i am about three weeks from moving to california, sacramento to be precise. as you can probably figure, i’ve been pretty busy trying to get things ready for the move and the reno rally, which is next weekend! woah.
i haven’t done much with ciao recently, i’ve ridden it around a bunch and it’s the fastest moped in seattle right now i’m pretty sure, but probably not for long. everyone’s always fighting the fight for more speed. once in sacramento i’ll be far from the fastest and it will drive me to chop it up some more! yeah!
i maaay bring it to the reno rally with me, even though i’ll be riding amsy around. if i do, i’ll pull it out for at least one of the rides, you know. just to rip around reno and have fun. you can’t ride doubles on a little ciao, though! and that’s what reno is about, riding doubles. and the gourmet hot dog store. and deep fried pickles. and hanging out drunk at the river. oh man reno!
i’m sorry i don’t have more for your enjoyment, but i have a feeling things are only going to get more nuts once i’m hanging around the motomatic guys all the time. you know how it is. unless you don’t, then you’ll see.
later taters!
so this weekend was a total bust. none of the other hry kids could go racing, and it left me with no ride. it was a little too last minute for me to cobble something together, so i decided to have a drunk weekend at the shop in seattle hating atwater. it was a shitty weekend.
on top of not getting to go, i some how misplaced/dropped in the street my wallet, containing $300 cash, my id and both my debit cards.
but hey! this isn’t a blog about my life, it’s a blog about ciaociao! so enough of that shit!
poor ciaociao did not see the race track this weekend like it really wanted to. i did, however, take it for a few rides!
now, i haven’t really ridden ciaociao in the street since la rally, just on the track, and i was riding around with slow bikes rather than race bikes, so it’s really hard for me to judge what kind of performance gains i might have obtained with my exhaust porting. i was really hoping to get a feel for that on the track. ah well!
however, now that racing is done until september, i think it is time for me to pull that cylinder back off and finish up my porting. larger transfers, two new transfers, and more work on the exhaust. plus i still need to mill the other 1mm off the top of the cylinder and build the 2mm spacer to lift the whole thing up. and i really want to work the head, the pinasco head seems kinda crappy for how rad that kit can be.
so yeah! hopefully after i do all of this the thing will still run and will be competitive next atwater!
in the meantime, my actual race bike build is now underway, but that has nothing to do with anything here, so i’ll not talk about it much. you can catch pictures of it every now and again on my mopedsmofun tumblr photo blog if you’re interested!
oh boy, back to the dremmel!
Filed under: general
well i got the exhaust port pretty much finished and milled 1mm off the top of the cylinder, there is much more to be done to this kit before i’m done hacking at it, but i am out of time. atwater #3 is this weekend!
expect some kind of write up on the weekend and some pictures, and some more details to what i’ve done to poor ciaociao once i get back.
well, firstly, the 2nd race went really well. i chopped two seconds off my lap time, and while i placed 6th in both races, i was faster and rode much better than the first race and i’m stoked on that!
if you want to read a better write up, check out the hry website. it’s still being worked on a lot, so it doesn’t really look all that great, but there’s rad photos and stuff over there.
on to ciaociao.
i decided to start playing with the porting in my pinasco. i haven’t really jumped into hacking at it just yet, but cuffs and i made a port map of it and did some measurements and i think i have a plan.
my map only shows one of the transfer ports because i’m going to focus on the exhaust port for now.
i’ve always known the exhaust port in this kit was pretty weak, so i’m going to be opening it up some and probably lifting the whole cylinder a bit and mill the difference off the top.
i’m still trying to work out what i’m going to do exactly, and the next race is coming up pretty quick so i gotta get on it. once the math is over and i start milling and hacking at it i’ll be sure to get a bunch of pictures for yous guys.
until then!
