Mellow Yellow...

Two posts in two days! What the?!? The weather has been kind to me and has allowed this to happen...that and I need to keep busy in order to not be depressed. Went to the garage today to F I N A L L Y start putting this engine together and...the crank that I had pressed in has a different sized diameter the original! What the deuce!? I'll have to figure something out. The needle bearing for the pin is too small...so I'll either have to find a different needle bearing (with an ID for the pin and OD for the conrod) or find a brass bushing to press in that allows me to use the same needle bearing...bonerjamz. It figures that right when I start getting some forward momentum, that I run into something else...but that's life right...er mopeds...

So in the meantime, I installed the yellow-wall inserts.

I tried a while back to put these on and just could not get them to seat right. You have to deflate the tire, shove them between the rim and tire and then re-inflate. Then when you see that the inserts are way off on one side, or that the tire is no longer seated properly...deflate, push, or pull to get it back to center...and repeat. I spent a few hours doing this once and gave up for a little while. Thankfully today I got both tires done in under an hour.

While I had the engine set and ready to go, I figured I'd take some photos of the 65cc Metrakit that came with the bike.

Pretty excited at the potential of this kit. The Metrakit for Puch is such a solid kit, and I'm assuming the quality extends to other brands as well.

While inspecting the engine, I noticed this little lever that lives within the rear wheel between the brake...

At first I thought it was some sort of clutch, as it disengages the rear crankshaft from moving the rear wheel...but then it was brought to my attention that its just the "bike mode" lever. On the original handlebar set up there was what looked like two throttle assemblies...one for the gas...the other to engage bike mode. Why? Why would you ever need to be cruising around on your moped and just decide, "bike mode sounds good about now." I don't know. That's why I thought that this was some sort of clutch mechanism (and was honestly scared at the prospect of having to pull it every time I came to a stop light just to stop my rear wheel from engaging). I'm hoping to run a cable to a lever instead of having to add another twist throttle. Should be easy enough.