Happenings

Making things work when you don't have a welder and you're alone at the garage...my leovince pipe wasn't mounting as easily anymore for some reason. It just wouldn't sit flush into the exhaust port. So I took an old seat post that fit into the inner diameter of the pipe and fits snuggly on the outer diameter of the exhaust port.

It works for the most part. I slabbed on a little "right stuff" to seal it up a little bit more after mounting.

Nate Bandit welding up this pipe for a friend. Cheap tools make great braces...

Then he welding up a rear variator for me as my super ciao had destroyed two in a matter of 3 weeks...later I grinded down the welds to fit in the frame.

And then DISASTER!!! While on a ride through the park, I came to a stop sign and heard a strange grinding sound. Worried that it was some sort of engine issue, I looked down but didn't see anything (initially). I took off from the stop and the bike went 5 feet and was SUPER wobbly. it felt as if my bike was made of rubber bands rather than steel. I came to a stop and on further investigation saw that I had cracked my frame. After taking the engine off I realized the extent of my problem...

Thank God I was at a stop when this happened...and that I had a cross bar...otherwise it would have broken completely in half! Going to need to add some steel for stability....Super ciao down!

Under Pressure...UPDATE!!!

So after battling with the vespino on and off for years now, we made some great progress lately. I have been stuck with low compression. No matter what I tried I could not get above 90 psi. I took the bike over to Nate's and being an old hobbit expert he thought of a possible fix. In previous posts you'll see that I plugged the decomp on the head. However the tiny little decomp on the cylinder was still leaking. When we put a drill to it you could hear the little whizz/hiss. We drilled the hole out a little and tapped it with an m5 set screw. After seating the set screw deep I put it all back together and WHAMMO! 180 PSI!!! How's that for a fixed problem! Celebration came momentarily however as it now appears that I have some sort of gas flow issue. Oh well. It had old ass gas in it so that's the next step. Clean up the whole fuel system. What i know is that now I have compression and I have spark. So basically we are ALMOST there. It's the closest the bike has been since creation. Sadly its been a long hard road...but I also don't have much time to put into it with nursing school. Regardless, I'm super stoked.

we have the power...we can rebuild him...

So in light of my car dying and someone stealing my bicycle, I am able to prioritize working on some mopeds again. I already put the yellow ciao set up on a grande and have that as a daily rider, but now I'm working on salvaging even more of yellow ciao. It was my first vespa and having it back on the road in some formation would be awesome. I replaced the forks with a random pair of ciao forks that I salvaged from one of brad's abandoned, old, rusty ciao frames. My frame was twisted and a little gnarled. When I hit that downed tree it was like the impact went through the forks and conducted all the way to the back book rack where it twisted. After looking it over however, I think that the frame itself is not trashed. Since the book rack was trashed i found a way to cut off the twisted portion in order to salvage the seat post. i reattached it to the frame using a few bolts and for now it has some integrity. I know that the weight of a rider however will put a lot of force on the bolts I used. In order to strengthen it later however, I'll have to weld or bolt on braces. Next I worked on building up an engine. I put the 65 malossi on rebuilt engine I had laying around on it. I had trouble getting the kit sleeve in the engine cases however. I noticed that the crank also wouldn't turn freely. My intuition told me that the bearings were seated properly. So I took a torch to the cases for a little while and tapped them with a rubber mallet. This helped to position the bearing slightly enough that the crank was able to spin freely and the kit fit in the cases. It was a little snug still, but it worked. I mounted the engine and installed a 13.13 dellorto. Here's the bike thus far:

It's been way to long

Thought I'd post up a minute here as its been way to long. Let's see what happened...well I quit my job and went back to school to study nursing (hence no posts)...I got to go to the guns rally and made this:

which never gets old...then more school and we're up to date. The weather was 60 degrees yesterday (in January!) and all I could think about was being outside. I was able to find some garage time and Oh by the way...here's the new garage space...

and my work space...

