BAH! Spent the whole morning yesterday untangling a huge rats nest of magnet wire, then wrapping it onto the peugeot coil core, then installing the coil and trying to get life out of it… nothing. bummer. It has continuity and measures about 5 ohms of resistance. This seems kinda high to me, i’m shooting for basically a slightly hopped up replica of a stock puch coil which measures 2 ohms.

I talked to some EE’s today at work about coil theory, i guess the EMF or whatever it is that moves electrons in the wire of the coil, will be forming a rotational force (kindof like a torque) around the axis of the core. I knew this already and it makes sense, but i hadn’t thought much about it. That means that the smaller diameter of the core, the more current and less voltage, which is not what i want, i think, because i’m looking for high voltage and low current… although they are related by resistance in the HT coil primary winding. This is all very confusing.

Bottom line, i need to re wrap the coil, but this time maybe go slower and do a more orderly job of wrapping the wire. I dont think the direction matters, but who knows. I grounded one side of the wire to the core itself and ran one side to the High tension primary phase (along with points/condenser). then grounded the high tension to the motor and tried to measure VAc with the points held open. Nothing. Shoot, i would have hoped to at least see a little juice.

I really need an o-scope or maybe just a ‘not 3.99 harbor freight’ DMM… I’m starting to think I’m a bit out of my league with this project, but seriously, how hard can it be, its just a coil of wire around a steel core, right?

Hopefully i can do more ‘spearmintin this weekend.

So the last couple weeks have been a real mess. Not much time for moped fun, mostly moped work. I’ve done quite a few custom heads, and finally shipped out some one-off parts that I’ve been designing to see how well they work and if it is something worth putting into production, but other than that things have been super boring.

Its been probably more than a month since i was able to update this last, finals for fall quarter killed me pretty bad, then it was two weeks of working and driving all over the midwest to hang with bandits for tanks’d’giving

This guy is great… there are very few things that i would drive 16 hours to attend for 12 hours, but campfires and garage bullshitting with the bandits is always worth it. The narrow window between finals week and thanksgiving break allowed me to attend this one with a clear conscious knowing i hadn’t violated my ‘no rallies during school’ policy that has so far kept me from getting any moped-related F’s. woo-hoo!

The next weekend saw me back up in the frozen northland, visiting the family in Eau Claire. Its always good to be ‘home’ especially when you come from such a warm familiar hallmark-esque town such as the Eau C.
Plus 2.50 mixed drinks and $9 pitchers dont hurt. The Joynt and GI are two of my favorite bars in the world, miss them lots.

I finally got serious about ironing out the bugs in the puegeot, the cold weather has aggrivated the wierdnesses and keeping it outside really hasn’t been very good for it. I finally pulled the coil out last weekend and cut off the windings, so now i’m committed to re-winding it. I got the drill-mount jig ready to go and found some 24ga magnet wire. Trying to learn something about fluxes and potentials and all that crazy physics (why is it i’ve had years of these classes and cant do anything practical with them!) right now to have a better idea of how much to wrap. The ‘more is more’ school of thought has occurred to me, but i really need this thing to get me to and from work so i want to get it right the first time. Walking/biking/bumming rides from the GF is getting old quick.
I’ve also been thinking a lot lately about needles and atomizers and bing carbs designed for piston port engines. I’ve modded the needles a little bit to make up for porting stock cylinders, but i’ve never ran a bing on a reed motor. It could be some of the wierdness i’m experiencing is related to all that atomizer/needle business being all wrong. I gotta get the coil fixed to be able to tell though.

Also, the stupid pipe which has been cracked and poorly spot welded onto the nut itself for 3 months now… gotta seal that up. machined a little adapter thing that will weld to the old pipe and give it a nice new machined (100x stronger) lip to securely bolt into. That might take care of some problems.

Thats about it for me. oh yea cranks are official. thanks a million to everyone who voted for us, hopefully we wont embarass y’all by acting like a bunch of nerds. oh wait we ride mopeds, why is that cool again? also, does anybody besides a handful of members on the coasts who are in MA for strictly social reasons, really care whether or not mopeds are cool? I’m happy with the members forum joking about us being the ‘kids at the magic table’ of moped army. I think moped army should be about the kids at the magic table. I wasn’t really one of them because i have no patience for card games but i’ve been to my share of drug fueled LAN parties and we were having hella more fun in high school than the ‘drunk-in-a-backseat-trying-to-feel-up-a-passed-out-cheerleader’ set.

And while i’m ranting:
Also, Four… anyone who is bitching should blame the lawyers and politicians who give them power to sue over stupid things like underage people drinking way too much and shooting themselves in the head. Thats what killed four, not the governments or alcohol control boards, the company was afraid to sell the product because of a lawsuit and fear of more lawsuits. The same thing that happened to Sparks (RIP).
Any time you cheer lawyers ‘sticking it’ to big awful corporations, remember those corporations are in place because they are making a product people want. Lawn darts, hot coffee, blackouts in cans (or bottles as they have been traditionally served). Irresponsible, opportunist and unethical Lawyers screw the pooch for all of us.