Filed under: general
in about four days, seven or eight of us are going to pile into something, along with a bunch of mopeds, and trek back down to atwater.
this will be a return trip for cuffs and myself, but for everyone else it will be their first time. i don’t think they understand the fun they have in store for themselves!
i have not done anything different to ciaociao since the last race, other than let a bunch of people draw more stuff on it. as i said before, i’m pretty happy with the performance for now.
my leathers showed up and i look like a fool in them, but i am super stoked to be a little better outfitted. i think next on my list will be some boots, or maybe proper gloves.. my high top leather vans and patched up bmx gloves will have to be good enough for now.
i plan to try and leave ciaociao alone until after the 3rd race. we have a two month break from racing between race #3 and race #4, during which time i plan to tweak some things on it.
anyway, that’s probably the last you’ll hear from me until after the next race. look for more rad track photos in little over a week!
well, i don’t think there is any way i could write up how awesome the first polini cup weekend was even half as well as fellow hry racing teammate columbus josh (aka cuffs) did in his blog, so i’m going to go ahead and send you guys there instead!
check out the rest of his blog while you’re at it, tons of rad info on all sorts of awesome two-strokey things!
team nerdspeed
he is also documenting our “plan b” build, a cobbled together vespa si racer! some of you may remember the si i picked up forever ago for the wheels and other random bits, well that bike is finally going to good use!
in the world of ciaociao, it looks like old boy is going to be my dedicated racer until i can get my actual race bike build off the ground. since pretty much all i think about these days is racing anyway, i think this is a good turn of events for ciaociao. it’ll get way more attention than it was before!
i’m pretty happy with the performance, but i’d like to do something about my pipe. it’s still all dented and banged up from when ciaociao v1 got ran over by that moving truck at the creature rally forever ago. dents are not an expansion chamber’s best friend, that’s for sure.
i have a few different ways i can go about this. option #1 is i could try to pull the dents out of the pipe i currently have and try to salvage it. option #2 is buying a new pipe all together, and option #3 is trying to replicate my pipe and build my own.
eventually i’d like to build my own pipes.. the more i read and learn about two stroke tuning, the less crazy building my own pipe seems to me. it’s really all just a matter of knowing what you want and doing the math.. and it helps to be good with a mig, hah.
seeing as the next race is two weeks away, i think i may bite the bullet and buy a new pipe. maybe someone will be into buying my old pipe from me at like half cost or something. it obviously still preforms really well, seeing as my ciao beat out most of the bikes on the track the first weekend, but i want everything to be perfect next time around.
i also need to fill the forks with oil, i ran them empty last race and it was super sketch at first, but i got used to it pretty quick. bravo forks are good forks, they just need to be topped off is all.
so other than a new pipe, and some fork oil in my forks i think ciaociao is ready to go! i CANNOT wait for the next race!
and, as promised, some of my favorite photos from the weekend, with some of me and ciaociao thrown in to keep everything on topic.
there are soooo many more on flickr.. just type in polinicupapril09 and you’ll get them all.
by the way, yes i was racing in jeans and a hoodie with skate knee and elbow pads. i am actually shopping around right now for some leathers, so leave me alone! haha.
oh, and number 8 in all the pictures is columbus “cuffs” josh on naz’s 50cc pug. hopefully in two weeks josh will be on plan b and naz will be on that pug!
sorry i haven’t been doing better keeping you guys up to date, it’s been super crazy lately!
i am supposed to be working on the 77 blog right now, so i’ll keep this short and give you more info later with lots of rad pics.
day one in la was a success, but then my variator exploded and ciaociao was down for the rest of the weekend.
after la i threw my polini variator on and took it to the races. it ran awesome and we took 3rd in both heats! yeah!
anyway, sorry for the short update. i will post more later and get some photos up.
well, i never found the box of parts, but i was able to find the parts i needed in my other boxes of parted out ciaos.
the bike is all together and i fired it up for the first time tonight since it got ran over at the creature rally months ago.
starts easy and idles, but is on the rich side.. it still has warm cali weather tuning, it’s much too cold and damp up here for it to run proper. but! la in a few days! it should be pretty close to right, i’ll be bringing jets just in case.
but yeah, i need to put fresh oil in the gear box, and refill the fork oil and i think i’m done! stoked!
as you can see, people have started drawing on ciaociao already! bring paint pens!
i’m busting my butt trying to get ciaociao v2.0 to the la rally, but i’ve seem to misplaced a box of crucial parts.. i’m sure it will turn up, i just hope it does soon. like today.
i’m not going to have the bike painted before the rally, but i was able to put a couple coats of brown primer on it. it looks like ass, the brown primer with the blue and green bits really looks silly, but that’s ok. once i get back from cali with it, i’m going to sand blast everything and paint it for real.
so yeah, if you’re going to the rally, bring a paint pen (i may have some on me) and you can draw whatever you want on ciaociao! well, just the frame. i’m going to be bummed if people start drawing on my pipe or something that’s not getting painted.. haha.
but yeah, blank canvas for you!
see you in la? hope so!
