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Post by harleyracer59 on Nov 28, 2019 16:35:08 GMT -5
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Post by harleyracer59 on Nov 28, 2019 18:11:59 GMT -5
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Post by harleyracer59 on Nov 29, 2019 19:04:16 GMT -5
been bored with 2 days of rain in sunny California... been working on the fleet here and there. finally received my yellow head light bulb for the 65 vespa. installed that then wanted to address a common problem with the smallframes. that is nose dive when braking. a month or so ago I pulled out the shocks front and back to lower it a little and stiffen up the marshmallow soft shocks. on the rear I was able to replace the spring with an old dirt bike shock spring I had in the pile. also rebuilt the shock body itself and replaced a seal that was causing it to leak fluid. also pulled a spacer bushing and got the rear about as low as I could without drilling a hole in the body for the spark plug to clear. its a tight fit to get the plug out but its doable without dropping the rear shock to get to it. on the front I didn't have any springs that matched the stock spring so I rebuilt the front shock replaced a couple seals and refilled it with some thicker oil. pulled a couple spacer bushings and threw it back together. the thicker fluid helped but didn't solve my brake dive issue. while searching the interweb, I came across an anti-dive bracket that they sell for too much money. since im cheap and/or broke, I made my own. I used a spacer I had on the shock stud then drilled a couple holes in an extra Harley motor mount I had in the shed and put it all back together. it works great almost a little too stiff but im gonna replace that thicker oil with a lower weight and see how it feels. im very happy with this mod and recommend it to any one that owns a smallframe vespa. weather you buy the actual kit or make your own like me. heres a few pics of the bracket and the scooter on flat ground to show the drop. next thing on my list for it is a side stand. the front tire is 5"+ off the ground when its on the stand and it lands pretty hard when taking it off the center stand which has already popped a bulb out of its holder resulting in a couple blown bulbs due to over voltage... stupid vespa 6v ac electrical system. im researching and working on a 12v conversion mod using a honda regulator and connecting the coils on the vespa stator in series. more to come of this at a later date...       |
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Post by harleyracer59 on Nov 29, 2019 19:13:39 GMT -5
also if anyone is wondering, I made that rear rack out of an extra honda aero rear rack I had laying around. just bent the mounting arms to where I liked them and bolted it on with some spacers. I think it looks pretty slick. and holds a toolbag perfectly.  |
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Post by harleyracer59 on Dec 1, 2019 16:47:44 GMT -5
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Post by benji on Dec 2, 2019 14:44:32 GMT -5
I'm not sure about the glove box mounting, it may be just a couple screws into the plastic.
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Post by harleyracer59 on Jan 29, 2020 8:28:26 GMT -5
update on the party, finally got the front tire mounted on the drum zx wheel. so the tacky aero has matching shoes. I need to pull the stereo amp because the Bluetooth quit working after I had to ride home in the rain 3 miles. I soft siezed the 5 port 47.5mm pinasco cylinder 2x a couple days after that. so now I have the 7 port 46mm zeda racing cylinder on it. best cylinder ive had the pleasure of trying. good torquey take off, only hitting 9.8k-10k rpm. I would like to get at least another 500 rpm out of it. this engine has the stuffy crank, jap chamber exhaust, treatland dio intake with stiffer reeds, and a 20mm mikuni flatslide. running a 35 idle needle raised with clip on second from bottom, and a 190 main jet.. it starts with no choke or having to blip the throttle, revs fast and clean, returns perfectly to 1700 rpm idle no hang ups, no stumble or flutter when it hits idle rpm. and im on oil injector. with a cap of oil for break in on first 2 tanks. currently have 1/2 tank left of my second tank. will probably stop the cap full on the next tank. still even with the capful, that's a shit ton of gas, anyone have any ideas as to why? im still waiting to find a gas tank for my dj1. also researching front brake mastercylinders. the one I have will have to trim the head light cowling and I don't like that idea. ive also learned that if I would have used a metropolitian steering stem, I wouldn't have needed to trim the leg shield to clear the stem when turning. like I had to do with the zx stem. I guess the met stem stays straight or drops down a 1/2" to fork tube mounts. where the zx comes up from center to tube mounts. bummer  also bought a rear zx wheel to match the front. also found an oil tank for 5$ on ebay. score! im in process of painting the blue 84 aero. it new color is a rustollium cobalt blue metallic. I hate body work and painting. so its taking some time. lol also scored some jdm wing visors. super rare!!! |
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Post by harleyracer59 on Jan 29, 2020 8:39:31 GMT -5