We've been in here for a while but it dawned on me that I hadn't posted it up. Shared with 5 other bandits which we rent from a mutual friend named Joe. It's awesome having so much more room. While there I tried further diagnosing the vespino...yeah i know...I've been working on it for years. But really not years. I only get time here and there. But I just can not figure out what the hell is going on. I still have really low compression (90 on the tester). I've replaced gaskets, tightened it down, and permanently plugged the decomp and still...90. hmmm. My latest idea is that the brand new 65cc metrakit head I got from spain might be warped. My old one has a stripped plug hole, but oddly enough I just got an email from Rocky Malin (who is the only other person I know who has vespino parts in the US). So hopefully I can try a few more things. I'm so over this moped being stupid...

$10 moped

What does a $10 moped look like? Well it looks like this...

In other words, it looks like a Kinetic Magnum held together with zip ties and bungee cords with an extra Puch E-50 strapped to it.

Oh and it also came with a box of random parts... Sort of random, but I ran into someone who used to ride mopeds who no longer does and they sold me this for $10. The engine turns over just fine, and if you didn't notice, its a variated Kinetic. Didn't know these existed. It's literally in pieces, so i'll have to put the whole thing together, but its in relatively good shape. The paint is good, the seat is pristine...in light of my recent accident, It might just be getting my old ciao setup...When I find the time that is...

Yellow Ciao...R.I.P.

Its with great sadness that I report that my humble, reliable yellow ciao has been destroyed. Late Monday night (early Tuesday morning) Elliot, Raymond and I went for a late night ride and none of our bikes returned...What started as an amazing ride ended in tragedy. Our last leg was to go up a large hill in Iroquois park to see the Louisville skyline. There is a gate for this road, which was thankfully open. Unfortunately this road is not intended to be used after dusk and so there were no street lamps. As we gained confidence by our tiny headlights we began to go faster and faster. And then it happened... Elliot was riding in front of me when I heard this loud POP! I saw his head light quickly point down. All I had time to think about was "what happened to Elliot" before I too wrecked; and Raymond behind me. I felt the impact on my shoulder and helmet (thank God we were all wearing them). At that point time had stopped. It was pitch black and as my senses started to return, all I could hear was the moaning of my compatriots laying on the pavement around me. While the gate was open, there was a downed tree covering the length of the road. We each hit the tree going somewhere between 30-35 mph. I flew the farthest (I won the moped rider throwing contest). I tried standing up but found myself lying down. As I stared up at the sky I realized that I was "spacing out" and in fact had passed out for a moment. I sat up and made Elliot keep talking to me. I was "out of it" but apparently "with it" enough that I directly Elliot in how to put my arm into a sling. The pain was excruciating. Nate Bandit came to the rescue and rushed me to the ER with what he thought was a broken collar bone. After waiting a while, the x-rays came back negative. I am lucky to walk away with only a sprained shoulder. It's still very sore and painful, although I regain some movement every day. Thankfully we were all wearing helmets and no one was seriously hurt. All of our bikes are toast (at least the forks and front wheels). My yellow ciao however (i am told) might be unrepairable. They aren't made from that great of material anyways. Here are the photos Nate took of the bikes in the back of his truck.

check out my front wheel...

How'd you break your moped?

So I got a sweet deal on a fully loaded grande; malossi hit, carb, pipe, variator...the guy I bought it from had been having trouble with it and when drill starting it, sucked the decomp into the engine. Apparently it wasn't put together correctly and shot into the cylinder. I knew that this wouldn't have caused much problems because it can't get passed the piston. I tried convincing him to keep the bike and that it was fine, but he insisted that he wanted to sell it. So i jumped on it at a unbelievable good price. The decomp situation should have been an omen... I took the engine apart and the first thing I noticed was that HE DIDN'T PUT ANY CIRCLIPS ON THE PISTON!!! WTF!!! Did he just forget? Did he think they weren't necessary? Who knows...sure enough on inspection of the cylinder there is a nice mark left by the piston pin.

