leftovermopeds.com

I’m really looking forward to getting out there and riding mopeds all weekend. It’ll be great to see everyone and hang out. I’ll be riding my Newport, so if you see it, stop by to say hello.

I’m thinking yes.

I posted this on the forum, but forgot to throw it up on my blog.

A friend of mine from Ohio came out for a visit. He wanted to spend some time riding, so I gathered up a few extras and we hit the road.

Here’s his Newport:

He did a great job with some of his subtle cosmetic upgrades. The bike is really clean:

I found a stock Hercules for this girl recently, but she procrastinated for several months and didn’t get it registered yet. She ended riding my loaner Newport for the day and had a fantastic time.

Moped flower for locking purposes. It worked out well.

There was so much water there this time. There was just no way to stay dry.

Lunch in town…great way to end our day.

At some point over the last year my Newport developed an annoying squeak in the front end. I think it was related to the brakes, because I could partially pull the brake lever and it would go away. I’m not sure why I was so lazy about working on it, but I was. Someone made a comment to me about it the other day and that was enough motivation for me to get it fixed.

When I thought about tearing it apart, I realized I didn’t want to deal with the grease and loose ball bearings anymore. I don’t have much of a complaint about how they work when they are dialed in, but they are messy and can take some fine tuning to get them adjusted properly.

I read through this wiki on Moped Army before I got started:
Puch Sealed Bearing Conversion Wiki

I ordered my 6001zz bearings through Amazon. I ordered a new 12mm axle through Treats, which came with a bunch of spacers on it. And I ordered my .5mm shim stock from Honest. It’s unfortunate how much this conversion costs. It’s about $40 per wheel when you add up all of those parts.

Here is how the shim stock showed up.

Here is what my bearings looked like when I took the wheel apart. You can see the sponge from the speedometer housing in there. I wasn’t using it anyway, so I eliminated it.

I used my angle grinder with a cutoff wheel to cut the shim stock. That was pretty easy to do.

I think the most difficult part of this was forming the shim stock into enough of a circle to fit it inside the wheel. I initially tried to form it around the bearing itself, but the steel was so springy that it wouldn’t hold the shapre. From there I decided to use some needle nose pliers and slowly form the part by hand. That worked out pretty well, but I had to spend a lot of time on it.

Here you can see the bearing and the shim stock in place. You can also see the spacer that is in between the two bearings.

I ended up having to stack a few of the spacers on one side to get the wheel centered. Since I am running Gazelles and a front fender, the centering is very critical.

On the other side I used a spacer under the brake plate and had to use washers on the outside. I plan to make one spacer to take place of those washers and another single spacer to take place of the three I used on the other side.

I haven’t had a chance to ride the bike yet, but spinning the wheel on the stand felt nice and solid.

Maybe new forks and a disc brake conversion will be next?

I started off with one of those Tun LED tail lights, but even with my 12V lighting coil it wouldn’t work. I could hook it up to a 12V battery and it would work fine, but I got nothing out of it on the bike. After taking the bike to MLM for some tuning, I realized the light didn’t even work when hooked up to a battery. I’m thinking it quickly blew up, even though I never saw it work to begin with. I liked the light, but I don’t like that you can’t replace the bulb for it. I’d end up spending $18 shipped for each new light while I worked out my electrical issues. That’s not cool.

So, I switched over to another light that Treats has. It’s fairly low profile and has replaceable bulbs. It even has a clear section on the bottom for your license plate, which I would thought would work out well during my initial license plate mounting plan. Oh well.

Last weekend I cut the light mounting plate out of 1/8″ steel. I then welded it to the bottom of my seat pan.

Here it is with the seat cover back on and the tail light mounted.

And here it is on the bike.

I like the way it looks overall. I was thinking that I could probably bend the bracket a little bit, so the light is closer to the seat. However, I want it to remain visible and I kind of like that I can still fit my hand in there, which makes moving the bike around much easier. I think I’ll leave it for now.

Before I register this bike, I want to get the license plate mount and the tail light figured out. The last couple of nights I worked on the license plate mount.

My goal was to mount both the plate and the light under my seat. However, the seat is super low and it doesn’t leave me a lot of room. I knew the plate mount would have to be shallow, but I figured it would still be somewhat visible.

I started by making a nice cardboard cutout using an Eggo waffle box.

I then transfered that over to a piece of 1/8″ aluminum and added the brake with my vice and some clamps.

