well i’m going to post some photos from the last race, though i figure most of you who read this have probably already seen them.
the ciao did pretty good considering my rear malossi spring was broken and i had to try and compensate with lighter weights. i’ll explain more about that later when i dig out my camera and get some photos of the damage.
and now some pictures
jimmy’s one of my favorite people to ride with and i love when i can keep up with him on the track. his motomatic bike is just too much for me to hang with once we get out of the corners, that dual variated 103 has too much top end for ciaociao!
this is alan, he’s one of my best friends in sacramento and is on the motomatic race team. he kills it out there on his polini e50. his bike may not be all that competitive in the open class up against superderbs and megahobbits but it cleans up in the polini 65 class!
i think this was taken right after i heard a loud CRACK come from my motor somewhere and all the crazy noise and vibrations started happening. i say that because i’m looking down at my bike and not at the track in front of me.
this is half a track away from the last picture, right after my broken front pulley cheek (that was the CRACK) jammed itself into the frame and stopped my motor. everyone thought i seized but that kit will never seize! i coasted down to little less than walking speed then bailed off the back and let the poor ciao topple over. i wasn’t mad or frustrated though, under my helmet i was all smiles, that was the funnest race all season!
there was this really rad photo from one of the practices of i think tommy and jimmy going at it and way in the back ground you can see me doing a cart wheel after i crashed, but i can’t seem to find it! i know it’s on flickr somewhere, but i have no idea who took it.
anyway, i tried to keep these photos on topic and post mostly a bunch of me and ciaociao, but there are some amazing photos of my friends that i’m super stoked on so if you get bored you should go to flickr and type in “polini cup” and be ready to spend hours looking at moped kids going crazy on a gocart track!
well, there’s your photo update from the last race. sorry it took me so long! i am most of the way unpacked, so i’m thinking my camera should surface soon (man i hope so..). once it does, i’ll get some pictures of the damage from my variator mishap and maybe finally pull the top end off to show you the port work i did.
i have some crazy builds underway for the next season of polini cup, so i’m not giving ciaociao a whole lot of attention right now, but there is still a lot in store for her! paint, a new pipe, a larger carb, lights of some sort, and more! so check back every once in a while!
later taters
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’m back from portland (so much fun!) and just won a nos grande transmission case for 99¢ on ebay.
a grande case isn’t as nice as a si case, the si case has a larger oil reservoir and a much larger brake pad, but si parts are really hard to come by.
i can swap brake pads no problem, but it sucks i won’t be able to pump as much oil into my tranny to keep things cool and slippery.
oh well, as long as i get it together proper (with a thick gasket this time) i shouldn’t have any problems.
besides, you can’t beat nos parts for 99¢! well, $6.99 after shipping, but still really cheap.
i took down the malossi gear installation page for the time being so that i can redo it with better pictures and better info. that should be back up in a few days.
tonight, mf and myself are jumping in big mo and heading to portland for the puddle cutters’ two year anniversary ride. i’ll be on orangeciao with a nice, stock rear end back in it.
i ran that transmission into the ground!
i am kind of mad at myself for letting it go that far, but at least i can say i broke it good?
new tranny is installed, stock gearing though. malossi gears are on the way.
Filed under: carb, dellorto, electronics, frame, intake, malossi, paint, performance, transmission
sorry to you guys that follow this. i have been lame about updating. it’s been busy around here! i feel like i need to update more mostly because other than jon’s blog, this is pretty much the only moped build blog that ever gets any updates. at least as far as i know.
well, i have paid for another set of the malossi gears, and they should be on their way soon. i’m going to be buying up a third set as soon as i can too. one set for orange ciao, another set for ciaociao. i was so impressed by the performance gain the gears gave me in la on orange ciao, that i really hate to go back to stock on that bike. that’s why i’m still running around on the broken malossi gears!
speaking of broken malossi gears, i think i should update my installation guide to inform everyone of what i think went wrong, and what i think i need to do to avoid it a second time. i’ll do that soon.
as far as the rest of ciaociao goes, i haven’t made much progress. i need to get on mikemike more about getting with me to machine the remaining electronic parts, and also to weld up the seams on the frame, and get that cross bar in there.
jeb said he has a dellorto si kicking aorund that i can check out to see if it will work for me. the carb for me is either a 20mm si, or a 21 phbg. once i figure out what i’m doing there, then i need to make an intake. that shouldn’t be hard/take long. i hope.
anyway, my goal is to have this bike done (sans powder coating) for the puddle cutter rally in june. i will be riding it in it’s rough and raw stage for that rally. i think i’ll be back in reno (at least for a bit) some time between that rally and creature rally, which means i’ll be able to strip ciaociao down and drive it to sac to have it coated by nate and rafter. save on shipping, and i’ll be able to test ride and tune the crap out of the bike before pumping more money into it for powder coating.
anyway, that’s my update for tonight. there’s more that i could go into, but i’ll save it for another post.
so, before leaving, i put the malossi geared transmission, my malossi variator and the malossi belt in orange ciao to get a feel for everything. with the stock bottom end, a polini kit, 13/13 carb and proma circuit, that thing was hauling some balls! that is, until a washer in the transmission split in two and half of said washer sucked up into the gears and tore out a few teeth.
yeah, i blew up my malossi gears. honestly, i don’t know why that washer broke. it wasn’t the one that i was told some kids leave out, but i think when i rebuild the tranny with a new set i’m going to leave out that washer for sure. also, i’m wondering if my gasket maker seal was too thin? the original paper gasket is pretty thin too, but perhaps with the torquing of the bolts, it caused too much pressure on the washers? i’m going to either make or buy a new paper gasket next time around. maybe i’ll make a thicker one, just to be safe.
at any rate, that was an expensive fuck up. that bike was ripping until i killed it, though!
i’m ordering two more sets of those gears, another variator and belt, and some clutch springs some time soon. i want orange ciao to have the higher ratio gears, and i want a set for ciaociao. they are a HUGE improvement over the stock! well, as long as they don’t blow up on you.
anyway, stock gears for orange ciao for now. i’ll take some pictures of the damage when i tear that tranny apart again.
i was able to limp to choke while in la, where i tore it apart, cleaned out all the metal shards and rebuilt it with fresh oil and a new gasket maker seal. i ran it a few times since then, but it’s kind of scary.. it makes a ton of noise, and you can feel when it hits the spot where teeth are missing. there aren’t any two or more teeth in a row gone, so i’ve been limping around on it until i get around to putting stock back in it. soon, i hope! i don’t want it to lock up on me!
YAY! my .nl parts showed up today! pinasco kit, malossi crank and crank case!
it is late and i’m kinda drunk and really tired, so i’ll tell you guys about it tomorrow. and have pictures for you.
but! i did the how-to on the malossi gears! look at your left!
tonight i installed the malossi gears in the transmission. i took a crap ton of photos, one for each step, and they are uploading to photobucket right now. there are a lot, and it will take a while to upload them all, so i probably won’t make that post until tomorrow night or something.
but until then, here’s a little mock up of what i have going on so far:
just to give you a little bit of an idea, anyway. nothing is bolted together, and the brick was put on the frame to hold it all together for the photo. haha.
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.
