being as ciaociao is currently my only running bike that would be rally worthy (green ciao runs great and is super pretty, but it goes 25mph), i decided to take it to the portland rally.
other than another shredded belt (which was expected, i even brought a spare) it ran great the entire rally!
of course ciaociao is never jetted right, and i still haven’t really messed with the variator after porting it to get all of my low end back, but it was fun, fast and super reliable all weekend long!
i was still running low air pressure in my tires from atwater, so it handled super good in the corners. this rally was filled with corners!
and i got paced by a friend on his yamaha motorcycle at 63mph. i’d like to gps confirm that one day, but he swears his speedo is accurate.
now i am ready to tear the motor apart again and finish porting it. once i do that i will tune the variator and i should get my take off back. don’t get me wrong, it still takes off pretty quick, but not as quick as it did before i did the exhaust port.
there miiiiiight be a motomatic pipe in store for ciaociao in the future.. nate said if i were to join the motomatic race team i would get a free pipe, but i don’t know if he was being serious. besides, i’m not giving up on hry just because i moved to sacramento! if those guys up in seattle stay serious and want to keep going to races, i’ll stick with them!
anyway, that’s it for now. atwater is in a few weeks, so i have to get busy!
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!
the pipe showed up today! other than a little easily fixed shipping damage, the thing was everything i expected! such a rad pipe.
the “carbon look” alum baffle is pretty weird, but awesome, and the whole thing is pretty damn light for such a big pipe. i’m quite surprised. this ciao is going to end up being pretty freakin light in the end.
i’ve been putting the most of my attention on orange ciao lately, old orange is the one that’s going to la for rally time. i installed ciaociao’s transmission on it, the long rides at the rally ought to break the gears in nicely, have them all ready to rip once ciaociao is good to go. i’m also going to use the malossi belt i have for ciaociao and get another one later on. maybe even the variator. i was planning on getting a variator and belt for orange ciao anyway, and i could probably benefit from using them at the rally, so we’ll see.
ok, it’s bed time now. i’m sick and i hurt. good night.
benji got my pipe in, so hopefully i’ll have it at the end of the week, or early next week. that’ll just leave the carb issue and machining the bits for the ignition.
rafter said he could hook me up with the paint job, but i am undecided. i know they would do a better job than most, it would be powder coated to boot, but that’s a lot of money to be shipping a frame and wheels and other assorted bits around.
first things first, i need to get the welding done to the thing. that is quickly becoming a priority. i need to do some stuff to the fork, too. possibly a new steer tube.. these are just things i’m thinking about. it would be sweet to use a threadless headset, that might be more work than i want to put into it though.
gaaah, too many decisions!
i am going to go watch rocketeer and pout.
someone make parts hurry up and get here.
yay, the si is in my garage! and already stripped down! haha. it’s pretty rough, but nicer than i thought it would be.. i think i might rebuild it later on with my spoked wheels and some mild performance improvements, put a basket on the front and make it my grocery getter. but that’s another story for another blog. i wish i had remembered to take better pictures of it before i started tearing it apart. oh well!
what i’m most excited about right now, though, are these;
like i said before, not the wheels i was hoping for, but now that these are actually in my possession i like them a whole lot more! haha.
i believe the si transmission has the 110mm rear pully, too, which is awesome. more torque! i’m going to clean it up and bring it up here for gear installation sometime this week.
also, benji says my pipe should be in this week, so if it shows up i should be able to have it in my happy hands pretty quick! so stoked.
Filed under: carb, dellorto, kit, malossi, motor, new parts!, performance, pinasco, pipe, simonini, wheels
i am tempted to put up the list of parts i have bought for ciao, and the remaining parts i need to buy (pipe, carb), but i would really like to wait until i have my hands on them before i start talking about what “i have”, you know?
such as those wheels i posted before. fred found them for me, but i ended up spending the money on engine parts and so will have to wait on the wheels. i feel bad because i already said i am getting those wheels, and i still will, but it will be further down the road than i originally though it would.
but at the same time, it’s really hard not to show you guys what i spent my money on! haha. after all, they are on their way already, so why not, right?
ok, here’s what i have on the way;
malossi crank case, cdi version. 4 pedal reed valve! sweet action!
malossi crank 10mm pen. stuffed and needle bearings all over the place!
pinasco 46mm (80cc) cylinder.
i was torn between the pinasco 46mm and the malossi 46,5mm (80cc), but all of the .nl kids i have been talking to recommended the pinasco. it’s aluminum, which will aid with the cooling as this will be a high rpm bike (the malossi is cast iron), and i’m told it out performs the malossi as is. the malossi has more potential apparently, but as this is my first kit ever (i’ve always been a make-my-50cc-haul-ass kind of guy) i decided to go with the kit that would require less work to reach it’s potential.
i will have to match the case to the kit, and add some boost port passages to the case, but that’s no big deal at all.
as for the pipe, i have decided on the simonini calibrata.
there are a few of these pipes floating around the u.s., but not many. i decided to build a ciao in the first place because it was the first moped i really wanted (though it took me forever to finally get one), and because i wanted to do something different. i was a little turned off on the calibrata at first because of the fact that they are out there already, but that’s a silly reason to not want the best high rpm pipe available (well, according to my sources).
besides, the point of this blog in the first place is to try and inspire others to perhaps build a sweet vespa, and it would be retarded of me to not want more tuners to have the good parts, just because i want my bike to be one off! haha.
as for the carb, i am still undecided. i would love to use a “racing edition” dellorto phbg (either 19mm or 21mm, still working that out) for the ease of tuning the carb over the standard phpg’s, but they don’t come in the “clamp on” style, which is what i think i’ll need with my limited space. i’m waiting until my parts show up so that i can figure out what i have to work with as far as that goes.
so anyway, that’s where i’m at. as i said, the crank case, crank and cylinder are on their way, so they are as good as mine. the pipe i will be ordering once benji gets one in for me.
as for the electronics, i have some stuff in the works. i have to wait until the case shows up so that i can see what will work, so i’ll save that for another day. 12v cdi is almost a certain, though, that much i can say.
ciaociao 