Broken SHA15.15 Clone UPDATE

So ebay seller sherryberg188 who sold me the dellorto clone (as well as many other clone carbs) agreed to send me a new carb after sending photos of the crack (see my last post) so I'll be writing about that carb once it arrives. So keep that in mind, good seller but carbs may (likely) be poor material or thinner casting so careful with them.

SHA 15.15 Clone turns into Trac maintenance.

Mounted this carb this morning and without any sort of force the mounting flange broke when I tighened the pinch bolt. Bummer. So far I do not recomend this carburetor unless I receive a replacement that doesn't break immediately. The brand of it is ARBEO BILBAO-ESPANA just in case anyone else finds these for sale. Installing this on my Trac led me to find my throttle slide spring was broken in my SHA 14.12 and my choke lever was falling apart. Also, my intake shim broke in the process. Damn. Made a makeshift shim out of hard electrical I bought from harbor freight until replacements show up from treatland. Once I dug into that I realized my throttle cable has been screwed up and sticky for way too long, so I made a new cable and knarp and routed it properly finally. Once I realized that wasn't exactly the worst things ever (although I hated every second of it) I decided to figure out why the brakes worked terribly. Figured why not since I commute every day on it and occasionally find need to stop and or slow down. One of my cable had frayed and wore out so i dug out one of spares meant for the 1985 Trac build. Re-reouted all the brake cables properly as well. Once I got done with all that crap, I dug into my hobbit and saw that the cylinder stud holes in the case were way stripped, and somewhat helicoiled. I thought that sucked so I cleaned up what was there, drilled what needed to be drilled and installed new thread coils. Bingo! Dino DNA, it worked. After a full day of feeling like none of my bikes ran better or went any faster and tired of the bullshit, I rode the mobylette around to blow off some steam. I installed a variator on it but didn't change the rear sprocket so it's a little slow off the line and doesn't really pull hills as well as a stock 50v. Fuck it for today, I froze my ass off and all I got done was boring. Maybe tomorrow I'll make all of my bikes run and do 100mph. Or 100mpg. I get those 2 mixed up.

SHA 15.15 Clone

Got home from a X-mas trip and found my SHA 15.15 Clone from ebay in the mailbox. Not as cheesy looking as I expected, and hopefully will take regular jets without too much fussing or modification. It's a cable choke, pretty sweet. I'm going to audition it on my Trac, Garelli with NOI, and on my Mobylette which I just (mostly) converted to 50v specs from a non variated model. More on that bike tomorrow and more on what I find out about this carb later.

1978 Puch Kromag PT1

Goofed around with the kromag this morning and got it to start. Had to adjust the clutch cable, clean the carb, and clean the petcock. The petcock was jammed up with gummy mud like stuff, the carb had lots of melted brown silicone in the float bowl and the fuel line was a little short so it was bunched up a bit. Bike seems to fire intermittently, so I'll be going over the points and condenser soon. Also doesn't want to run with out a rag stuffed into the intake so it may need more cleaning or different jetting.

The carb had a lot of this gasketey stuff melted in the bowl and all over the original dried out gasket.

Over the next few days I'll examine more of the bike like the ports and exhaust and see how it's looking inside.

Gotsa Hobbit and Kromag

Just got home from buying a pair of bikes today and I'm pretty excited to start digging into them and get them going. 
First one I got is a Puch Kromag rigid, pretty decent condition.

 The second one is a Honda hobbit. Seat's tore up, but otherwise it's not bad and came with all of it's plastics except the horn cover. Been pretty excited about finding a hobbit after riding my dad's, seems like a good platform to go fast and pull hills with the variator.

 I'll probably start on the Puch first, so I'll be writing about that soon.

1977 Batavus? Hardly even knew us! PT.2

Spent a little more time on the Batavus yesterday working on the tank paint and removing frame fairings. The plastic pieces under the seat were tricky as all the bolts going through it and screws in the top were super rusty, and the black paint seems to have hardened the plastic so it wouldn't flex much.

Found some gnarly cracks in the rear part of the frame that someone poorly welded and then broke again. Probably from the one adjustable shock they were trying to use (which is torqued to it's highest tension position).

Most of the black paint stripped off.

I used a wire brush tool on the hand drill to remove the really stubborn paint, neck step will be polishing out all the marks from the brush tool and fine sanding for painting.

Plastics removed

Really wasn't hoping to see this

This whole back section will likely be removed in favor of welding on a stronger piece of material.

This frame will either get a some custom fabrication considering the damage, or is a more likely candidate for just being a parts bike. Options will be mulled over.

1977 Batavus? Damn near killed us!

This is the Batavus. I'm gointg to call it a Starflite until someone corrects me. I got this on craigslist and drove 2 hours to get it because I was itching for a project. I'm debating the payoff vs work involved for this one. It's obviously been sitting outside for a long time, and has been painted with a stout, but deteriorating black paint over the original yellow which isn't in great shape either. Chrome is amazingly good considering many aspects and it's mostly complete except the seat, side panels, controls, and maybe some other hard to find miscellaneous crap.
Got it home and this morning I started investigating what I'm going to be in for.

Here's the photo sent to me before my drive. Sure, I'll drive 2 hours to buy that! Notice the mono shock setup.

For some reason the wheels aren't rusty. Holland must know something about chrome.

Ack! This black paint sucks. Texas weather and shitty repaints lead to this. Going to take a lot of paint stripper.

I'd better remember where these crappy wires go.

The guy I bought this from said he unseized it. Hard to tell in this photo but the cylinder looks really good inside. Not expected at all.

Hmm, maybe someone was trying to pry the cylinder off and busted these fins. I'll bet this won't ruin christmas when all is said and done. Look at all the other fins that are still there.

Ah ha! Hammer, flathead screwdriver, and this guy got it un-seized! I will want to clean the slots in the bell and maybe see how bad the discs are after having some nubs busted off.  Where does the clutch cable anchor at?

Another non rusty wheel. Tires hold air too. I'm guessing these old broads are ready for the retirement home / dumpster.

Piston skirt is busted. I'm really tempted to clean it and see this piston has any life left, as it's been lightened for speed now (mini skirt?) and hopefully won't affect the porting. Or not.

Gunky. I think water got in there. Moves but definitely need to disassemble the case halves.

Gross! Should clean up okay though. No cylinder or base gaskets were present.

Another shitty photo of the not so shitty cylinder wall.

Stock paint is pretty tough, paint stripper softened it, but didn't kill it.

Rust on this side, guess I'm going to strip it down completely and repaint.

Petcock unthreaded fine, but the mud in the tank had the filter stuck in there. Here's what that looks like. Surprisingly this tank doesn't leak (yet).

Looks pretty rough, I'll dig around and see if the piston is similar to anything else I have. 

This bike will get more posting when I start removing more bolts. I don't know if there's any good way to restore this and have it be "worth it", so I'll be thinking of parting out the good stuff and keeping odds and ends I might need for other stuff. Maybe this bike wants a Tomos A5 or a variated AV7?

I'm going to cover my moped projects past and present. First few projects I'll cover are my 1987 Trac liberty, 1985 Trac liberty, 1975 garelli eureka, 1976 mobylette 50, and a 1977 batavus of some kind.