i was able to grab a couple photos with rafter’s camera the other day, so i can show you some of the stuff i’ve done.
first, tony was nice enough to take my variator to his lathe and rid me of that big ring that’s part of the polini pulley cheek.
it’s actually part of the cheek (the part of the pulley the belt rides on) but it’s too high up to be used, at least by my current setup, so it was nothing but added weight to me. i also had him mill .5mm off the back of the cheek so that the variator would close up further, giving me more top end! that was the idea anyway. not sure how well it worked, i did so many things all at once that it’s hard to say what’s doing what!
pro work done a pro dude, thanks tony.
and here’s a blurry picture i took of the brake stop peg i had to weld in to work with this wheel and brake plate;
rafter has a fancy super camera and i don’t really know how to use it. i miss my crappy point-and-click deal with the built in flash.
i finally got around to making a fork brace for the bike, too. i was going to put it way down close to the tire, super tight tolerance like, but i decided to leave some room in case i go to 17″ wheels later on.
not the prettiest brace on the block, but it gets the job done quite well.
also, i’ll be going up to a 24mm mikuni from my 21mm dellorto, hopefully before next race!
it’s going to be tricky getting it in there, but i think i’ve got it covered. thankfully nate of motomatic mopeds and tony are both super skilled at welding aluminum! i’m running out of time, though, and both are busy with their own stuff, so we’ll see if it happens before october 3rd!
inside the cylinder pictures will probably have to wait until after the next race. no time to pull it apart!
anyway, there you go!
some pics of what’s been going on! i installed the ebr forks on ciaociao and they are much stiffer than the bouncy ball bravo forks i’m replacing. those bravo forks were great when the seals were good, but they blew out and now they are horrible. these new ebrs should be rad for now.
all torn apart and in rafter’s way, making him grumpy.
when i converted my front wheel to sealed bearings i went to a much larger axle than stock, so i had to dremel out the dropouts on the forks to fit.
when i had the fork off i noticed my bottom bearing cup was way loose in the frame. i was worried the frame was ovalized, but it turns out the cup was bad. nate found me a replacement and now everything’s better.
now that the forks are on, i’m presented with a few new problems. the brake plate i modified to work with the ciao/bravo forks won’t work with these forks, so i’m going to have to get clever there again. also, these ciao ebrs don’t come with any way to attach the bars to them. ebr assumes you’ll be using your stock parts with their forks, and as you may or may not know, stock ciaos have quill stem style bars. i have a couple pair of clip-ons, i’m thinking about throwing a pair on to try them out and see if i hate them, but i think i will.. so i’ll probably end up drilling four holes in the top tripple tree plate and using the bravo fork’s u-bolts and riser thingys like i was running on the old forks. we’ll see.
i’ve also did some variator mods, but i’ll save that for next time. i need to go get some work done. later taters.
i’ve started pulling ciaociao apart to get it ready for the next polini race.
apparently i’ve been running around with a huge head leak and i had no idea. i guess i should have looked under my bike, the motor is covered in oil! the nuts holding the head on were like hand tight? no idea how that happened. oh wait! i just realized i bet it’s because my triple layer of base gaskets compressed! doi. that’s why you use metal to make thick base gaskets, kids.
everything’s looking good inside the motor. the 3rd mount on the case snapped off again. it broke right along the weld ray did for me. nate says he can do a better job, so hopefully it’ll be fine after that.
also, the aluminum spacer i was using to keep my fan rivets from dragging on my ktm50 coils wore itself out and i have some wear showing. it’s because, even when super tight, my fan will slip a tiny bit when i really get on the gas. the torque is just too much for it. rather than replacing the spacer with a steel one, i just took a big punch and hammered the back of all the rivets flat. it clears nicely. lucky for me, the rivets didn’t do any serious damage to the coils. just some grooves in the plastic.
you can see the flattened rivets there.
sorry for the dark photos, i’m at motomatic using their camera and the light is low.
tony will be around next week and he’s going to help me figure out the best plan of action for this kit and then i’ll get started cutting stuff up.
also, i’m going to try and get some forks on the way for the ciao before next race. i do want to eventually finish my mod to the stock forks and run those, but i don’t have the time right now.. i still gotta get magnomos back on the road by september 11th!
anyway, in the meantime, i plan to run the vespa ebrs. they are pretty stiff and should work well for the track, at least better than these pogo stick bravo forks i’ve been running.
that’s it for now. more posts and pictures soon to come! and maybe a video? who knows!
