finally got the ball rollin on frame hacking and welding so i can actually put the simo engine on a bike again. jordan and ben showed me their new warehouse shop (the old ghost rider’s shop) and we got down to business.
i’m using an old general 5 star frame (motor mounts were busted) and a bravo subframe for this bike. i had cut the bravo subframe mount off my old bike before i moved back from pittsburgh. we cut it and shaped it and probably could have used a level when positioning it on the frame…
3 sets of eyes later and it was in the vise to be welded. “yeah, that looks pretty straight!”
it’s just tack welded for now, and now that i’ve had some time to look at it I think i’m going to move the subframe forward more.
i put it so far back because on my magnum/bravo build i was using the original bravo wheel base and all the weight was over the back tire making it kinda squirrelly (especially with two people). so i think i’m gonna move it forward two to three inches and make some new suspension mounts on the general frame as neither the original ones or the rigged up ones in this photo are gonna work.
definitely the best rebuild job i’ve ever done. i didn’t have to trim any of the gasket once the case was together. crank movement is really smooth and the engine just popped together really easily.
i’ve been making a lot of progress on my mopeds now that i’m inbetween jobs (a whole month till I start on the farm).
i couldn’t get all the red spray paint off the case, but i’m ok with that. i would have had to get some really intense paint stripper or have it bead blasted.
another thing i’m really excited about with this rebuild is my reed upgrade. I did a lot of poking around online to see if the vforce reed block was worth the money and got mixed reviews. I’ve ridden plenty of hobbits with dual stage boyesen reeds before and I read this review that someone posted on treats and selected the pro series.
other things in the works:
finishing my HPI mounting plate
adapting a kinetic plastic fan or possibly an echo leaf blower fan if it doesn’t work out
and on my ciao i’ve got to clean up a transmission and replace the brake pad, mount the wheels and reattach the cables and touch up the electrical. then it’s off to goshen to get a people’s pipe! (thanks devin!)
this…
plus this…
plus this…
a [long awaited] treats order
it’s simple mathematics, check it out, i revolve around science…what are we talking about here?
got this sprocatti stator plate that bolts to a CDI case to allow you to mount and adjust the timing of a points setup. with a little grinding it should accept HPI…
I’m also replacing my crank as my simo crank’s weights were starting to come loose. i looked into a crankshaft rebuilding service but it just didn’t see very cost effective compared to just buying this new one.
in about 3 weeks i’m moving back to west michigan and am really gonna hit the general 5 star vespa build hard
I popped open the single speed gearbox that came with these mags to give it a good cleaning and once over and ran into something really strange. It’s a variated gear box with a (longer than usual) single speed shaft and that has angled teeth to interact with the variated gears. The shaft on the right is from a standard single speed transmission with the one big gear in the middle. I’m really puzzled.
I counted the teeth on the gears and they all matched with the olympia stock gear set count
Basically you’re stuck with a torquey set of internal gears that you can make taller by putting on a smaller drive pulley. Strange.
Since i’ve been obsessed with Generals for a little while now and I’m currently workin on a general/vespa build, I thought it wouldn’t really be a problem to post this build up. it’s still italian after all.
so nice, i think he later raised the headlight a little an did some other minor changes. you can check out ->more detail here<-
last little tidbit. the dude is from holland, michigan. small world!
