the 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.

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.

I've edited the Bridgestone page 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Peugeot).


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?

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.

Steady Bloggin'

Or not so much.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thanks for reading!

out of 'controls'- and were back with a somewhat readable site

Ha 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.

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.

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.

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. 

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!

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.

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.

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!

Ah shoot

Despite 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.

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.

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.

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?

A quick one

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.

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.

From Blk Pinto 12_11

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.

From Blk Pinto 12_11

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.

Speaking of getting my dollars up (a phrase borrowed from The Illustrious Miles Fox) I've been cranking out new parts like a monkey on crack lately.

I turned a few heads for the Treats 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.


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 Simonini Peugeot Circuit pipe 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.

From Sachs simo exhaust bracket

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 ZA-50 Billet oil fill plugs. Why? Because I needed a couple for myself and figured while I was at it, might as well make 20 or so.

From za 50 drain plug

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.

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.

A shop day, back on the Pugeot

I 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.

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 that stupid pipe that started life as a 'faco' and is now mostly hand fabricated with only a section of the chamber original.

From Puegeot

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.

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.

From Puegeot

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.

From Puegeot

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.

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.

Two steps forward, four steps back

I'm not quite ready to go Mike Ness on the whitehouse or anything, but these lousy A35 manifolds were a bit of a set back. In addition to taking way too much effort to make and costing me a ton to set up all the jigs and such, they have been somewhat problematic in that they are the first product I've made like this. There is a good reason nobody else makes these things!

Version 1

From Moped Factory Products

The first batch of 10 had some quality control issues first of all, the welds left something to be desired visually (they were airtight- tig welded inside) and the powdercoating was a bit spotty. Definitely not up to Moped Factory standards. I was in too much of a rush and sent them out anyway and right away one of my product crash testers got back to me and said that there was a placement error, on the A35 frame the old intake (ver 2) went right into the front side cover bracket. The bike I tested them on was an A3 and slightly different in that area.

Version 2

From Moped Factory Products

So last weekend, the forward progress was interrupted to re-make the offending manifolds, with what I hope will be a more universal and all-around better design. Version 3 of the manifold is less trick, bringing the carb out farther from the frame, and on the right side this time (starboard), instead of the port side. As much as I like designs that allow you to keep things tucked in neatly, the Tomos engine and frame layout doesn't give much of an option for that. Perhaps in version 4 I'll use an actual a35 frame and make it specific to that model, in the mean time I've got something that will get the job done and should be a bit more universal for all the hackers and wierdos out there putting these things on Puchs, Batavus (more regarding this soon!), etc.

Version 3

From Moped Factory Products

The new models are welded with some tricky machine shop magic to give much better looking welds. Mig, not tig, which has certain advantages to the manufacturing process. Mostly that its faster and doesn't heat up the plate as much, so it wont warp as badly, and it looks so nice.

From Moped Factory Products

And another pic to show clearance:

From Moped Factory Products

This is finals week coming up here, so I'm working on a pile of final reports and crap, but next week I'll be hard at it getting some more exciting new products out and I'll mock up a puch frame to make sure this intake clears... take some pictures.

If all goes well, hopefully I can get some work done on some of my own projects, might make for more interesting blogging.