update on the party, finally got the front tire mounted on the drum zx wheel. so the tacky aero has matching shoes. I need to pull the stereo amp because the Bluetooth quit working after I had to ride home in the rain 3 miles. I soft siezed the 5 port 47.5mm pinasco cylinder 2x a couple days after that. so now I have the 7 port 46mm zeda racing cylinder on it. best cylinder ive had the pleasure of trying. good torquey take off, only hitting 9.8k-10k rpm. I would like to get at least another 500 rpm out of it. this engine has the stuffy crank, jap chamber exhaust, treatland dio intake with stiffer reeds, and a 20mm mikuni flatslide. running a 35 idle needle raised with clip on second from bottom, and a 190 main jet.. it starts with no choke or having to blip the throttle, revs fast and clean, returns perfectly to 1700 rpm idle no hang ups, no stumble or flutter when it hits idle rpm. and im on oil injector. with a cap of oil for break in on first 2 tanks. currently have 1/2 tank left of my second tank. will probably stop the cap full on the next tank. still even with the capful, that's a shit ton of gas, anyone have any ideas as to why? im still waiting to find a gas tank for my dj1. also researching front brake mastercylinders. the one I have will have to trim the head light cowling and I don't like that idea. ive also learned that if I would have used a metropolitian steering stem, I wouldn't have needed to trim the leg shield to clear the stem when turning. like I had to do with the zx stem. I guess the met stem stays straight or drops down a 1/2" to fork tube mounts. where the zx comes up from center to tube mounts. bummer  also bought a rear zx wheel to match the front. also found an oil tank for 5$ on ebay. score! im in process of painting the blue 84 aero. it new color is a rustollium cobalt blue metallic. I hate body work and painting. so its taking some time. lol also scored some jdm wing visors. super rare!!!            |
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Post by harleyracer59 on Jan 30, 2020 10:15:55 GMT -5
this post is for all the vespa fans out there. ive been showing love to my 65' smallframe along with the honda gang. I bought a glove box and a side stand for a PX on craigslist. got them both for $75. since I lowered mine I had to cut over an inch off of the side stand leg so it wouldn't high side and fall over. I think side stands make a scooter look so much cooler/tougher/better than the boring old center stand. the PX glovebox mounted really easy to 4 existing holes already in my leg shield. had to bend the mounting tabs on the box a little. but it fits nice and snug with no gap after I installed the trim gasket. it is just narrow enough that the gasket sits on my chrome leg shield beading. none of it sticks out the sides. I couldn't have planned it any better if I tried. I also got a 12v stator for an external coil vbn. the 12v coils have same spacing as my VMA1T. I made my own wiring harness too. I plan to install these with a 4 wire full wave rec/reg and a small 12v battery. looks like I will only have to disconnect the ground and run an extra wire from the side of coil #1. I stayed with points and I think im gonna order one of those parmakit coils with the cool advance curve built in already. everything I have read on these coils has been good, so I figure why not try it? I took the flywheel to my old business partners shop and had him cut the 3/8" lip off the outside edge to try and lighten it up. he cut it right up to the cooling fan fins. it actually made the scooter rev faster and I was able to squeeze a little higher rpm out too. I do feel as though I lost a little engine braking capability but it still has some. also bought some chrome wheels and white wall tires. I think it really classed up the old gal. next om the list is to install the 12v coils and harness when I have time. im still debating on weather or not to also install one of the extra 4 channel 1000w boss Bluetooth sound systems on it too. im trying to think of a way to route all the wires and mount the speakers without drilling any extra holes in it. ive also been researching cylinder kits. I really like the parmakit direct inductions, like the challenger 130 or the W force 144. from what ive read, the direct induction kits cut down on the amount of case cutting required and it opens the option of a full cheek crankshaft. but the polini dual intake cylinders look pretty sweet too. anyone with knowledge on these kits is welcome to give their reviews or thoughts. id love to hear your opinions, because $300+ USD is a good chunk of change and im a little hesitant on which kit to pull the trigger on... I don't want buyers remorse a week later. well here she is in all her glory. my next post will be about the new to me, honda 3 wheeler that I just got. so stay tuned. heres a hint: don't cross the stream. lol       |
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Post by harleyracer59 on Jan 30, 2020 19:58:13 GMT -5
