welding, kitting, and metal prep

My friend Josh came over the other night to work on a few things. He wanted to relocate one of his seat brackets, add a tail light mount to his rear rack, and start the kitting process on his e50.

Here he is getting ready to relocated the bracket on his hobbit seat. Unfortunately, he put a little too much heat to the metal and it melted the vinyl. I think he was pretty bummed about that.



Here's the stock 2HP e50 that we are going to put a kstar kit on. I'm letting him do all the work. I'm just going to give him a little bit of guidance through the case matching process.



While he was working on his stuff, I finished stripping the old spray paint and original paint off of the top of my Newport triple tree. I was hoping to get these powder coated yesterday, but I wasn't feeling very well. I'm sure I'll get around to it this week.

powder coated my first part

After seeing a few of the items that Responsible Jon was turning out, I knew I had to do the same thing. I've finsihed a few projects now with powder coated parts, but they were all done by local shops. This is the first time I've done my own.

I picked up the powder coating gun from Eastwood and a $40 oven on CL. I also picked up a $60 metal cabinet that I'm hoping to use as an oven that will allow me to do entire frames.



Here is the flywheel cover that I started off with. I stripped all the old paint off of it with aircraft remover. I really need to get my own blast cabinet, but I'm not quite ready for that yet. This picture was taken just after I washed the part and right before I preheated it.



Here it is after I took it out to cool. I've heard several people comment that it doesn't look black in this photo. I think it is because of the lighting and angle.



Installed with a new decal.



I'm happy with how it turned out. There are a few very minor blemishes, but I'm hoping those will go away as I get my technique dialed in.

Installed my trail tech temp gauge

A good friend of mine got this as a gift for me. I figured it would be a good tool to help with my tuning. As some of you know, I've had some problems getting my Newport (65 Metra, 19 dellorto, Estoril) to run above 3/4 throttle. I'm hoping to learn a thing or two with this.

When I first ran my cables, I thought I would send them all through the cable hole in the top of the triple tree. Well, that only worked with one of the cables and it has bothered me ever since. The brass colored washers didn't help either. So, I took this opportunity to fix those things at the same time.

Trail Tech temp gauge:


Before:


After:


I also added a 90 degree elbow where the throttle cable enters the carb. That cleaned it up nicely.

picked up a 1967 Sears Allstate

This is the first bike I have owned that came from the 60's. Most of the stuff I have worked on has been from the 70's. Considering how old this bike is, check out how nice it looks.

traded the hobbit for a garelli ssxl

A local friend of mine has wanted a hobbit ever since his friend got one and quickly smoked his e50 while pulling away from a stop sign...variators will do that to you. Well, when he heard that I found one, he offered up his other bike to me, which is the garelli ssxl that you see here. I know that hobbit isn't the fast one, but thanks to the link that Responsible Jon posted, he should be able to make it fast in no time.

This is the first top tank I have had. I really like it...the color, the seat, the bars, the factory tool set, and the front rack...all very cool.

giving up on the roadmaster

I figured out that I'm just not that motivated to work on this bike. I think it is partially due to the lack of factory parts on it (fork, wheels, light, throttle) and also the lack of parts that are available to fix it. If it were a really cool bike, I wouldn't mind taking the time to scour the interweb one part at a time, but it just isn't.

The bike is now on CL:

picked up a hobbit

I drove out to the Quad Cities last night to get this Honda Hobbit. It's the first Hobbit I have owned/worked on. From what I have read, it is a lot like the Vespa I built a few years back. I'll have to dig into it shortly and see what I find.

The 2" receiver carrier came with it. I built a similar setup about five years ago, but this one is much nicer. I may have to keep it.



Only 600 miles...not bad.