit revealed the source of the dust, what used to be the bevel gears in the gear box. One was half rusted off. Probably a previous owner stripped the plug for the gear case and didn't concern himself with the fact that the engine was sitting with water in the gearbox. Doing that for awhile turned the lower gear (which runs on a horizontal axis and was therefore half submerged) to dissolve the submerged half. Someone surely tried to run it after that and made a mess out of the rest of the gearbox. Totally mangled.<br />
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Since drive gears for a 1948 Gale outboard aren't exactly something you drive down to NAPA and pick out of a catalog, I had to start doing some research. Turns out Gale was making outboards in northern Illinois since world war 2. The engines were marketed through 'brand engineering' at department stores, sporting goods stores, and even Goodyear tire stores (which used to sell a lot of general automotive-type junk). The Good Year store sold the Sea-Bee, Hiawatha was sold by some long deceased sporting goods store, there was another one that came from Montgomery Wards even. With this additional knowledge, I was able to get on Ebay and find some of the more popular brands. A short search turned up a lot of lower unit gearboxes, but only one matched visually to the one I had. Several years of Gale shared similar lower units, but the very early model that I had was a slightly different casting and assembly. I ordered it and paid $25 including shipping from Arizona, crossing my fingers that it would be the right one, and not be trashed in a similar manner.<br />
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The new lower unit came a couple weeks later and I set about to adapting it. No propeller and the water pump was a mess, so i was able to keep those. The water pump casting was a little different but enough parts were similar that it could be cobbled. The mounting hardware was different too, a short stud where i had a long stud and a different water pump feed tube. No biggie, that was all adapted as well.<br />
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At this point summer '11 was quickly approaching and I was hoping to get something running ASAP to get out on the lakes and rivers around Milwaukee. I was also moving my shop and trying to get the engine finished up before having to pack everything into boxes and risk loosing a bunch of parts. What a mess.<br />
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The engine at this point came all the way apart, I was pretty close by having removed everything from the engine and removed the stern drive. It was logical that I continue the process. Plus the inside of the water jacket, from what i could tell, was a complete mess. There was some kinda crummy coating that was peeling off with lots of scale behind it, someone had done some work on the engine at one point in time and bent part of the engine casting leaving it with some sealing issues, and I figured while i was this far along, it would be fun to port the thing out a little bit and see if we couldn't get that '5' hp up a little higher.<br />
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I pulled the covers off the engine, no small feat considering the 60 year old gasket goop holding them on! Cleaned everything up with quite a bit of time in the ol' sand blaster. The porting was crossflow, which is the predecessor to loop scavenging and much more suited to low rpm's. Large heavy pistons with scoops on them direct the flow of air from the transfers up and over the piston so it scavenges the chamber, then down out the other side through the exhaust port. Definitely not ideal for performance. I could also tell that the ports were drilled into the casting with a drill bit. Obviously a manufacturing concern, trying to avoid the use of additional cores or tricky machining, but not the best for performance. Since I don't really know anything about porting crossflow engines, I pretty much just went by feel, trying to get a little more exhaust area and get the ports to open a bit earlier. Hopefully my gut feeling isn't too wrong, but i really dont think three crummy drilled holes are magical in any way.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ported on the right, unported on the left. </td></tr>
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I also left the raised area on the casting around the ports. Not sure why this was there, but I think there might be some significance to it, a port without significant length can cause wierd eddy current stuff and I didn't want to risk getting the area too thin around the ports where they could have heat problems.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Final porting. symmetrical? you be the judge. </td></tr>
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The flywheel, points and stator plate was all in pretty good shape. Spark plug wires were gone. I found some cool fabric braided spark plug wire and soldered that on the coils, dressed the points and adjusted everything. How did I know what timing to set? It doesn't matter, the engine is goverened largely by adjusting the timing advanced/retarded. This was a pretty common thing back in the days of crappy carburetors that really only ran well at full throttle or no throttle. The carb in this thing was really crummy, one jet and no real metering system other than that.<br />
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I had thought about putting a big mikuni on there, but thats just getting silly. I'm not trying to set a record with this, i just want to put around the river and crash condo parties all done up like Huck Finn. <br />
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Here is the engine all finished up. There is a shroud that will go over it, but I haven't put that back on yet, still ironing out some bugs. <br />
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In the end it should look like this Hiawatha which I photographed at an outboard museum in Sayner, WI.<br />
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The patina will be retained on the Sea Bee, I like it looking like something that I dug out of my grandpa's shed and miraculously still works. I think leaving it like that does true justice to the heritage of the machine and the people who designed and built these beautiful things with old school american craftsmanship.<br />
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In other news, Leo the 90 year old grandfather-in-law has since decided he doesn't want to part with his boat for now, so it will remain sitting in the weeds in northern wisconsin while my poor engine languishes in Milwaukee with no boat. Oh well, what'cha gonna do? Fire it up in a 5 gallon bucket and annoy the neighbors? Yes please, I'll try to get a video for you!Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-8586233269495572772012-05-25T08:00:00.000-05:002012-05-25T08:00:07.851-05:00Wild Wednesdays!Its been a long, busy winter and between moving out to the 'burbs, having the kid, working non-stop and not having much for running mopeds (especially a running 2-seater) my ability to get to Cranks' Wednesday night rides has been at an all time low.<br />
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That just makes it all the better when I can get out, and last night
was no exception. Between final-ing this week and running around like a
crazyman in general, it was a real treat to get out and ride with the
crew.<br />
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It was pretty sweet to have Caitlin along on her own bike as well, I've tried a few times to get her to ride on her own and experience that side of mopeds, but the last few experiments ended badly, most notably Just the Tip 1, where she crashed pretty bad, due to riding my maxi with lousy brakes.<br />
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Getting her the general was something that has taken me a lot of time, a little luck, and some good moped karma. It was her first night riding a moped on her own since the JTT crash and I'm glad she could be on something safe and sturdy. <br />
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Dez was back too, which always makes things more fun. He really lives the moped lifestyle and he's been an awesome addition to the Cranks since the first night he rolled up out of nowhere on his moby and agreed to go rally with us the following weekend. <br />
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Not having ridden with these guys for awhile I was pretty surprised how fast the pack is rolling these days. Caitlin and I were the only ones who didn't have KITS and everyone was blasting us pretty bad. Its time for some upgrayyds and the minarelli might even get one of those 43mm DR kits if Caite continues to feel more and more confident in her abilities.<br />
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In other news, the tecno circuit finally showed up yesterday too, and in the next week or two should be riding along happily underneath the peugeot, hopefully this bike will at long last reach blaster 50cc status. So far everyone I've told about the project is pretty excited and I'm really amped to bring a mild 50cc circuit pipe to the peugeot market. It seems like there is a huge black hole in that market just waiting to be filled by something that will give people a choice between stock/joke pipes and rediculous loose your pedals and deal with ball joint nonsense pipes.<br />
