Phil decided to quit mopeds and race scooters instead.

(sike, that’s not actually phil)
Thanks to Dan Kastner for the photos.

Busey did pretty good on the track. My headset started to get loose (that’s been a long running headache from the pitbike fork mashup) about halfway through, but everything else stayed solid. The event was part of the Thunderdrome series and hosted at the Gilmore Car Museum during the bike weekend. There were over 8,000 motos there, it was pretty awesome.

The track was fun, but slow and real hard to pass on. The Gilmore was nervous of people wrecking so they put in a bunch of chicanes to keep the speed down, which clogged things up. Regardless, I still had a blast and can’t wait to get back on the track.

I starting talking shop with one of the owners. I love sharing a passion for small cc vintage bikes with people. They’ve got some crazy Honda Trail builds.

So I snagged a rad set of gas shocks from them and slapped them on Scary Busey. They took a little adapting to make work. But between stealing a stock set of Puch shock bushings,

then sliding them into the bottom gas shock bushings,

and then making a fancy cut up hose clamp shim for the top bushing mount,

they turned out ship shape and real solid!

I also finished buttoning the motor up.

The final parts for him came in the mail today. Tonight he sits waiting. Tomorrow, hopefully he comes roaring back to life.

Easy buddy.

This fancy item was forged deep in the liar of Seattle wizard Michael Mike. When I picked it up he gave me some wizardly advice and suggested running dual snap rings to keep the crank from walking (those KTM clutches bring the business). So I did.

Per MM’s advice I cut the groove on the outside of the stator side bearing. This way you can run a standard 6203 bearing and have the snap ring hang out between the bearing and seal, instead of running two 6203NR’s. It also gives you a little room for error with cutting the groove.

To cut it, I used a reinforced dremel cutoff wheel and gently scored the surface back and forth. Depending on the cases, you’ll probably be able to see where the bearing sits from discoloration, giving you a nice guide. I also had an old crank with trashed bearings on it to cut around.

vroom!

Gazelle intimidation

Remove the wheel, do whatever you please to get the tire off (tools are fine to use at this point). When we got the gazelle off this Derbi had plenty of awesome blue paint, but no rim strip.

So I used a trick Peter taught me and cut up the old busted tube into a rim strip.

Huzzah!

The brake pads were all glossed over

So I sanded them with some aluminum oxide sandpaper, good as new.

Now comes the fun part. Tire wrestlin’.

The no-tools magic works by constantly squeezing the bead of the tire (both sides) into the middle of the rim so the tire is able to stretch the maximum distance. You don’t have to be stronger, you just have to be smarter. When the tire is almost on and it looks impossible, figure out an approach that stretches it a bit more. Last night Derek (who isn’t a big dude) wrestled his brand new 2.75″ Gazelles on by hand.

Now enjoy the satisfaction of knowing you manhandled your tires on yourself.

we competed in a 24 hr film competition.

the finished film

i got to see the wizards liar.

there were amazing rides.

we wrenched and ate burritos.

and greasy bags of dicks.

and had the best hosts ever.

it was one of the best weeks of my life. the fleets hospitality is second to none, and they’re a rad group of dudes to boot. thanks for everything guys!

In brief Scary Busey news, I spent a some time rekindling my relationship with him last night and jb welded my cases where I blew through. I also got my crank back from Chris and mopedcrankworks, and she’s a beauty. Premium parts and precision. I’m pretty sure I have everything I need to put him back together, possibly with a some bonus parts from the wizards liar.

I found out on my family’s vacation that rental scooters are WAY more fun than I thought they’d be.

SCOOT SCOOT.

That will not stand, man. The top ports especially. Here’s an ok photo of comparing a before and after. The right channel is mostly done, and the left is untouched from my previous case matching.

All done.

There’s a lot of slop in the cylinder stud holes on puchs. I made some ghetto brass shims to make sure the cylinder was centered and then smoothed the cylinder to case transition one half at a time.

I ended up only using the top two sizes. 9/32 inside 5/16 (or just 5/16 for m7 studs) gives you a snug fit.

Cut them while one is inside the other and they meld together nicely.

Tap them into place, file them down, and boom goes the dynamite.

Case match away.

Once I got into that, I started to see how I could take the transfers back and make the transition a lot smoother. There’s a large bump that didn’t have any business getting in the way. Half done.

SEE YA. This just need to be patched, smoothed out and it’ll be good to go.

I got a little too zealous and broke through the case wall in one of the case bolt channels. You can see it in the above photo on the left transfer. At first I was bummed, then realized it was probably better to break through now, than to be terribly close and have it cave later and have to go back and fix it. The hole is about the size of a partially used pencil eraser. I’m looking for some advice on patching this up. Will JB weld work for this? or QuickSteel? or do I need to aluminum weld that in? I have zero experience with having to patch something like this up, so any knowledge you guys can share would be radical.