It's not scored that badly and isn't raised. So other than a slight loss of compression, it should still run. Wheh! And then we get to the crank...notice anything wrong here?

let's give you a close up...

WHAAATTT??? That's right...you're looking at A BOLT that was WELDED on the crank. The crank must have been broken in the past and the "fix" was to just weld a bolt upside down in there. Unfortunately the crank is hardened and so the weld isn't actually welded. It's only a matter of time before it just breaks off. Other minor issues of note: no case gasket...just slathered some indian head on there...nuts for the front wheel were finger loose as well as the front fender... All in all however I'm getting this thing tightened up and rebuilt. Should be another reliably fast bike (fingers crossed)

almost...

A few weeks back Nichols helped me with the vespino. This thing has been such a pain in the ass...we worked it down to a possible problem with the decomp. The design of this bike is annoying at times (most times) because just to check the head you have to take so much of the bike apart...the engine is tucked up in there. So we used we used a car lift to hold the front of the bike up.
Unnecessary, yes...makes the job easier...yes. When we took the head off to inspect it, here's what we found...
Brand new metrakit head with a chunk missing from the decomp area. There's no way that the decomp will seal properly with that. We tapped the decomp hole and threaded in a bolt with JB weld to seal it up. I took it down the street and instantly it started right up. Unfortunately it had very little gas and I forgot the tank key at my garage...woof. A day or so later I got it doing wheelies UPHILL down my alley. Excitedly I rode it to moped Wednesday...it was running fine until about 3 blocks from the Monkey Wrench; it just slowly died. Soft seize? Nope. Compression still good? Yep. Turns out it was the bike lever cable that I installed. The cable came loose from the housing. Yesterday I replaced the cable housing and still no dice...vespino time out...again...

way cooler than mopeds...

real life

WB4 Teaser

hijinx

Still little progress on the vespino build as life seems so crazy lately. But I am finding time to hang out with bandits...just not working on bikes. The bandits have an EPIC 4th of July celebration every year with home made fireworks (bombs), etc. this year however, Kentucky law changed and we had access to all the fun things that we used to have to drive to Indiana to get. Here's a great idea for using full face helmets for something other than they were designed for:



Notice that Sean thought he'd cheat by using 2 roman candles...but he got what was coming to him. karma ladies and gents...karma...

life through the lens...

Experiments in analog photography thanks to the Diana Mini...

Holy Hole...and Peter's Piper...

The other day I was helping my friend Michael do some case matching for his Grande and dremeling we discovered a cavern in the his cases.

It's just some sort of casting flaw...I guess It'll be OK and we'll just have to smooth the transition into the case. Unfortunately he also blew through the wall of the cases and will have to add some aluminum and continue matching. Bonerjamz!

Also, a local moped dude named Damon bought a rare pipe from Italy.



I'd heard that the gianelli pipes were pretty sweet. So far the reports I get from him are that he really likes the pipe...although I haven't seen it yet myself. He's trying to keep his ciao stock and I'd like to think that this pipe is meant for something so much more...

Vespino the international moped of mystery...

Sometimes when you get frustrated with mopeds you just have to put them in "time out" for a little while..I'm just starting to get back into tearing into the vespino. After losing compression while going over the bridge, i was hoping that i just blew a gasket. After checking the head and cylinder however, the gaskets are still complete and brand new. my next thought was that maybe i blew a seal...but when inspecting the seal on the stator side it too looked to be in good shape. hmmmm. right now...
Marshal suggested that maybe I have a decomp issue. My decomp is not hooked up, but i guess it could have worn out (so was an issue he had with a moby head)... While I'm not convinced this is the case...I'm really taking any and all suggestions. The plan right now is to get it all put back together and run a compression tester (which is honestly what i should have done before tearing it all apart again)...Then proceed from there. Any thoughts out there?