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<br />Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-46662057272630127522012-05-24T13:33:00.001-05:002012-05-24T13:33:49.614-05:00GenerelliThe General is pretty close to being done. I gotta say, after spending time in and out of this bike its not too bad, for a top tank that is.<br />
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I never knew these were Taiwaneese, and very late for mopeds, mine is 1985... pretty surprising that these aren't still being made, even with a crummy honda lifan clone this would be a pretty sweet small motorcycle. It really is a small motorcycle, big hydraulic forks, partial DC electrical system, even the fork lock doubles as a kill switch! The brakes are huge drums that stop you like woah, and the controls are all motorcycle. Personally, I kinda like it for a motorcycle but I dont like it for a moped. After putting some miles on it, It really resembles a very light vintage enduro/dirt bike. The soft suspension and light weight make it very skittish like an old enduro type bike, but it turns in sluggish and resists being thrown around<br />
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Its actually lighter than my Peugeot, I think, but feels top heavy and mushy. Personally I like the exposed, tossable moped feeling better, but Caitlin wants something substantial between her legs and will appreciate the hydraulic forks, good brakes, and comfy seat, so its probably going to stay in the family for awhile. <br />
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The previous owner, Brandon from Minneapolis, was a high school kid and apparently a pretty good mechanic. I gotta say, I didn't do nearly this nice of work when I was in high school, i was an idiot. He had a lot of the minor stuff done, the rims were cleaned up (pretty well considering the chrome is worse than a lot of spray paint i've seen) the chain was about the right length, the spark plug wire and boot was replaced, he had my favorite kind of 'Window air conditioner filter foam' air filter on the SHA which doesn't leak too bad.<br />
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The list goes on, brand new gazelles with the ticklers still on them, new petcock, etc etc. Pretty nice bike all around, for $400 it was an awesome smokin' deal (even though it is the most expensive moped i've bought since my first maxi which i overpaid for).<br />
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There were only a few issues, but since this is a bike for Caitlin and it has to be perfectly reliable and safe, I had to take care of those right away. The pipe was at one point an EV Racing, it was all messed up. The header was cut and spliced... cant imagine why.. maybe it had been hack and welded then got hack and welded back? There was even a small bolt welded through the header for some completely inconceivable reason.<br />
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I could tell right away that this pipe had some design flaws from the factory. The header was way too small for the chamber, and it had a big ugly shim and over lap where the header goes into the divergent cone. I have developed a theory about this, because it is the same thing you see in the Proma GP, and to a lesser extent with the Boss. Aside from the obvious that it is much easier to weld a lap weld than a butt weld, there is something going on with these pipes that gives them better bottom end than pipes that dont have the step. I think when the header is kept small the exhaust pulse signal from a 50cc cylinder is much stronger... well any cylinder that is, but a small header is more critical on a small cylinder. So with limited porting and a short blow-down you maintain the strength of that exhaust pulse. The big step going into the chamber creates a pipe-within-a-pipe where that pulse hitting the end of that header tube creates its own return pulse before the return pulse from the chamber itself... I'm not sure if there is any validity to that theory but it would explain why pipes with that step in them work well on 50cc cylinders and why they seem to have a mystery power band way up high that you can hit with a high revving small displacement setup.<br />
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Either way, the header was too gnarled up to re-use and maybe my theory is just some crazy stuff i came up with in a dream and not real and its always good to go with tried and true stuff when you have 5000 variables and need something that will work without a lot of screwing around. With a long header this should keep plenty of grunt, and opening up like that, hopefully it will be able to stretch its legs on top. <br />
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To fix it I used my favorite trick of splicing in a piece of large diameter tube to give the header a slight overall taper. I bent up some 1" EMT conduit and combined it with the stock header to get the compound bend needed to clear everything. This is great for the top end of a pipe and doesn't really hurt the lows or mids. A lot of smart pipe makers use this trick to make a cheap tapered header without having to roll long tight cones, which are a pain in the butt and almost impossible with the tools i have access to. Plus it gives you a joint that you can put a little misalignment in to make things line up better. <br />
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The silencer was also a major problem. I rode the bike once and was amazed how quiet it was, i could tell the silencer was pretty badly plugged or something, and I was right. The perf tube was capped off inside, causing the gasses to go around the tube, through the glass, and out the back. It was homemade by the PO, who did a pretty good job of creatively making it re-packable and laid down some decent welds on it, but the design was flawed. Greasy fuzz was all jammed up at the back where exhaust should come out. The exhaust was all leaking out around the edges of the silencer and completely plugged off from coming out the back. Thats not good. Its really not much of a loss because the stock EV silencer is a completely worthless hunk of crap which usually breaks instantly anyhow, and even when it is intact, doesn't decrease noise much if any.<br />
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I set to work on version 2 of my Lymo silencer and came up with a nifty new way of packaging it that will give me some additional tuneability while only moderately restricting flow. There will be more details to come soon regarding this new silencer technology, but i'm pretty excited for the possibility of ninja-quiet mopeds. Even the higher performance version 1 that i built is quieter than a glass pack and has no flow restriction whatsoever. The new one is more restricted but easily as quiet as a stock pipe. The new packaging technique also allows the possibility for a relief valve to be incorporated that could open when you are WOT blasting and let more air out. It could actually lower the power band of your pipe so as you reach the top of the pipe's power band a valve opens and you get your power band back... awesome huh? Maybe? Who knows! The possibilities are endless! :Like a million people have experimented with this kinda stuff and made it work but until now nobody has really made the push to make it something everyone can have on their bike, so it hasn't reached that critical mass of a lot of people having them and developing a community of tuning knowledge. I'm going to get to a good jumping off point where everyone can have one of these and then start tweaking them and figure out what works for each pipe, engine, kit etc setup. <br />
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Its all under wraps for now until I get a production prototype fabricated, and there is still a lot of design engineering and testing to be done to get the design perfecto and quiet as possible, but for now i'm really happy at how well this is going to work on this bike. The older I get the more I like stock-ish bikes that do what a moped is supposed to do, get you where you are going as fun as possible. For Caitlin, riding a moped that isn't deafening and obnoxious is more fun than one that is, so for now Lymo2 is a success.<br />
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Any Minarelli fans should be excited reading this because the addition to a Minarelli to my fleet will be sure to precipitate the development of plenty of new goodies for the Minarelli crowd. I've already used my test buddies all over the country to help me design some great new Minarelli heads, but stuff like the engine stand holding this engine, didn't get designed and built until I had some personal motivation. I hate to plug my MF parts too much on my personal blog, but I gotta say these dumb little engine stands make working on engines on the bench so much easier. Its always a pain holding onto moped engines and with this little guy you have both hands free to wrench on stuff, plus it keeps everything tipped up vertical so working on the top end is a lot easier. Removing wrist pin circlips with the engine bolted down is night and day easier than trying to do it tipped on its side. Sorry for the plug but its true, i wouldn't make this stuff if I didn't need it myself, y'know.<br />
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Minarelli engine stands should be in stock at the major moped retaileirs in the next week or two. Dont worry tomos/sachs guys those will be out soon too. The rest of you guys will just have to wait, sorry. If you really want me to make some goofy engine stand for ya send me an email and i'll see what i can do. <br />
