It's been a while since I've posted, so let me bring you up to speed. After about 50 miles of notched variator, one of my already cracked plastic caps that sit on the variator weights cracked in half and flew out, causing the weight to wedge itself in the moving cheek so it was stuck in high gear. This happened while we were on a long ride, naturally, so I limped home, pushing the weight back down and resetting my variator manually at every stoplight. Thanks to Travis (who also is now featured on my links section) I got some new caps, and lubed them real good this time around, and the variator seems to operate much more smoothly.
I've also pending payment sold my Vespa Bravo, which should free up some funds for my Magnum and for a personal side project that has nothing to do with mopeds.
Here are some pictures of my old Anderson Indiana days, when my Honda Express was my best set of wheels (except for my awesome van, Goldzilla) and I used to love to take it grocery shopping. Here are some pictures of two different trips to the grocery store.
Once off, a hack saw quickly notches the aluminum, and then make a nice straight line with a dremel cut off tool, and then simply snap it off with a vice grips. Use a little bit or a hand file to clean up the edges, and reassemble after a good cleaning with brake cleaner. I would have taken the weight retainers out, but i stripped 3 of the 6 phillips screws. 
Why do the Japanese love phillips head screws? 50% failure when you use a crappy screw driver like me. After I got this thing back on, I thought perhaps I'd gone alittle too far and taken out too much material, but one trip down the road let me know I was okay. The weights pop out and the bike surges into overdrive with the belt as physically high as it can ride. Luckily, my rear spring is good enough to pull the weights back in after such a ginourmous variation. I love my Hobbit!
