ciaociao

the portland rally was awesome. i’m sad ciaociao wasn’t ready in time, but i don’t know if the poor thing would have made the 300+ miles i put on ams over the last four days.. and that was some hard riding, too. ams is a trooper, for sure. i haven’t had a chance to give it an oil change or to finally swap out the bald rear tire and i’m about to take it to moped monday. i love that bike.
anyway, real update with the photos i was promising last week either later tonight or sometime tomorrow. sweet!

update! well, kinda. not much to talk about. i did a bunch of work on the fork swing arms last weekend, have photos but i can’t upload just yet. the bike isn’t going to be ready for portland after all. lame.
however, it should be for blood drive 666! it’s probably better to unveil a new project at one’s own rally rather than a neighbor’s rally anyway, right? right.
this bike has taken a long time to get this close to completion, but i always knew it would take a long time.. it actually has gotten this far much faster than i thought it would! that’s because i was spending money when i shouldn’t have been, like a jerk.
anyways, i hope to update all of you with photos soon. yay!

so i know this is off topic and all, but i wanted to share it anyway.
i picked up a 1971 ciao from the original owner yesterday, and the thing is mint. it came with the title, every service record ever, the original ad that came with the bikes, the booklet.. even a cheesy 1970’s half helmet. all for $200!

i’m super stoked on this thing. no idea how many miles are on it, as it’s the base model that didn’t come with a speedo, but it can’t be many.. and it has been kept perfectly stored for the past 20 odd years in the woman’s basement.
i’m keeping this one stock, mostly. i might try a si pipe on it, and a few other little tricks, to get it up to 35mph or so, but i don’t think i’m going to put an expansion chamber or anything on it.

anyways, in the world of ciaociao, things are looking bleak. i hope to work on it at mikemike’s shop this weekend. hopefully i’ll have something to show you guys!
oh, as for the pictures i promised in the last post, i keep doing dumb things like leaving my camera at the shop, or the cable, or the charger.. i gotta get all three of those things in the same location at one time so that i can get them uploaded! and take better pictures of the new ciao!

well, the front wheel is done. made the spacers, drilled the brake plate and installed bearings. i have pictures, but you have to wait. i got all moved into the new place, and my camera upload crap is there.. problem is i won’t have internet till next thursday. lame.
mikemike got some work done on the intake while i was doing the wheel. looong way to go on that!
i ordered the stem i’ll be using (not the one i posted before) and have decided to use these downhill mtn bike handle bars i’ve had laying around for a while.
what else?
i will be running the stock 30 year old 2.5 pirelli tires for the portland rally, so i don’t need tires and tubes yet. the performance won’t be that great, but this is mostly a break in rally anyway. break in/test out mikemike’s crazy stuff rally.
things i do need to buy are;

• petcock
• fuel line
• fuel filter
• grips
• random bolts

and i think that’s pretty much it! i have cables for it already. that other stuff i have in stock at the shop, i think.. i just need to buy it.
ok. next post will have some pictures.

sorry about the lack of updates, i’m kind of at a stand still. it sucks because the portland rally that i am supposed to be riding this bike to is approaching so quickly..
i don’t think i’ll be running the dellorto 21 phbg, at least not at first. seattle is kind of on a diaphram carb kick at the moment, i’m going to be testing out a 20mm tillotson carburetor. should be interesting!

but yeah, the list of things left to do before ride time include:

• build intake for tillotson
• build stator plate for cdi, hope everything works
• build swing arms for fork
• build brackets for front shocks
• build stem adapter for stem
• weld in cross bar and weld up seams
• make up my mind on what bars to run
• buy the rest of the little bits (grips, tires, etc.)
• obtain bolt for front axle
• make spacer for front wheel bearings and install
• drill out brake plate to fit new axle
• various other little things

and i’m running out of time! jeez.
running a moped shop makes a lot of that easier, such as collecting the small bits and whatnot, but some of that stuff i need to get on asap. like last week.
anyway, stay tuned. as rally time fast approaches, i’m sure this thing is going to get busy again.

so i’ve made some progress since the last update.
in the frame department, i chopped the seat post part down further, should have the seat nice and low now!

i also ripped out the center stand, as i will be using the side stand i bought forever ago on this bike. once i modify it to fit the frame the way i want it to, i’ll hack the center mounts off the frame.
as it stands, i have the frame down to just over 12.5lbs, including all the grime and chain tensioner still on the frame.

not too bad, but, as i said, i’ll be hacking more off soon. i’ll also be welding more back on (frame brace, seam welding), so i’ll probably end up about 15lbs or so. about 4lbs lighter than a stripped down puch frame.

the struts for the front fork showed up the other day too!

rather than modifying the fork swing arms for the larger axle and trying to rig up some kind of mounting system for these dampeners, i think i’m going to make all new swing arms. at 80lbs of pressure a piece, i don’t think i need the stock springs anymore. and if i make custom swing arms, i can provide multiple mounting spots for the struts, giving me on-the-fly adjustable front suspension! awesome!