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Before going anywhere with the engine, I planned out some basic stock upgrades. Since I always buy basket cases, I always pull the cylinder off right away to make sure the engine is in good shape, no rusted out con rod bearings, that kinda thing, and this one was a beauty. The rings were perfect, no blow by whatsoever. These late model V1's are just really nice engines, the machining and casting on them is top notch, the roller bearing rod, etc. I haven't worked on many of these, but I believe people who do when they say they can take a ton of power and are rock solid reliable. If the 3500 miles on the odometer is to be believed, there is a lot of life left in this engine.<br />
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At first glance the porting is pretty aggressive for a stock engine. Should be in the 35mph + club no problem with the pipe. I left that alone for now. In the future it will get opened up a fair bit, but its always best to get a bike running 100% perfecto stock before screwing around with that sort of thing. (The 3rd rule of mopeds) The deck clearance was about 1.5 mm so I took the head down scosch and gave it a nice squish band for a bit more torque. As the engine gets tuned up, this head should maintain torque and keep things cool with bigger porting, for now it wont make much difference.<br />
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The intake on these is usually a huge restriction, coming from the factory at like 12 mm, there is a lot to be gained by port matching. Lucky for me the previous owner did a real nice job of this, opening up the whole intake manifold to 14mm... looks like i'll have to drill out the carb to match soon. Maybe i'll go to a much bigger and more tuneable Bing with a custom forward facing intake, to provide a nice smooth airflow into the engine. Ed says these like big carbs, and given the fact that it is a piston port i would agree, but for now that might be too much compromise of low end for a heavy bike that is supposed to be tame and predictable. I have a bad habit of over-tuning bikes that I want Caitlin to ride.. whoops. Maybe we'll end up with one of those 17mm bings on there or something wacky, for now the SHA should be good for her to get the hang of riding and feel more comfortable behind the handlebars.<br />
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Well that was about it, I bolted everything back up, tensioned the chain. The rear wheel is sitting a little screwy so the adjusters are at two different settings and the fender is much closer on one side than the other, but all in all its looking pretty good. I'm pretty sure the rear fender support (which is part of the tail light bracket) is misaligned or the tail light is a little tweaked. No big deal, but at full compression the tire will rub. <br />
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I rode it in to work yesterday and it was cruising along nicely at 35. The speedo -in motorcycle fashion- seems to be somewhat accurate matching up to a mounted speed camera on my ride to work. I'm almost positive the timing is too far advanced based on my visual looking at the points and seeing them too far open, the sluggishness on the top end, a possible pinging rattle, and that crusty whiteness on the piston crown. Dialing that in should get me a better idea of the true top speed and from there what performance mods are needed to get it hanging out with the big dudes.<br />
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I better hurry up and get either my sachs or polini on the road quick so i'm not slower than my girl; that would be embarassing!Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-22696076009413556532012-05-03T17:20:00.003-05:002012-05-03T17:20:40.824-05:00Sachs is running again!Replacing the totally gone crank seals and fixing a major air leak means i down-jetted from 160 to 90 and i'm still rich as heck in my VM18.<br />
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The most shocking thing is how long it took me to figure out something was wrong. Sometimes you get locked into thinking one thing is the problem (timing, points, condenser) and cant see the forest through the trees. You end up putting a 160 jet in your VM18 mikuni and not realizing that you're about 80 sizes too big.<br />
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Now i gotta order some smaller jets. <br />
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In other news, had a chance to put some more miles on my new chambered silencer and it is working awesome. That huge athena 80 has more intake noise than most kit's exhaust, so its kinda hard to tell exactly how well it is working, but i'm building another one this weekend for Caitlin's minarelli and i'm thinking its going to be quiet as heck. <br />
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Moped neighbors everywhere are about to be super happy. Proma owners will start getting cookies from that sweet old lady next door again. The moped community can advance beyond the caveman approach to drilling holes in things and stuffing in a bunch of fuzz. <br />
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bah. i have a video of it running but cant get it to embed. guess y'all just have to wait with anticipation.Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-46264099527334725052012-04-24T17:06:00.001-05:002012-04-24T17:09:22.432-05:00Headlight BumpskiJust a little bump.<br />
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There's lots of good hacks out there for rigging up brighter lights on mopeds. I've seen everything from adapting halogen bulbs into replaceable bulb headlights, motorcycle lights, automotive fog lights, LED's... etc, but nothing so far that was convincing enough to make me convert from running 1156 12v filament bulbs.. which are robust, work well and can be purchased at any gas station.<br />
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I was aimlessly browsing the asiles at my local Advance auto parts yesterday, waiting for the guy behind the counter to get the code scanner and scan my car, and I saw this little tiny halogen bulb.<br />
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I was looking at the base in the bottom and thinking of this sealed-beam headlight I drilled out the other day. I wanted to try to epoxy some kind of base into this light and adapt a halogen but the connector things for those are usually part of the headlight housing itself, meaning i was stuck waiting to find a broken headlight or something... rats. </div>
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Anyhow, getting to this part was pretty easy, i drilled a hole through the center of the inner bulb and smashed it out, then I heated up the metal reflector where it was soldered to the original bulb, and yanked the bulb 'base' part out of the reflector with carful application of pliers and torch to melt the solder. </div>
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I test-fitted the H3 bulb to the hole that was left and it was perfecto. Even just enough interference that it took a careful tap from a hammer and punch to seat it in there perfectly. Its pressed-in so you can still get it out by prying at it with a screwdriver, so I soldered a little blob on there to hold it in, and stuck a spade terminal to act as a secure ground. <br />
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The whole thing took all of 15 minutes and cost 4.99. The H3 bulb works great, probably wont quite drive it with the stock 12v coil in my Sachs, but who knows. Probably brighter than the original.<br />
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The best part is, I'm reusing an otherwise thrown away sealed beam reflector and lens. The glass is way better than the modern stuff and the reflector is solid heavy metal with no corrosion (because it was sealed all these years!<br />
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Thats all for today, I'm working on tuning my Peugeot with the SHA so that article will be back up shortly with more details on how that is going. The Sachs is so close I can taste it. Just a few more things to wrap up and she'll be back on the road!<br />
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Plus there is a new ped in the stable for Caitlin. A general 5-star. Pretty sexy and much more stable. Its getting the treatment right away, so it will be rock-solid reliable for her and not break down all the time. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just a lil' tease for now... ooh so nice working on engines with the MF engine stand! </td></tr>
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Spring is exciting! <br />
<br />Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-50874801886792683972012-04-24T13:20:00.000-05:002012-06-18T14:00:10.410-05:00Dellorto SHA boring<span style="font-size: large;">Introduction </span><br />
Dellorto SHA carburetors are common, cheap, easy to tune, compact and complete junk. They are made about as cheaply as you can possibly make a operational carb, probably less than half as many parts as are in the carb in your leaf blower, but because of that, they are highly modifiable, robust and easy to work with if you know some of the tricks. Starting with a standard 12:12, you can create a very functional and precisely tuned carb that will easily perform as well, if not better than the stock 16:16 or equivalent, but dont expect to slap it on your kitted puch and have it run out of the gate. <br />
