Express yourself

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.

Variate O Might hobbit

Perhaps one of the least well documented and easiest mods to do for your hobbit is to create what I like to call "The overdrive". Pull off the variator, and notch the outer cheek. The only special tools you need are a large crescent wrench or perhaps a pipe wrench and either a big bench vice or a thin set of channel locks to grip the shaft so you can loosen the outer cheek variator nut. 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!

Magnum X3

I got my fairing painted up, as you could tell by the lats post and mounted it. I trimmed the wind screen with a bit of gold which helps it blend with the bike a little better. I don't think you can get a perfect match for the brown gloss metal flake of Puch, but it's pretty close and I think it looks quite rad. It really looks good with a Monza dash, and I love having two needles to watch move around, even though they are both quite pointless. Shay - I guess you can be the judge if it's worth it or not for a fairing, it's all asthetics and it fits well with the look I'm going for, but they do break quite easily, the first time you lay it down it will bust, so caution there.

Apartment Living

So I don't have a garage anymore that I can set up a paint booth in, and it's too cold to paint outside (for the paints sake, not for mine!) so where does an apartment dweller paint? The perfect solution! Bathrooms make good paint booths for these reasons

• Well ventilated, exhaust fan blows the smell out
• Enclosed area keeps the fumes from spreading around the whole house
• Well lit - Most modern bathrooms have nice heat lamps making it easy to see and help the paint cure
• The bathtub is an easy place to mask off and any over spray dust will wash away
• The shower curtain rod makes a great and easy place to hang parts between coats

So I'm shooting my magnum fairing at the moment, and it's turning out quite well. It's as close to stock brown as I can easily get and I'm going to trim it out with a matching gold paint. We will see how it looks, pictures soon.

Pipe-tastic!

So this guy got me a hook up on some of those fancy "new" "Leovinci" pipes that came in a Technigas bag. They apparently came from the same European source that Treats got them from, mintues before Benji called and ordered the rest of them. So I've got it installed on my Hobbit. It used to go 27mph, now it spins out to about 35 and accelerates like crazy. Unbeliveable that a pipe makes such a difference on a bike, such a popular bike at that, and manufactureres just wouldn't make them anymore. It mounts up very nicely, the welds look solid. I also went ahead and put in some Boysen reeds for stock cylinders and went on a belt finding mission tonight, I came very close to finding one exactly the same size, but ended up with one 1mm smaller. It seems to work fine so far, it fits and the bike starts much better than with my old stretched out belt. It is a Goodyear 17425 also called 13AV1080. I'm curious how long it will last. What are other hobbit owners using? The next mod to this bike will be opening up the variator just a tick, notching it for a little extra speed and perhaps jumping down a few g's on the weights. My reservation is to keep the bike at +80mpg, so I think I'll start keeping track for the next week or so and find out what I'm getting.

Donk!

The maxi-taxi had a short stop the other day and played tag with another moped and went for a slide. Luckily the riders involved were okay, and the bikes came out relatively fine. The maxi, since it decided to do the snowplowing got it's front forks bent in, but after we removed the front fender for spark plug boot clearance, we were rolling again. I attempted to straiten the forks out today, and ended up making it worse (which is usually the case). I tried using ratchet straps to gently pull them into place, but that was no good. I strapped the bike down and then used a puch baffle for a cheater and bent the outer fork, which worked well, but the inner forks are still totally kinked. So I tried to get the forks all the way straight and ended up really tweaking the center plate of the triple tree, so I just decided I would go for a new set of forks. Luckily, Brad was nice enough to hook me up with a stock set of maxi forks on the cheap. So I need to pull them apart and mail them off to powdercoat by my favorite moped shop in the whole world, Motion Left Mopeds. I'm kind of tired of the Maxi-Taxi, and I'm curious if I should maybe just part it out, I think she's worth as much dead as alive. I could get a few hundred for the motor and some change for the wheels and frame, so who knows. I'm getting a Circuit pipe for my Hobbit, it should arrive any day. I want to go 80 on my Magnum, but I'm a little on the broke side right now, so that needs to wait until I sell my Vespa. All in all, it's kind of nice to have moped work to do again, as long as I have a running bike to ride in the meantime.

Hobbit !

So this is my first time cleaning a hobbit carb, and i found it to be not too difficult. I chose the method of removing the engine mount bolt and then raising the front wheel. This worked quite well and was very stable since the kickstand was still solidly planted. It isn't too bad at all. The carb was a little dirty, but also full of all kinds of tiny holes that are begging to be clogged and were.
A little bit of carb cleaner and some tiny wire later, it was all clean. Even with the broken throttle kill switch, I had nice blue spark, so I pedaled over to the gas station and dropped in nearly a gallon of gas in the tank. The tank doesn't hold a gallon, as you hobbit owners may know and I made a nice mess at the gas station. It fired right up and after adjusting the cable on the carb to idle correctly, it behaved quite nicely. The bike has crazy torque for a stock bike and winds out to about 28mph, which I assume is about right. I didn't notice if it had points or CDI, but there is a small CDI looking box so I'm curious. Maybe I'll pull the flywheel cover, or maybe someone more knowledgeable can tell me. I've also been fortunate enough to get one of those out-of-production Proma Circuit pipes in the mail on its way to the USA. I'm thinking pipe, upgraded reeds, and notch and lighten the variator and call it good for now. I'm going for 38mph with good acceleration and 80 mpg. I love this Hobbit, it reminds me a lot of my first 50cc, a yellow Honda Express.