that is all for now. i have been challenged to a 50cc race off by erin of the puddlecutters, and we have decided to turn it into a mini-rally event, so most of my free time will be put into that for a little while. i’m still confident that ciaociao will be in rough draft forum for the puddlecutter rally, i am even still planning to ride it down to portland! so keep watching, i’ll have more for you soon.

as some of you have noticed on spacemanicecream.net, have started a blog for the 50cc bike, the 50cciao, though i probably won’t do much posting about what all i’m doing, as i know erin reads it and i don’t want her to know my secrets! yet, anyway.
i’m thinking of keeping that one a photo blog strictly.

anyway, till next time.

i love the ciao chapter of jerry murray’s mo-ped, the wonder vehicle. i think i might actually type it out and put it up on here as an article. do you think i’d get in trouble?

on an unrelated (yet still ciao related) note, i pulled the axle out of my front wheel yesterday, along with the bearing cups. the si front wheel holds 32mm bearing cups, which is a pretty standard od sealed bearing size. however, vespas use an 11mm axle in the front wheel, which would make finding bearings difficult as the most common sizes are 32×10mm and 32×12mm.
to make finding sealed bearings easier, i’m going to throw out the 11mm axle in favor of a 12mm gremeca axle. i will have to machine the swing arms on my fork, but less than .5 of a mm on either side of the axle shouldn’t be a problem at all.

also, i found a source for the struts! msc industrial supply co. appears to have exactly what i’m looking for, and pretty cheap too! they have different ratings in the size i want, as well as different end connection options. i think i’m going to try to get at least 60lb rated struts, giving at least 120lbs (not counting the stock spring rate) for the front end of the moped. they also have 80lb rated struts, but i haven’t check to see if they have my size yet.

oh, and i dremmeled the inside of my rear hub the other day to allow for more oil access to the gears. i started assembling the rear end and then realized i left the main axle back in my bed room.. i gotta get over there to get the rest of my ciao stuff soon.

ok, fed ex is here, that’s all! later taters.

i lied! the front wheel isn’t quite done. i am going to pop out the steel cups for the bearings and fit some nice sealed units in there. then the front wheel will be ready to roll.
i’m having a harder time sourcing out the dampeners for the front wheel than i thought i would.. turns out most washing machines use plastic struts rather than metal ones to dampen a uneven load. oh well, something will turn up.

so, as promised, i spent some time in mikemike’s shop milling up the brake plate to work with the stock ciao fork. after milling the squeezed out quicksteel, i had a nice flat surface to work with.

i marked the centerline for the new brake stop slot, chocked the plate up in the mill, and went to town.

the finished product came out nicely, and fit in the fork perfectly!

so the front wheel is ready to go for now. i still need to source out some dampeners for the front fork and build brackets for those, but that should be pretty straight forward.

while i was milling the brake plate, mikemike had the flywheel on the lathe, cutting the taper for my crankshaft. it was a pretty simple operation, and everything is fitting up nicely.

you’ll notice there’s no stator plate for the coils yet, mikemike’s waiting on a new blade for the ban saw, so that’s something for later.

there’s a ciao frame with a rusted through tank sitting at the shop, so once we were done turning and milling, we stuck my motor in that frame to start brainstorming on the intake. we’ve got a couple ideas, and will probably make a couple intakes to see what will work best. i’m hoping to get back in there this weekend if mike has the time, or at least taking a trip down to the metal store next monday.
there are still a few things i need to source out (i found another set of bars, but i’m not really that happy with them), but i am excited that its coming together!

i know you’ve all seen the dellorto racing 21mm phbg before, but i feel like i need to update with at least a few pictures.. i’ve since added a lever choke to it, though i need to yank the oil injection tube and tap/plug the hole it goes it, just to get the lever to sit where it is supposed to on the carb.

also, a few weeks ago i begun milling the brake plate so that it will fit the stock ciao fork. the wheels are from a vespa si, and the fork’s break stop is in a completely different place than the ciao.
lucky for me, mikemike has a mill, and i know how to use it.
i started off by milling the brake plate down to the proper height for the ciao fork.

once it was down the the proper height, i noticed that the back of the plate was hollow, and now i had these nifty holes to deal with.

i’ll be milling a new slot at a different angle through there, and so i had to do something about those holes. here you can see them from the back;

to get around this, i’ve roughened up the inside of those holes and groves in the back of the plate, drilled some holes connecting the groves and packed some quicksteel in there super tight until it was squeezing out the front like playdough. quicksteel is rad because it is millable once it’s nice and hard.

so that’s where i’m at currently. sunday mikemike and i are headed to his shop where i will try and finish up the front wheel, and maybe brainstorm on the intake now that i have the carb handy to play with. maybe i’ll be able to get some pictures of the cdi system we are going to use on this project. it’s much smaller than the system we were going to use, it should be pretty nuts once it’s all worked out.

so there you have it! you’re all caught up! june is coming quick, and i still plan to have this in rough-and-ready mode (not painted, but good to go otherwise) by the puddle cutter rally!