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SHA carbs come stock from a few different manufacturers. Mostly Italian brands, Minarelli, Garelli, Morini, Tomos A35 (very few A3) and some of the later model Motobecane and Peugeot. There are also Chinese clones that are out there, possibly Indian as well. By the time you finish tuning the carb, it doesn't matter if it is an old one or a new one, so I've found the clones to be totally functional. The clone used to be available for $20 so I bought them, but now they cost more. The nice thing is that all the seals and needle are good, most used SHA's will leak and need a new needle. The bad is sometimes they need the jet tapped to the correct dellorto jet size. Dellorto Jets are 5mm by .8, which is a commonly available size. If you can find a bottoming tap that will help, otherwise do the tapping with the emulsion tube removed. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lever Choke Carb w/ filter- $50 from treats (Jets do not fit) </td></tr>
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<a href="https://www.treatland.tv/SHA-15mm-clone-carburetor-p/sha-15mm-clone-lever-pack.htm">https://www.treatland.tv/SHA-15mm-clone-carburetor-p/sha-15mm-clone-lever-pack.htm</a><br />
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OK so, briefly, what we're going to do here is pretty simple, first dissassemble the carb completely, then we have to pull out the emulsion tube (brass tube thingy in the middle of the venturii), then bore out the inside of the carb. The emulsion tube goes back in, the carb gets reassembled, back on the bike. The carb is then tuned by modifying the holes in the emulsion tube and the slide cutaway. Fun!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Part 1: Boring</span><br />
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Dissassemble the carb completely. You can leave in the idle screw if you want to, maybe the choke if you're good. Clean up everything as well as you can, tooth brush and carb cleaner (and safety goggles).<br />
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The emulsion tube is pressed into the carb underneath the main jet. When you remove the mainjet you might be able to see the brass lurking down there. You have to slide it out the bottom through the main jet and its fit snug. The first few of these i did, I used needle nosed pliers on the inside grabbing the tube, then someone told me this trick and it blew my mind.<br />
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Find a very small screw, I believe the one I use would be considered a #4 wood screw. You need a #2 phillips head to drive it, so its pretty small.<br />
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Screw it into the hole in the bottom of the emulsion tube. You'll have to press down firmly to get the thread to catch, but it will. The smaller the screw the better the thread catches. Tighten the screw reasonably tight, I'm not sure how to describe it but you'll feel the threads grabbing in the brass and stop before it strips the threads.<br />
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Grab a blow torch, propane is fine. You could probably put the whole dinghus in the oven too, but it might smell like varnish gas or kill you or something. Here I am using team overkill to very lightly flick the bottom of the jet snorkel thing with some heat. The carb is some bogus zinc/aluminum/matchbox car crap metal so it will melt pretty easily. <br />
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Now you'll grab those diagonal pliers you see sitting there pinch up against the head of the screw. This is why we put it in the vise upside down, you can give the joint of those pliers a quick tap with your right hand while you hold the pliers with your left hand, and that screw will yank the tube right outta there.<br />
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BOOM! TUFF ACTIN' TINACTIN<br />
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Its ok if you're excited, this is mopeds after all.<br />
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So now you're looking at this:<br />
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Now the carb is ready to be drilled out, see no tube in your way!<br />
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I didn't document the whole drilling out process, lots of other people have talked about it and discussed it on the forums, but its really up to you to figure out how you want to make that hole bigger. Personally I do it on a lathe with a drill bit and a few reamers, then I use a taper reamer to give it some venturii effect. You can just use a large drill bit and do a pretty good job if you go very slowly, I would definitely recommend a drill press at the very least.<br />
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This is a picture of one i did a few years ago, I'm pretty sure we're doing 5/8 here, just under 16mm. If you have a mill you can offset the reamer slightly so you dont break through that thin edge on top, but normally the biggest you can get these is somewhere around 15mm. <br />
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Some people with very steady hands even do this with a dremel and a sanding drum or stone or something. Crazy! If thats all you have, go for it, just be careful. I've never done that so i dont know how well it works.<br />
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Now that your carb is bored out, you'll have to clean up the burrs. The most important one is where the throttle slides in, if you dont file that off your throttle plate can jam and leave you stuck on full throttle. Not good. Also the emulsion tube hole in the bottom will have a burr which should just knock out with a small drill bit, and the inlet and outlet of the carb might have some junk. Small files work the best for this, if there is a lot of grungus you can get a dremel in some of those places.<br />
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Once everything is cleaned up, we'll have to re-insert the tube. First, it makes it a lot easier to sand down that press fit a little bit so you can get it in and out without having to heat it up. The shoulder at the bottom of the tube is what seats in the carb so get some emory paper or sand paper and chuck it in a drill. Be careful because it goes fast, you just want to take the tiniest hair off. Try it in the carb as you sand it down and see. You want it to go in about half way then get snug.<br />
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Dont install that tube just yet, there is another tricky part we have to check on. If you look closely at the bottom of the slide groove, from clamp side of the carb, you'll see a tiny hole. That has to line up with the tiny hole on the bottom of the emulsion tube, or the bike wont idle. This is probably the biggest reason people who drill dellortos cant get them to idle. In most cases the hole lines up with the other two holes in the carb, but sometimes that hole is slightly off. In this case it is way off. I'm pretty sure they drill these after the tube has been pressed in, so if Vinnie had a rough night last night, yours might look like this.<br />
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Here I've already marked with a black line the location of that hole, when you go to insert this thing you'll have to line up the black line with the hole you see sighting in from the clamp side of the carb.<br />
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Cool. The last step is to check that you lined the hole up right. You need a small strand of wire. I find that grabbing a strand from a wire brush and yanking it out works really well for this. Poke through that hole and make sure it went all the way, Not sure how to explain the feel of this, but you'll know it when its right. If the wire doesn't go in all the way, you have to play around with pulling the tube out and turning it slightly either way. Now that you loosened up that fit a little you should be able to do that just tapping it out with the pilers.<br />
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And now you have something like this, ready to be tuned.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Part 2: Setup/ Tuning</span><br />
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The SHA is tuned by adjusting 3 things: Main jet, emulsion tube holes, and slide cutaway. I could also include air filter in there because it makes a huge diifference on the operation of this simple carb, and you might want to think about changing it around if you aren't getting the performance you want.<br />
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Setting up the carb will require a shim. Most intakes are 18 or 19mm. The clamp size is 21mm (20.8-21mm) so a 1mm or 1.5 mm thick shim will be needed to fit your intake. Here i made one out of brass and pressed it onto this intake so i wouldn't have to worry about loosing it. <br />
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I also like to use an o-ring in the groove there to prevent air leaks.<br />
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Obviously match your intake and clean things up.<br />
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Oooh la la! That looks nice!<br />