so I strayed from my hoarder ways and when a gentleman knocked on my door asking if the black gyros (Gyro S) were for sale, I made my usual remark of "how much you got?" he responded with a story and an amount that was very fair. he works for an event promoter here in socal that does the rose bowl swap meet and other big events. they had a dozen of these back in the day and over time they've dwindled down to 4 that run and he was trying to find a few more to restock their fleet. funny part is when I got the non running 2 gyro s last year, I bought 2 from different people to make 1 complete and hoped to get the other complete at a later date. I found a guy on fleabay selling parts locally so I got his info and arranged to go by his place and see what I wanted. I get to his house and hes got 6 gyros that hes parting out. long story short, he knows employees from the same event company and he was given 12 to get as many as he could and was told he could keep the other as partial payment. I bought some parts and got my second one real close to rideable. I am so amused that full circle, the company that's buying mine has parts that were theres originally. lol bonus was the guy was so impressed with my fleet of old Hondas that he asked if I was interested in maintaining and repairing their vehicles big and small. so I sold 1 of my gyro tg50's for more than 2 times what I had in the 2 of them, and I hopefully picked up a good size account for my business. score me!!! with no good deed left un punished, the next day I was messaged by a guy on offerup asking if I might be interested in buying his gyro. exchanged # and told him to send me picture. a few days later I get a video of his gyro, and its actually a honda stream. they were never imported into the US and are super rare. we haggled on the price of his "gyro" and I ended up getting it for 300$ delivered to my house from north Hollywood 35 miles away. which in southern California from my house to there can be 2 hours in medium traffic. worse on a gridlocked afternoon. I had it running 3 days later only because it took a while to clean the rusty gas tank out. the oil tank is missing and theres a premix only sticker on the gas tank. it was set up for the japan style auto choke that uses hoses going to the cylinder head but it has a us style electric choke carburetor on it. the choke isn't plugged in to anything. the spacer between the carb and manifold was for a 2-3mm smaller carb. I swapped that out for a proper sized one I had in my carb box. sorry for the novel. ill add more info on this later. heres the pics. How I got them. 1 roller not running the other in boxes. And then the first one running     |
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Post by harleyracer59 on Jan 30, 2020 20:13:15 GMT -5
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Post by harleyracer59 on Feb 28, 2020 22:31:09 GMT -5
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Post by jbjhillbilly on Feb 29, 2020 21:31:59 GMT -5
The PX125 looks really nice painted!
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Post by milly on Mar 1, 2020 18:06:17 GMT -5
Have you thought of red rims?
How did you lower the px. I was going to do that to Violet later in the summer but have not read anything on lowering on the net without conflicting views by various forum poster's
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Post by harleyracer59 on Mar 2, 2020 13:41:22 GMT -5
Have you thought of red rims? How did you lower the px. I was going to do that to Violet later in the summer but have not read anything on lowering on the net without conflicting views by various forum poster's I haven't lower the silver px yet, I lowered my black vma1t smallframe. although I am thinking about trying to lower the px because it teeters side to side on the center stand. plus a great way to change anythings attitude is to lower its altitude! on my smallframe I put a 1" shorter stiffer dirt bike spring and a thinner isolator on the top of the rear shock then put it through the chassis and put a 1-1.5" spacer to take up the extra space on the shock shaft. then tightened it all up. on the front I flipped the rubber isolator from below the mount, to above on the top. then I fabricated a curved anti-dive arm from a sportster motor mount. the anti dive arm/brackets they sell on the interweb are straighter. so it didn't cost me anything to lower that one. the big frame px uses different style shocks than the smallie. but since youre interested too, I think ill tear into the px and see what I can come up with. I love everything about lowering the smallie. besides looking cooler. it took away that marshmallow ride it had, and I can now use the front brakes without it slamming the shock on the stops. that felt sketchy before. you would grab brake, dive the nose, then slam when it bottomed out then start to slow. made it almost like a delayed reaction, with some bad side effects. lets see what I can figure out. the rim color has to stay neutral. per directions from the owner. hes trying to sell it when done so black grey white or chrome. personally, I think it would look cool on red rims and whitewalls. sorta like a classic hot rod. and thanks Jay. I know you were voting for the patina look on the px too. its amazing what a little shiny paint can do. totally changed its style. it went from a rusty dingy blue jeans white tshirt look to a slacks and a button up shirt type owner/rider. those people usually have a little more pocket money too. hopefully it gets more on the sale price. |
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