Bing carb rebuild

When I stored my free spirit for the winter, it was leaking gas out of the carb pretty bad when the petcock would be left on.  No big deal, turn it off, but when you forget, all of a sudden your garage smells like gas.  I had a guy contact me wanting to buy a bike, so I sold him this one, only to remember that it was a dribbler, so I told him to come back in two days and it would be ready for him.  I have to hit the tank with acid too, because I stored it dry and it got all flash rusty.  Here are some blurry fish-eye shots of the carb, I love new gaskets, floats and needles with a tip of viton.

Motron gets his bars chopped

 I decided the tall bars on the Motron are just too wide, so I pulled out the pipe cutter, and removed 1 3/4 inches out of the middle. I tig welded them back together, and the took a half inch of the ends of each bar, bringing everything nice, tall and narrow.  Looks good, feels good, glad I finally did it.

Tire changing stand

When I bought out Everett's old moped shop, along with the parts came a large variety of factory and home made tools.  Some are easy to identify, some take a bit to figure out what they are for, and some I have no idea.  This one was pretty easy.  It is a Maxi swingarm welded to a motorcycle sprocket, with some notches ground into the tensioner part of the swingarm, so an axle can rest in it easily.  It has a mobile arm attached to it with a little threaded foot to accept a dial indicator so you can true wheels.  Pretty slick.  I'm using it as a tire changing stand.  Hang your new tube in the swing arm, set your wheel in place and tighten the axle down so it can't escape.  With the sprocket clamped to the work bench, your tire stays in place wonderfully as you pry with the tire irons to remove the bead and withdraw the tube.  Then you simply bring the new tube up, tuck it in, and use your hands to finish the job.  If you were replacing the tire as well, you would have to remove the wheel to get the old tire out completely and insert the new one, so a bit more work, but it is nice to not be wrestling around the garage with a wheel in my hands pinned to the floor under my knees. 

Mopeds before the internet

I love to think about what it would have been like to be of moped age in 1977, wishing to have one and going to your local library to check out any books they had on mopeds so you could read all about them, and then buying a book on mopeds just so you could convince your mom she should totally buy you a moped.  You pick out the one you want (Puch Maxi Sport, $525) and she finally buys it for you.  You get to enjoy it for about a week because you mixed your oil at 128:1.  Where ever this book came from, there is a seized Maxi Sport in the garage. 

Out and About

Just waiting for winter to finish, Brian and I caught a nice day to take our Minarelli V1 bikes out for a spin.  I love my 58cc DR kit, runs very smooth with a 14:12 and goes about 40mph.  Perfecto.

Polish Aluminum

I've got this Motron I've been dreaming about, and I pulled an aluminum V1 cover out of my giant stock of awesome parts.

  It looked good, but it wasn't shiny enough.  I took about an hour today and went after it with 200, 400, 800, 1000, 00 steel wool, aluminum polish then 0000 steel wool.
It isn't that hard to do a mediocre job polishing stuff, but boy to you get a sweat going.  There was some pitting that I didn't get out, I should have started at 100 grit perhaps, but it's shiny enough for me.

I fried some stuff

Some of the Yetis came over the other day and we had a fry party where we celebrate all things delicious and cooked in oil.  We fried up some sausage links and patties, dipped them in pancake batter, then deep fried them for delicious breakfast treats.  Then we made donuts and funnel cakes.  This has nothing to do with mopeds other than this is some seriously good breakfast, which is probably one of my favorite parts of moped rallies, eating breakfast Sunday morning.