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Install everything on the bike. As far as air filters go, its going to depend a lot on your mounting situation. If you can find a stock air filter that will fit that is probably the best. Because of the way the mid-range is set up on these things, they like to have a little resistance.<br />
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Ok so now we should probably discuss how this thing works a bit more. Fuel is flowing up through the main jet. When it is at idle and the throttle is closed, fuel is flowing out that tiny hole in the bottom of the slide slot. As you open the throttle you expose the other two holes and the fuel flows out of those holes. As air is passing the throttle slide it is going from high pressure low speed, to low pressure high speed, by Bernouli's principle. This is why the throttle cutaway matters, the cutaway will determine how much the air speeds up. When you put a slant on the bottom of the slide, known as 'cutaway' the air gets slowed down before it hits the emulsion tube. This has the effect of raising the pressure of the air at the tube, which reduces the amount of fuel that gets sucked up through the tube, in effect making you leaner.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uPWR-guXpME/T996CWDIQqI/AAAAAAAADYc/UelzqJXYamQ/s1600/Carb+cutaway+diagram.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uPWR-guXpME/T996CWDIQqI/AAAAAAAADYc/UelzqJXYamQ/s640/Carb+cutaway+diagram.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Note: This picture was wrong before, thanks to Todd Kingeshaft for fixing it! </td></tr>
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This crappy drawing shows how the cutaway matters more at less than 1/2 throttle. You are in effect creating a nozzle, you go from a small opening to a bigger opening and as a result the air slows down. You can see above how when the throttle is mostly closed, the ratio between the front to the back is bigger than the ratio of front to back on the second drawing. This means that at low throttle, the air gets slowed down more, and the cutaway has more effect.<br />
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This is cool because 2 strokes tend to have a peaky power curve and therefore a peaky fuel delivery curve. When your pipe hits you are making more power and need more fuel (richer) than the linear curve that most stock-ish engines need.For most two strokes this means that the wide open throttle/ high rpm conditions require a dumping of fuel, but when the porting isn't flowing very well the mix should be leaner On more advanced carbs you can use smaller idle jets and an atomizer tube setup for progressive fuel delivery. On the SHA you are stuck with a relatively constant delivery of fuel.<br />
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Another interesting point about these is that reed valve engines (which as we know make more power in the low-midrange than piston port) will work better with the stock-ish flat fuel delivery curve. Thats why SHA's are popular among peugeot and av10 dudes, they run pretty good out of the box. For a piston port engine that has less midrange, especially if its a big kit or ported, you will need to modify the carb. This is also why, with PHBG or Mikuni carbs, reedvalve engines will work well with a 'four stroke' atomizer, which has a flatter fuel delivery curve, and piston port engines need the '2 stroke' atomizer.<br />
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So by mimicing that effect by changing the taper on the bottom of the slide, you can run a larger main jet so your top end is nice and fat, and your bottom end stays crispy. If you have ever ridden a puch piston ported 65 or 70 kit with a unmodified 16 SHA you will notice the rich bottom end, this wont hurt anything, but it makes your throttle response on the low end poor and when you mod a stock small carb, it is really bad. Porting a stock cylinder can make this really bad, and the stock cylinder doesn't make enough torque in the low end to make up for it.<br />
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The size and placement of the emulsion tube holes also plays into the fuel delivery curve. Unlike carbs with needles, air bleed, and different emulsion tubes, the SHA is very simple: want more high-end fuel delivery, drill out the top hole, want more low-end drill out the bottom hole. Usually when modifying a 12mm carb to 16 mm or so, you will need to enlarge both of them some If you have a set of jet drills, which you should, just reach them in the intake there and drill it out, if you dont, you can use the corner of a file to slit them out bigger. <br />
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If you combine the progressive effects of cutting the slide, and drilling out the holes, you can play around with things enough until the carb works very well across the entire powerband. If you use jet drills you can stick the emulsion tube in once and forget it, if you have to keep pulling it in and out you will want to chew it up with some pliers on the seating area when you put it in for good, so when you push it in, it jams in there. It would be really frustrating if that thing was loose. <br />
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Follow up: Added 4/24<br />
This took me a while to get to, had a lot of projects get in the way, but very slowly over the last month or so I've been getting the Peugeot back together. The variator got modified to delay shifting and keep the engine in a higher rpm power band. The SHA got installed along with the intake manifold, and the engine got mounted back in the bike. <br />
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At first, the best i could do at tuning was to get it running ok-ish by drilling out jets and swapping around air filter pieces. The float needle was leaking like crazy, so fuel was pouring out and making the low end impossibly rich. It took a week for the needle to get to me, and with it some appropriately sized jets in the 60's and 70's.<br />
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This would be a good point to remind you, of course, that its absolutely necessary to have a properly functioning carburetor. All the parts have to work. This would seem obvious, but i've ridden bikes for people 'hey, can you ride this and see if i'm jetted right?' followed up by, 'oh yeah it leaks a little, you've got to rev it to keep it running.' Well, shoot, there's part of yer problem right there partner! <br />
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I've done dumb tricky stuff to try to save old crusty needles like filing a new point on them and shimming them up in the float with some beer can, but to be honest, its just not worth your time or mine. You will spend more than $5 on the gas you loose when you forget to turn your petcock off, and nothing gets you kicked out of shop spaces or gets people mad at you for parking your bike on the sidewalk, like a puddle of gasoline. Something about fire hazard, blah blah, yeah that too.<br />
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<br />Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-23679369363538795492012-04-14T12:25:00.000-05:002012-04-25T11:48:25.339-05:00Place holder, for nowI wanted to get a post up here just to remind myself what I've been doing the last couple weeks. Maybe kind-of a teaser for now because I promise to fill in all the details, pics, and everything else once i have more time to write.<br />
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Sachs:<br />
Been working slow but sure on the sachs, the engine has been together for a couple weeks now but i wanted to powdercoat the intake manifold, previously painted crappily with primer, and sand the clutch discs to see how they would hold up. I've got the whole new clutch drawn up on napkins, and once i find some time i'll be re-designing the pack in solid works. Hoping to be able to put together an 'uberclutch' that outperforms the german one for about $100 us.<br />
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Is this why you had an air leak?<br />
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Engine re-fitted temporarily, nice and shiny p-coat intake manifold! Damn that sexy. Now its just hooking all the cables back up, tuning it, fitting the seat cover, adding buddy pegs, finishing the airbox/airfilter... i guess there is quite a lot to be done yet. <br />
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Peugeot:<br />
Finally got the new intake manifold attached. Also modded (lightened) the variator and pulled 3 balls out of the clutch. Woah, what a difference! Unfortunately I cant compare what the carb change did and what the variator change did independantly because i did them at the same time. Due to the peugeot having the 'old style' mounting bracket where the spring rod thingy doesnt come out, installing the engine is a godawful pain in the ass, so i elected to do them both at the same time. The reconditioned SHA is leaking like it has a hole in it, so I ordered some new jets and a new needle and i'll be installing those and finishing the tuning this week. Low end tuning is rich as hell because the air filter has gas dripping out of it... darn.<br />
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Bridgestone:<br />
Got the rear hub rebuilt, still have to bend the bent swingarm back into place, and re-fix the clutch, but we are making slow progress.<br />
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Mopedfactory:<br />
