Kalamazoo & QK

I went up to Kalamazoo today and stopped in to visit Chad Burke of Mopeds @ Quarter Kick. Chad kept drooling on the BRAT and tried to pay me big money to put a giant sized QK decal on the hood, but I declined, even though I admit it would look pretty good. In the BRAT you can see my Puch Maxi and a TX50 Tomos AKA lil' tom. Trading $40 and a stereo amplifier for the two I feel like I got a pretty good deal on my way up to Kzoo. I had lunch with Dan Kastner and talked about moped shops. Hanging out at QK, I got to look at pretty much every rare moped in America. Including my new favorite, this 3 speed wonder-mobile. Best feature? It has a cable operated ringing bell, the trigger is right under the throttle. It's awesome.

Chad also showed me something he was working on, it's a little flange he had made up that welds into any Vespa pipe, and then miraculously, it is exactly a Hobbit pipe, even bolting up to the hole in the subframe for rear support. Then he talked about how Hobbit was a clone of Vespa with a better engine. The frames, the way the tanks mount, gas filler necks on the tank, identical. Vespa went square, Honda went round. Fun little tidbit. The moped shed is getting quite full now. Time for some warm weather to unleash some of these beauties.