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!
seeing the bike in a pile of parts was making me sad, so i decided to go ahead and start putting the thing together. this will be ciaociao v0.1a, seattle rally mode! haha.
no welding done on the frame yet, no cross bar. the custom fork isn’t ready, so i’ll be running with the a bravo fork (which just happens to match the rattle can paint job on ciaociao’s frame!), altered to fit the larger front axle.
no motor yet, as you can see. i couldn’t get a hold of mikemike this weekend to see if i could go to his shop and work on it, which sucks. i think he was probably more worried about working on his own project anyway.
the cdi should be close to ready to go, unless mikemike has been too busy to work on it at all.. it’s the intake i was hoping to get in there to work on. maybe sometime this week? i’m running out of time! i don’t even know what to do for jetting yet! fuck.
anyway, it should be running, even if running shitty, for the rally. it’s so close, i don’t see how it could not be.
i even added a basket to the front to carry my gas can for the long ride out to camping at our rally!
also, you guys should come to our rally! it’s going to be epic!
well, it’s crunch time again. i decided it was time to prioritize what i had left to do for ciaocioa to finish her. i decided the most important, at the top of the list thing that needs to happen, is to get the electronic system and the intake finished. these are things that absolutely need to happen before she’s on the road.
last sunday i went down to mikemike’s and did some work on the mill to make the stator plate we are using fit. all i really had to do was drill some holes in it, and mill it down to be half as thick as it was. then we had to turn the inner hole out a bit larger to clear the bearing seal and it was golden.
here it is sitting in the motor.
notice all the extra holes everywhere. this plate originally went to something else, we used it because it took little to make it fit proper. we’ll only be using the three holes that bolt the plate to the motor, the rest will go unused.
here it is with the rotor and coil set on it something like it will be when it’s all mounted up proper.
you can see how small the rotor is. the little holes in it will be drilled out a bit more and tapped for the alum fan adapter plate to bolt on, which will allow use of the plastic fan i stole from a parted out kinetic.
i hope this weekend to go in and bust out the intake for it. i’ll be using the dellorto si carb to start with.
it uses crazy car-carb-like press-in jets, but they are readily available at pretty much any serious scooter shop. i can also order up what ever i need at the shop, so that’s good.
these carbs are found stock on the old, bigger vespa scooters, so there’s a bit of novelty using it on my vespa ciao.
i chose it for a few reasons; flat slide, down draft (makes building an intake much easier), novelty, availability of jets and parts, and best of all, it was free! thanks jeb!
ok, so those are the things i am going to focus on until they are done.
however, a running engine is no good if you don’t have a bike to put it in..
since my time at mikemike’s shop is reserved for those two bits for now, i’m going to put off the fork swing arms until i get them done.
even if i had the swing arms done, i’d still have to lathe out the stem adapter before i could use that for.. so for now i am going to just use the heavier bravo forks that i was rocking on the orange ciao for so long. i’m also using orange ciao’s handle bars, controls and grips.
tonight i bolted the fork on and threw a too-small axle in the front wheel just to put everything together to see how it looked, and it’s going to be awesome. i forgot my camera here today, so no pictures. i’ll get some tomorrow.
yay!
ok, so here are the pictures of my sealed bearing conversion for the front wheel all ready to go. i thought i got some photos of the bearing cups and knocking them out, and making the spacer for between the sealed bearings, but i can’t find them.. 
lame. oh well, if enough people want to see it, i’ll find another wheel to convert and make a walk through for it.
here are pics of it ready to go on the bike!
you can see the spacer in the last pic, showing the bearing inside the brake hub. it’s just a piece of chromoly tubing cut just long enough to support the lateral load of being bolted into the fork. if you do this conversion, make sure you use good steel tubing of a high grade, cut the ends SQUARE, and make sure they only touch the inner race of the bearing.
i’ve also started on the new swing arms for the front fork. originally i was going to make a bracket that bolted to the axle to hold my shock dampeners, but then i realized i needed to mill out the axle slots to fit the larger axle that goes along with the sealed bearing conversion, and that there is no good way to build those brackets to begin with, so i decided custom swing arms were the way to go.
first, i took a block of aluminum billet and cut out two chunks large enough to whittle down to size.
once i had those, i had to take them to the mill and mill them down to the proper width. then i started to shape the inside bottom corner of the arms so that they could pivot in the fork like the originals.
corners shaped, it was time to mill the hole for the bolt that they will pivot on. i made them the same diameter as the holes in the original arms so that i could use the bushings and spacer from them.
the bushings press in nice and tight, and everything fits the fork.
next is to drill the hole for the axle (it will be in the same place as the original, just larger for the bigger axle) and to mill in the slots for the dampeners. once i have that done, i can figure out where i want to drill the holes for the bottom of the dampener and mill off excess aluminum from the arms to reduce weight.
then it’s just a matter of building the upper brackets and picking up some pins to hook everything together! i’m hoping for three different shock mounts at the bottom, maybe two up top. or, to keep it simple, i might just go with one up top and two down below. that would give me a “hard” and “soft” setting.
if i were real fancy, i could do the math, figure out the angles and everything, and know exactly how stiff the front end will be in each mode. but i’m not fancy, i’m just going to wing it. if it’s too stiff, i’ll pick up some 60lb dampeners from the same people i got the 80lb ones from and try again.
so yeah, that’s where i stand. i still don’t know for sure which carb i’m going to use (i have three to choose from), and don’t have the electronic system all ready to go.. and rally time is like a month away! jeez.
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.