Working on a few new parts, hobbit subframe braces for racers and heavy dudes, and the sachs clutches mentioned.<br />
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yikes! Maybe i'll have time this week to fill in the rest of that, maybe not. whew, sobusynow. Leaving you with a little view of the shop. AMERICA!!!!!!!!<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AHu7LNryO0M/T5bvlQYMN9I/AAAAAAAADKw/5VshLZv0qBo/s1600/DSC00934.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AHu7LNryO0M/T5bvlQYMN9I/AAAAAAAADKw/5VshLZv0qBo/s640/DSC00934.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-55874376626150859002012-03-26T10:43:00.000-05:002012-03-26T10:43:22.655-05:00Fixin' yer Subaru exhaustThis is just a quick one but I wanted to write it up somewhere before I forgot.<br />
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If you own a Subaru and know the undeserved feeling of superiority that comes with driving around a monster truck that looks like a dumb station wagon, you probably have had or will have your blissful driving experience ruined by a noisy exhaust. Most old cars in general are riddled with exhaust problems (it takes a beating down there piping out highly corrosive mixtures of acidic vapors).<br />
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It seems like every Subaru I've owned (3 now) has suffered from the same problem, the whole exhaust holds up pretty well but for some reason these stupid flanges rot out. It probably has something to do with how they are welded or the material of the flange or something like that but you go over a bump and your car gets louder, you smell exhaust and go underneath to find something like this:<br />
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So the other day I cut out a handful of flanges and made a couple of these:<br />
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Quick, easy, permanent. You cut off the tail pipe with a hack saw, angle grinder, sawzall, sharpened toothbrush whatever. This little guy bolts onto the other flange and clamps on around the tail pipe with a regular exhaust u-clamp thingy. Since every Subaru from the '86 brat i have up to the 2001 outback uses the same flange and same 2" exhaust plumbing, this little dingus is pretty universal.<br />
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If you want one send me an email. $35 shipped, cheap! I even shot some paint on the weld and unprotected flange so it wont rust so fast.<br />
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I put one on the 2001 outback and it worked great. Still a pain in the ass having to jack the muffler out of the rubber hangars, cut the pipe off, somehow everything moved.... 15 minute repair turns into 3 hours.. but its a hell of a lot easier than the alternative which involves going into the parts store, sifting through a catalog to get the right flange (ordering it and waiting 3 days while your car is up on jacks with no exhaust system), removing the whole exhaust, trying to weld the new flange to the rusty old pipe... blah! And the flanges aren't welded on exactly straight!<br />
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The slight bit of slop in the slip-fit coupler takes up enough of the wierdness to get it all together, and it makes a tight seal without needing a welder or having to weld an airtight seam on rusty pipe... tough.Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-88558260042001936122012-03-15T12:57:00.000-05:002012-03-15T12:57:39.081-05:00the Bridgestone lives!Last nights ride was awesome. Yesterday we were in the mid-70's in Milwaukee, with the slightest hint of breeze and a cloudless sky. Basically a perfect day in all regards. I was watching Lyle, so he and I got a lot of work done on the Bridgestone. My goal was to have it running for the ride, Caitlin's folks agreed to babysit so we could go out with the Cranks and celebrate finishing up midterms.<br />
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I didn't take good pictures because I was rushing to finish the bike, but I'll snap some better photos and maybe get a ride vid tonight or tomorrow.<br />
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I've edited the Bridgestone <a href="http://www.outofcontrolmopeds.blogspot.com/p/bridgestone-100s.html">page</a> to have most of the info up to last weekend, and I'll add the final details as soon as I get some free time.<br />
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The ride itself last night was great. It was the first time Caitlin and I have ridden together in over a year, since before she got pregnant, so it was pretty special. The little Bridgestone is going to be a great bike, I can tell already. I got the lights working just as it was getting dark, we hopped on the bike and rolled to fuel. On the way, we had a minor hiccup, Carlos must have removed the bolts from the chain guard and left it sitting in place, I never noticed it wasn't bolted down. If you haven't experienced a chain guard/chain interaction on a motorcycle, you are lucky, its a completely terrifying sound and handling experience. Especially on a tentative first ride about half a mile from home! I pulled the chain guard off and stashed it in a bush to get on the way home.<br />
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The rest of the ride was really uneventful. The TMX has a dual rear sprocket, like many enduros of the time. With the amount of power this thing has (really surprising for a 1960's motorcycle- blows any comparable honda out of the water) the short gears are pretty silly. It is revving uncomfortably high at about 40 mph. I'm sure it could rev out higher, but I'm afraid that it is a little lean. The rotary valve induction has the carb sitting in a little box off the crankshaft. The air comes in from the air filter, through plumbing, into that box, and there are about 4 or 5 different plugs to cover up clutch, carb, and oil pump adjustment holes... the cables also come in through a wierd rubber snorkel dingus, and the fact that all this stuff is over 40 years old probably means that it is leaking somewhere. I dont mind the leaks because i'm not driving through mud, dust and water, but I will have to up-jet to compensate for them.<br />
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Pretty dissapointingly by the end of the night i could tell that the pressed-in kickstart cog bushing thing was slipping. Carlos, being trained as a machinist, informed me that it was obvious that it was going to slip, and he would have done it differently- thanks buddy hindsight is 20/20, right? I'm a little nervous because when that bushing slips out, the clutch basket pulls forward allows for some misalignment in the gears... not the best situation.<br />
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On friday, before frozen snot, i'm going to have to fix it again. I came up with the idea of drilling out a hole on the interface of the two surfaces and jamming a brass pin in there.. I'll probably also knurl the bushing a bit, and use some Loctite Retaining compound (aka bearing glue) in order to give everything a bit more hold.<br />
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All in all, i'm really happy with this little bike. Its very well designed in a lot of ways, the 4 down rotary shifter is an awesome idea that more bikes should have- you just keep stomping the gearshift until you get into the right gear. Going from 4th to neutral is accomplished by one click down, and if you do ever have to 'downshift' in a turn, its a lot easier to flick it up once than most bikes where you are constantly wearing out your boot going up and never go down.<br />
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I can tell already that the points need some atttention, i'll try to dress them but lately i've been of the opinion that points should just be replaced all the time. Its not worth the headaches they cause. (see <a href="http://www.outofcontrolmopeds.blogspot.com/p/peugeot.html">Peugeot</a>).<br />
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All in all, it was an awesome night.. nights like these remind me why I work so hard to get bikes running and keep them running. Sometimes after a long winter, especially one where you have 5 active projects, and no running bikes, you get lost in the shop time and forget why you're doing it. Being out with my girl, on a bike that I brought back from the dead, and riding with my best friends, is really the whole point isn't it?<br />
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That said, with 3 people on motorcycles at moped night, I did feel a bit like we were cheating. I cant wait to be back on a moped again. Motorcycles are cool, but mopeds are still more fun.Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-73924670842742751782012-03-08T14:44:00.000-06:002012-03-08T14:44:12.725-06:00Steady Bloggin'Or not so much.<br />
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I just finished compiling the list of Tech articles I've written. It was good to go back and look at some of that stuff from years ago. Its good for me to see how much I've improved in my understanding of mopeds and engines and such, how much better my shop practices are and see some of the comments I missed.<br />