I was super happy with how it turned out. However, as I suspected, I couldn’t put much of a brake in the part. It was getting too close to the tire. I thought I could get away with it as you see it in the pictures, but when I put the seat back on and sat on the bike, I could tell it was going to be too close no matter what I did. Damn. I really wanted to mount the license plate here. It would have been clean, sleak, and out of the way.

From there I moved on to plan B. I modified the piece of aluminum to make it fit the lower shock bolt. I really didn’t want to go with a vertical plate, but I didn’t see another way around it. Oh well…I don’t think it looks too bad for a compromise. I checked the fit after I finished it up and with my feet on the pedals everything clears just fine.

A few of the local crew came over yesterday to work on some projects.

Josh was re-sealing his E50 case with Yamabond. He was paranoid about the RTV failing and didn’t want to risk having any issues. He also drilled out his clutch posts for a MLM clutch brace.

Kyle put a new condenser on his Hobbit. I guess it died on a recent long ride and he suspected that was the issue.

I worked on getting this Newport started. This ZA50 is giving me trouble.

We recently found out about a local guy that had built up his Newport a few years ago, but has since neglected it (life, family, etc). I invited him to stop by so we could see what it would take to get it fired back up again. It mainly just needs some little things, but the main issues was the starting clutch cable. I found a random cable I had sitting around and modified it enough to work. It really won’t take much to get this thing going again.

He did a good job of building it with a Metrakit 65, 15mm Bing, and Tecno Estoril. It should be a good runner very, very soon.

While I was out at MLM a couple of weeks ago, I decided to pick up a clutch brace for the Gila’d E50 on the Pinto. I haven’t really had issues with bent clutch posts, but the engine hasn’t really ran correctly until now either.

I initially made an attempt to drill and tap the posts myself, but I ended up breaking both a drill bit AND a tap in one of the holes. I tried to salvage it, but decided to scrap it when I found out a new one was ~$12 shipped from Treats.

The 2nd time around I decided not to mess with it. I brought it to a machinist friend at work and let him finish it properly. He shaved down the posts to a minimal clearance over the top of the clutch arm. And he drilled/tapped the holes at the same time. It turned out great.

Before I reinstalled the arms, I checked the weights. They are all right around 73 grams. I know some of the stock arms can be close to 100 grams, which is too heavy. And I know some guys will cut theirs down to 55-60 grams, but I’m concerned that may be too light. So, I decided to leave them alone for now and just work with the oil and spring settings.

When I picked up the clutch brace, I forgot to get the fasteners with it. I went to two local hardware stores and this was the best fastener I could find. It’s close to flush, but it isn’t perfect. However, I think with how far my posts have been shaved down, the minimal amount the fastener is sticking up won’t be an issue.

I’ve got the Paz orange springs in this clutch. I ran the set screws down 2.5 turns from the top. I’m not sure if that will be enough or if I’ll have go more. We’ll see.

I used Mobil 1 Synthetic ATF this time. I know there has been discussion about all kinds of different oils, but I’m going to start here and see how it does. Up until now I’ve only used whatever ATF I had sitting around. This has to be better.

I found a Puch Newport on craigslist in a town that is about an hour or so from me. I emailed the guy back and forth a few times and we agreed on a price. While I was making arrangements to drive down there to get it, I googled his email address to make sure I wasn’t meeting up with some crazy person. Well, it turned out that I was meeting up with some crazy person…and he just happened to be a member of The Guns.

Matt was great. We had fun reviewing some of his projects…cars, motorcycles, and mopeds…and going through his vast collection of random parts. By the time I left there, the Newport was almost complete.

Here are a couple of pictures of it. It was/is pretty ratty. I went through it over the weekend. I fixed the cables, chains, pedal clearance, and engine mounting bolts. I cleaned the carb, the wheels, the petcock, and the frame. It needed a lot of work. It currently isn’t running, but it does have spark. I’m not sure what is going on with it yet, but I’ll figure it out soon.

Since Matt isn’t too far away, I’m hoping we can get together for a couple of rides over the summer. I think he needs to finish up one of his bikes first though.

The rear sprocket on this bike was super beat down. The previous owner of the rear 8 spoke had a really janky bike, so who knows what happened to it. Earlier this week I ordered new front/rear sprockets and new gold chain. I went with 18 x 45 for this bike. I’m looking forward to trying it out once I get the clutch finished.