It's cold as balls and time for new a winter project...

Christmas came early as at my door two large bike boxes arrived. Brad investigates...


I got the bike sent from the land of the cuperteens and in hopes that this rare bike wasn't in as rough shape as I feared...

I soon came to realize two things:
1. This is a really bizarre moped
2. It needs A LOT of work!

History Lesson: Vespa opened a factory in Spain that birthed the Vespino. It was widely popular throughout Spain but few were exported outside the country. This one came to California in a shipping container.





The case...huge transfers, case inducted that comes up from the bottom of the engine. I'll take better photos of of this engine mounts soon you can get a better idea.





Reed Cage...Rusty old, two petal...honestly it seems like a lot of material that restricts what could be a HUGE intake.









Frame: Sort of ugly, hollow tube frame that hides cables and wires, forks use sealed bearings and have a weird scooter type fairing (which is being ditched)








Wheels...Awesome! Sealed bearing 5 stars.











Rear Clutch...Big and thin. Here it is compared to the stock vespa size. Looking forward to what sort of power I can get out of that.


Other things...The bike came with performance variator and metrakit. More on those later. I was looking for a winter project and I got it.

Raiders of the lost Ark...Handy Bikes

There's a lot of updates coming shortly, but for now I'd like to tell you a story about the giant ass moped warehouse that everyone knows about but doesn't REALLY know about because if they did, they'd crap themselves. That's right, I'm talking about Handy Bikes. It looks like this:


Look familiar? That's because it's the warehouse from Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark. Seriously! I swear it looks JUST LIKE it...Except instead of state secrets and ancient religious artifacts, it's full of new old stock moped parts. Every nut, bolt, and rare part you've ever lost while working on your moped at night or in a low lit area can be re-discovered in this warehouse of mystery and intrigue. Shelves and shelves of forks, fairings, fenders, clutch parts, CEV electrical components, throttle assemblies, tanks, carburetors, engines, decals, pedals, and other parts, parts, parts!

While the the ark of the covenant could not be found here, the wheel room that's bigger than my apartment blew my face off.

Adventures in air leaks: Exploring 100cc's

A little while back my bike began running like total garbage. MAJOR air leaks. Since it has been steadily getting colder and colder, I sort of put the problem on the shelf. I wanted to open up the engine this winter anyway to see what sorts of improvements can be made. INSERT: lighting coil here.

Tonight I scratched the surface of a magical land. I thought I'd share my discoveries here.


Our journey begins with the Port of Simonini. This holy land is treacherous and is fill with many ports spanning the cylinder.


BEHOLD! The spectacle of ports!









Peer further into the inner cylinder with this port map as your guide






Next we cross the expanse separated from the Port of Simonini and head to Transfer Town. Scientists have many theories as to why the transfers of Transfer Town and the Ports of it's neighbor line up so perfectly. They explain this phenomenon as case matching pangea.




BEHOLD! The awe that is Transfer Town!


Next we head to Coil and Case Caverns! COMING SOON!

Simo dirt bike

1977 mopeds went to a huge conference in Europe and came back with some awesome photos. These in particular caught my eye...


In case you didn't notice, it's got the same simo engine that I have on it.

I know that these are already posted on their blog, but its just too cool not to post up here as well. I don't think I'd ever really go for the dirtbike style but I still think its pretty awesome.

Even More Simonini Ridiculousness

So somehow I now own not one simonini side intake...But two.


The kicker is that I have no project that involves this intake anywhere in sight...it gets added to the project pile with the 90cc simo and matching calibratta pipe...

Someday...

WTF points replacement

So I stumbled on this at the vespa-ciao.nl site. They were selling this strange points replacement unit.

Seems super elementary.











Just mounts where the points were.


In this video you can see the box through the window in the flywheel. Seems to be running nicely. Super interested in figure out A)what this is exactly and B)getting one.

The end of an era...

I sold my sparkly red maxi this weekend. I'm "puch-less" and fully committed to vespa. I really hadn't ridden my maxi in some time, but still had it around as a back up. After I sold it I got sort of sentimental and looked up old photos. Here's after bringing home my first moped.

This was the day after picking up my bike. My car had died for the final time and I decided to do something different; something that I had to fix because I couldn't get it repaired anywhere else; something I could get my hands dirty with.

I'm soooo dorky in this photo and have come a long way in regards to moped mechanic knowledge and intuition.







After I got hit by a car, the bandits rescued me. We picked up my mangled bike, salvaged and scavenged parts to make a red maxi.





Now it's "Italy or Die!"
With my Italian brand of choice being the Vespa.
More to come on that soon...