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The only thing that hasn't improved apparently is my actual blog writing. I should be writing more and writing better, taking more pictures, and thinking about my work. Right now I'm working on my senior design project and my project notebook is a big weakness. The original reason I started this blog was to slow down and doccument what I do, hopefully to improve. In some ways I have, in some ways I haven't. Either way to be a good engineer it is critical and now is as good a time to make myself keep notes as any. <br />
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Now that I have an exciting new format and its getting to be spring again, I'll be trying harder to make good habits stick and continue to write and document everything I do.<br />
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Speaking of, there is a lot of new stuff that can go in the 'Bridgestone' build page from last weekend. I spent a whole day in the machine shop re-machining a little cog thingy that works with the kickstart mechanisim. I'll put up some more pics and try to write up the current state of progress on the 'Bridgestone' page soon.<br />
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Moving right along, the Sachs build is progressing incrementally and I'm hoping to have time to pull the Peugeot engine this weekend. Got a motorcycle skills class on Sunday that should be interesting. <br />
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Thanks for reading!Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-29949247496634123212012-02-29T14:20:00.000-06:002012-02-29T14:20:10.913-06:00out of 'controls'- and were back with a somewhat readable siteHa haaaaa, I just had to call the post that because I just finished up one of the most brutal classes I've taken for engineering, Electromechanical Control Systems or 'controls 2' as it is called. This was my last ME class (only physics, math and humanities electives to graduate) and I'm perrrrty happy about it, so now that I'm finally 'out of controls' I can get radical on mopeds again.<br />
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To start with I had to fix up this shoddy excuse for a website. I know I should be on here more, but my ADD pulls me toward wasting all my time on the $@#$ing moped forums all the time, starting fights with depressed elderly people and the mentally handicapped. A book I read about ADD said that people with it are drawn to internet forums and chat rooms and mopeds... just kidding about the mopeds part, but its creepy how true that can be.<br />
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Anyhow, taking a break from all that nonsense and focusing on this for awhile has it looking better. This whole debacle started with the picture on top getting resized and ended with me getting so mad that i deleted the whole template and just left it with whatever default. The new 'OOC Choppers' website... which this is, of course, comes with a cleaner interface that is easier for your eyeballs to find content on, a left side junk tab which i like better, and a welcome-to-2004 screen width of 1000 pixels. I also added RSS feeds for everyone's blog and made that shorter so now people who update more often are at the top. Your blog link is now governed by an automatic meritocracy, instead of a myspace-esque 'who do i put at the top' decision that i refused to address.<br />
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In the next couple months i'll try to add a couple 'projects' pages for my ongoing projects, and i'll try to get the moped factory blog turned into something useful. I have so many products in development and coming out that i want to make it easier for people to get good setup information and hopefuly i can spend more time producing useful content than repeating the same crummy instructions 20 times. A 'how to properly shim your head' video is needed very badly so i'll try to get that done too. <br />
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On to mopeds, I've been pretty dormant the last couple weeks but got started up again last weekend trying to re-stock some popular items. I made over 30 sets of hobbit rollers, an entire 10 foot chunk of material was cut into tiny pieces... made a couple custom heads that have been on the shelf for a couple weeks, and got some computer design work done. This week i'm trying to get prepped for next weekend, i hope to have two long days of cranking out everything from cylinder shim plates, to batavus intakes... yikes!<br />
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Personally I'm trying to get my bridgestone ready for Frozen Snot ride, march 17 this year. Caitlin wants to go so I'm going to try to get a motorcycle fixed up, as the puch polini is still a ways out and totally untested, so she'll have to wait. Frozen snot is always a fun time to bring out your winter project and this Bridgestone is coming along nicely, so i'm pretty excited. I have a ton of work to do, but its starting to come together. <br />
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The polini is hours (a lot of hours i guess) away from running, but those hours i just haven't had. The engine is 'done' it just needs to be assembled, really. All the shims and everything are in place, but i need to have 2-3 uninterrupted hours to sit down and piece it together. ZA's aren't black magic or anything, but you do have to take your time and work clean, careful and precise. Currently the garage is pretty messy and 40 degrees, not very condusive to that kind of work. I need a spotless, brightly lit environment to do a good job. Also need to finish fabricating the pipe and piece together a few sundry items such as air filter/velocity stack, intake manifold modded to clear ZA, pedal shaft extension, electrical system. I'm pretty sure at least to start with i'm going to run the 2041 pietcard box on the 'treats' cdi stator. I'm hoping for a mild retard around 8 or 9k rpms. The LK95 pipe i got from Devin at MLM really needs to be retarded when it hits, and there is no way i'm springing 200+ bucks for one of the top dollar CDI units. <br />
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Oh yeah, weedwacker? Another in my series of tuned up vintage 2 stroke power equipment. This is about the fewest moving parts you can possibly combine to make a running engine, which makes it cool. I was really missing not having a weed wacker last year with my crazy hillside 'back yard' so this year i can trim the weeds and pick up dog poop!Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-43506411207458804272012-01-16T13:55:00.002-06:002012-01-16T14:02:47.676-06:00Ah shootDespite being an engineer and having quite a bit of experience with computer type things, writing code, configuring networks, hardware, software... etc. I find myself being completely unable to navigate simple systems. Facebook boggles the hell out of me, "i" phones dont make any damn sense at all, and apparently the totally idiot-proof interface of 'blogger' is beyond my technical sophistication.<br /><br />Long story short, I started out trying to figure out why the heading photo got resized down to tiny, and somehow i messed up my blog. Now pictures are all whack-sized, colors and themes are lost, and a bunch of time i put into making it somewhat readable over the years is all gone. It took me a couple weeks just to figure out how the heck to get back 'in' to the control interface and make it somewhat legible.<br /><br />If i get some time here in the next couple weeks i'll try to fix things and add some of the new fun things i've been working on. In the meantime sorry if it looks crazy around here.<br /><br />I'm putting some time into developing a new website for moped factory, and parent company motzing engineered components, on my own server, without glitzy templates and crap... just something simple and ugly (think geocities style) with good valuable content, then i can keep this blog for updates on dumb stuff like when i changed a throttle cable and when i'm feeling sad about backstreet boys not getting back together, and whatever else dumb stuff that people put on these things... cake photos?Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-2777902157744954872011-12-11T19:12:00.004-06:002011-12-12T21:57:28.702-06:00A quick one<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://www.treatland.tv/v/vspfiles/photos/moped-factory-head-old-metakit-2.jpg"><br /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://www.treatland.tv/v/vspfiles/photos/moped-factory-head-old-metakit-2.jpg"><br /></a>Not much to say, trying to blarg at you more often than not here, but its not easy with everything else going on. Plus things in my own garage are pretty stagnant at the moment, haven't made much progress on any of my poorly running bikes.<br /><br />Despite my best effort however (to avoid buying more bikes), I did acquire another $100 Pinto. I know you guys on the coasts (or anywhere that isn't milwaukee, i guess) will hate me for this, but its almost hard not to buy $100 barn-fresh Pintos here. This would probably be the 7, 8, maybe 9th Pinto that has come to me in about this same condition.<br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/aZDZSAkDyXkBQpqpueWVlc68JRdXlI71-oGPo8k4MPU?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-R-pRdIZF5NM/TuVU7ZU-pLI/AAAAAAAACeA/1iwSaK3IOAI/s800/DSC00590.JPG" width="800" height="600" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/motzingg/BlkPinto12_11?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCMyVx4ig1pr4VQ&feat=embedwebsite">Blk Pinto 12_11</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />The throttle cable is ALWAYS broken, the chain is usually froze up (missing in this case), the forks are loose as hell, and the pedals are bent, but the EE-FIDDY is in great shape. No speedo, so no clue what the miles are, but the tires are original and hold air. Not too worn down either.