More posts unrelated to mopeds: The Volvo Army

So I decided to put some regular maintenance into my Volvo so that I can hopefully have it for another couple years. I wasn't raised to work on cars and that's sort of why I got into mopeds. Mopeds just seemed like an easy way to get my hands dirty and pick up a little bit of mechanical knowledge. Now I can translate what I know about mopeds into figuring out issues with my car. First, I changed the spark plugs, distributor cap and wires. I also changed the oil and filter (ashamedly the first time I'd done that at home instead of just taking it to a garage). But the big fix involved my rear brakes. Nate Bandit noticed that there was a lot of rust on my aluminum rims...which didn't really make sense. With a closer inspection we found a huge problem...This is was your rear rotors are supposed to look like:

And this is what mine looked like...

COMPLETELY SEPARATED!!! The inner part of the "ring" was sharp enough to cut your finger. We found this out after we tried throwing them around the yard like Xena Warrior Princess. Needless to say I replaced both the rear rotors and brake pads as well. It's amazing how different it feels to brake with four brakes instead of just the front two.

Rain, Rain, Go Away...what to work on when you can't work on a moped...

So with all this rain we've been having I've been unable or unwilling to work on mopeds...why work on a moped you can't subsequently take out for a test ride? I went to to the garage to hang out anyway to find the lawn had turned into a swamp.

Thankfully I was able to back in and still work on my garden. Since I'm at an apartment in Old Louisville now, I don't have a whole lot of yard space. I opted for doing everything in pots. The lady at Lowe's suggested I use paint buckets for my tomatoes and I'm so glad I did. I drilled about 5 holes in the bottom for drainage and planted away. I'm growing two different varieties of tomatoes, green peppers, spinach, basil, and a few varieties of lettuce. I also started jalepenos, cilantro, and more basil.

Mullberry...Bandits...I love you...

Thanks Gabe for putting this video together from the most recent Mullberry hangout. More footage of the vespino (when it was running)...

What a great time.

The Vespino Aquatic...

I finally got my decals for the Vespino and I have to say that they really set the bike off...


Here's a shout out!

I'm off for spring break this week (first time in 6 years) and have been enjoying my time over at the garage. Jshay and Sean came over for some afternoon grillin. We made some nice eats.

Here's the boys comparing...meat swords...

Here's Sean working on his batavus...why anyone would want a batavus is beyond me...

In other vespino news...I have been unable to get the bike to run consistently. I don't know what the problem is. It will start easily and rip up and down the street...then the next time I go to start it, it takes FOREVER! I don't get it. I finally had it running to where I was happy enough to try and ride it to moped Wednesday. Unfortunately, I never made it all the way across the 2nd street bridge.

My bike just cut out and whirred to a stop about half way across...When I tried starting it again, It was obvious that I lost some form of compression...Soft seize? Blow a seal? Gasket? Who knows. My theory is that the problem involves the cool air coming off the river and all the wind blowing into my forward facing carb...Back to the fucking drawing board. Woof!

Crazy Vespino Videos

Well it didn't take long before I found these gems...
Wheelie

MORE WHEELIE!

Two engines

THREE ENGINES!

Dia de Los Vespino pt. 2

Here's the video that gabe put together from Saturday. Bear with the long drill start intro...

Here's some more photos from the day that I stole from Gabe's blog

Gettin' my hair did..THANKS MAGS!.

In bummer news, while cleaning out the rear wheel hub to hopefully improve my rear brakes, I noticed this...

A cracked mag! It's cracked almost halfway through. Here's a close up...

What a freaking bummer. Now I'm trying to source a new wheel. I know that I can get one from Spain, but I have a small lead on one in the US (strangely enough). Fingers crossed...The other option however is to try and weld this one back together. I'm told by Francesc from vespino.es that I can "solder weld aluminum" or so that's what google translate tells me he says. I'll have to look into that option as well.