<br /><br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/5XzQQDsHBwKPIjnL5bmmEc68JRdXlI71-oGPo8k4MPU?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3ZB-jELabc8/TuVU6QsstJI/AAAAAAAACd8/hpYgJvyiKtw/s800/DSC00589.JPG" width="800" height="600" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/motzingg/BlkPinto12_11?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCMyVx4ig1pr4VQ&feat=embedwebsite">Blk Pinto 12_11</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />It also came with 2 14mm bing carbs and a box of other fail from the previous owner trying to resurrect it. I talked to him and he wants to buy it back from me if I get it running, but the more I think about it, the more hoarder-ey I feel. I've never had one of these with snowflakes before, I usually get the 'red' orange ones with spokes. I dont really like snowflakes but for some reason I really like this little bike. Either way it will have to wait a couple weeks for me to get my dollars up enough to sort it out properly.<br /><br />Speaking of getting my dollars up (a phrase borrowed from <a href="http://trashwagon.com/">The Illustrious Miles Fox</a>) I've been cranking out new parts like a monkey on crack lately.<br /><br />I turned a few heads for the <a href="http://treatland.tv/">Treats</a> gang, the bulk of it Puch stuff, but also trying to bulk up supplies of vespa, motobecane, and there might be a debris laying around somewhere. The Metrakit 65 head I started doing 5 or so years ago is still a hot seller, and my processes (sandblasting, paint, finishing) have gotten a lot better thanks to my new machine shop and upgraded tooling. I daresay these are some of the nicest heads I've ever made.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.treatland.tv/v/vspfiles/photos/moped-factory-head-old-metakit-2.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 456px;" src="https://www.treatland.tv/v/vspfiles/photos/moped-factory-head-old-metakit-2.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />I also finally put a bracket that has been riding around on the bottom of my sachs since, oh, 2007? into production. The final version is burly 12 ga steel and powdered in MopedFactory blue. It will let you put a <a href="https://www.treatland.tv/peugeot-moped-simonini-circuit-pipe-p/peugeot-simonini-circuit.htm">Simonini Peugeot Circuit pipe</a> on your lowly Sachs 505. Anybody want to test it on a 504? Freebeeez! The way the pipe is set up from the factory, the header is the exact same size as the nipple of the Athena Kit, but for stockers, you'll need a little shim. I'll be making those very soon so hang on to your hat.<br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/R2sUaWv8a4ftPYW__oeyAeSMpzktj5lciC9EfPTPFMQ?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-oUX6VoAm7ew/TubMUKxD09I/AAAAAAAACek/VP2CccNNWs4/s800/DSC00593.JPG" width="800" height="600" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/motzingg/SachsSimoExhaustBracket?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCNq4teWtk7r0Zg&feat=embedwebsite">Sachs simo exhaust bracket</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />Oh yeah, what else you ask? As if all those fantastic parts that i've been slaving over isn't enough to make you happy, I went ahead and did another production run of <a href="https://www.treatland.tv/puch-ZA50-fill-plug-cap-p/moped-factory-za50-fill-plug.htm">ZA-50 Billet oil fill plugs. </a>Why? Because I needed a couple for myself and figured while I was at it, might as well make 20 or so.<br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/mjVU-0uwzpR_9NPFPBQHYhTzjbeZo8W2wXoe4WtT27M?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-4uwy_bYgrYk/TuVU9NvGMFI/AAAAAAAACeI/0nGV8c12SAo/s800/DSC00591.JPG" width="800" height="600" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/motzingg/Za50DrainPlug?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCM6EpsbTpKzm7wE&feat=embedwebsite">za 50 drain plug</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />These new ones are, once again, better because of the improved equipment at the new shop. There is a miracle machine there called a 'speed lathe' that makes it easy for me to keep the quality control on these like 300% more consistent. The last batch I ended up throwing out about 1 in 5 due to the o-ring groove getting cut funky, but this batch came out almost perfect. They also are faster to make, but I cant drop the price people, geez they are already cheaper than the 30 year old rubber crap Puch is trying to give you... and it ain't even in stock.<br /><br />oh yeah these fit in your rare as hell x-50 3 speed hand shift moped engine also, but dont bring it up, i just sold mine and it makes me a very sad panda. Oh well, on to bigger and faster things hopefully.Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7854654208038145638.post-41676109703929103122011-12-01T11:00:00.000-06:002011-12-01T11:04:29.491-06:00A shop day, back on the PugeotI was able to get a day in my workshop finally after several weeks. When I started making mopeds my business, I had plenty of moped time to go around and was able to keep up on a running bike or two, my projects, etc. Now that life has gotten crazier all moped time (which is much less) goes into making parts now, and a pure, unadulterated, shop day of just dicking around and sorting things out, is a rare joy.<br /><br />I cant remember where I started, but first project was Le Peugeot. This was easy stuff but frustrating/time consuming BS. When I loaned it out at the rally, somehow (this was probably happening before the rally but I didn't notice) the exhaust rapidly began disintegrating into its component parts. This is<a href="http://outofcontrolmopeds.blogspot.com/2010/08/faco-power-for-le-puegeot.html"> that stupid pipe</a> that started life as a 'faco' and is now mostly hand fabricated with only a section of the chamber original.<br /><br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/dyr2EHJ99A5Pe6QAUcWETO_4hkz2lo1x-c6iXR9gtBo?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-VGJxVSAjR-E/TteyNCOqXrI/AAAAAAAACdU/HcwzXgh7ARs/s800/DSC00504.JPG" width="800" height="600" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/motzingg/Puegeot02?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCMePuaebt6jERg&feat=embedwebsite">Puegeot</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />The flange that screws into the cylinder broke off, so i welded in the higher-quality stock peugeot flange and a section of pipe, along with the peugeot stock nut which was much nicer. This held for most of the summer, but finally let go sometime during the rally. My apologies to Seth for the bum-ass loaner bike. The wimpy little sheet metal bracket under the engine disintegrated even after being welded closed, and it didn't take long for the flange/header to break and let go.<br /><br />So yeah, i welded that back together. The handlebars that I started replacing a couple weeks ago finally got new longer cables that aren't frayed and corroded, and now the handlebars aren't bent and hastily welded back together. Also a much more comfortable angle.<br /><br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/wBwYbexbOWXfmmvBBwSBQe_4hkz2lo1x-c6iXR9gtBo?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-vM8AHK1LmHE/TteyNmaarPI/AAAAAAAACdY/_QjiFuCCi9w/s800/DSC00505.JPG" width="800" height="600" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/motzingg/Puegeot02?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCMePuaebt6jERg&feat=embedwebsite">Puegeot</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />True to form, she fired up on the second kick after i dumped a carb-bowl full of varnish gas out. My bone head brother stole my good fat OEM peugeot belt and i was forced to use his rolled-over shredded to heck belt of unknown provenance. The bike was a totally new animal with the thinner belt, definitely helped even though it was slipping like crazy.<br /><br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/v1gaD7lkxwjkCCm_ksZDLO_4hkz2lo1x-c6iXR9gtBo?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-L6aZQ_rOn9c/TteyMinu1GI/AAAAAAAACdQ/OvhsdIqUwl8/s800/DSC00503.JPG" width="800" height="600" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/motzingg/Puegeot02?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCMePuaebt6jERg&feat=embedwebsite">Puegeot</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />Rode to work yesterday and made it, although i still cant figure out this top end 4-stroking/misfire thing. I've tried different timing, different jetting, different plugs, and i'm still totally flummoxed. It just feels gutless, like bad timing, on the top end, then when you go down a hill or pick up speed around 37-38 mph it starts to four-stroke like crazy and slow down.<br /><br />The intake is still stock and who knows what is going on with that pipe, so either of those could be causing the flow to choke abruptly. In the next couple weeks when i get paid for a few things (most notably selling my precious X-50 motor) i'll invest in one of those malossi SHA intakes and put the 16 SHA that came off my 'ella' maxi on to the Peugeot and see if we cant get her blasting properly. Also the variator still needs attending to, so that will probably happen all at once.Graham Motzinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09327335751664687661noreply@blogger.com1