Ach… i’m too hostile to be typing tonight, back to the grind.

Batavus go-fast parts are in testing, look for some cool stuff soon.

2 quick things:

1) I have some heads for sale on Moped Army buy/sell

Aftermarket ‘treats’ Hi comp 50 and 70, $25 shipped. The 50 is in perfect cond. The 70 was a little beat up but i re-faced it on the lathe.

Batavus M48 hi comp 50 cc. I think i decked this about .025″. They can go a lot further, but this is definitely a noticeable gain especially on the upper midrange where these things have no power whatsoever.

#B) Thanks so much to everyone voting for the Cranks this round of MA branch review. Two handsome and fabulous Mosquito Fleeters even put us in their blogs. The warm fuzzies are just flying around the interwebs, getting stuck in the nooks and crannies and in my butter There are a lot of REALLY AWESOME GANGS applying for MA Branch Status this year and we Cranks are so honored to have the chance to apply. Thanks for all the kind words and supports MA, hopefully we’ll get in and can continue spreading the love and warm fuzzies.

See you midwest cats in louisville at thanksgiving!

Seeing as Cristophe put up some sketches of far off projects (maybe his isn’t very far off) I guess its ok for me to show you what i’ve been doodling when i should be doing my homework.

Maybe recent posts on the forum will tip someone off as to what this is… I’ve been thinking a lot lately about finally building a top tank. MB5 or maybe CBR125 forks, swingarm (monoshock) wheels and a motor to make it worth it. Something I could practically and reliably ride on the highway or race on some of the local underground TT races. I love the idea of using scooter parts, especially variators so i can fix the engine. I definitely get off on the engineering and pioneering aspect of this kind of thing, and it would be a blast to build my own engine, do some finite element analysis (a class which i am taking and loving the crap out of right now) and have a crankcase CNC machined from billet. Send out for some heat treating… the works.

Who knows if anything will ever come of it, but it never hurts to dream. Maybe Project ‘MOPED FACTORY PHASE 2: Return of the Profits’ will net a little extra walking around money while leaving me with some spare time. Ha yeah right.

Ugh, i’m obviously not a graphic designer, and aside from being able to slang HTML reasonably well, i’m not a pro website ‘make-look-gooder’ kinda guy, but the colors and format and stuff on this blog are really gross and make me not want to read it myself.

so i made some changes, might actually look worse now, but who knows. I should just have a blank page up with some text, but i’m too lazy/busy to even do that.

i’m machining heads and making parts like crazy this week, trying to correct the proportion of internet mopeds to real life mopeds. hopefully by next week some new stuff will be in stock at treats, or at least re-stocked… sorry to everyone who has been waiting on goodies.

In other words, the Peugeot is running well, finally! The last time I blarged it was way off, but turns out not so much really. Four stroking in the midrange had me dropping the needle all the way down lean. The bike was trying to tell me something was wrong because it kept puking out the throttle cable. Finally in an act of desperation I tried putting the needle medium-rich and now it is running beautifully.

I moved the timing a couple degrees off Shaw’s suggestion of 15-17 BTDC, which might be wrong now giving me lousy low end, but who knows, I did port the cylinder pretty aggressively, plus I haven’t tuned the clutch or the variator yet.

Here’s how she’s sitting right now.

From Puegeot

The pipe clearance is dead on.

From Puegeot

The porting was strictly ‘seat of the pants’… I stayed pretty conservative because this is supposed to be getting set up for my girlfriend, but stock porting on these is pretty weak. I figure I can make up the loss of low end by tuning the clutch /variator, because right now when that clutch grabs it almost stalls the bike.

From Puegeot

Yep yep, pretty good stuff. Gonna be gettin’ smashed this week, Wednesday I have 2, 2 hour midterms that are going to crush me. I probably have at least 10-15 hours of learnin’ to do by then. Maybe thursday and friday i’ll finally be able to dig myself out of this hole and make some magic happen. New developments on the Moped Factory front are in the works, but i’m pretty much broke so it is making purchasing raw materials difficult/impossible.

School is kicking my ass.

The maxi blew out the brass bushing on the end of the crankshaft (after 15-20k miles of abuse) and for some reason i cant seem to break the counter-shaft nut off to get at it. So i’ve been riding the peugeot, which is running better but still really crummy. Dead spots all over the power band, very little power. I ported the cylinder a little bit just opening the exhaust and eyebrowing the transfers, which pulled up the top end but now my low end really sucks. Its jetted at about an 80, with the needle all the way lean, and running really wierd.

I think its definitely time to re-wind the ignition coil. Shaw suggested i just cut off the outer windings, which would probably work well, but i’m going to kick it up a notch while i have everything apart and re-wind it with heavier gauge wire and maybe a few more turns. Hopefully that will solve all my problems, but who knows. I’m not sure what stock compression is in these, but it feels pretty good. I might try milling the head a little bit, but its not high on my list of priorities.

I needed to take a break from homework a couple nights ago so i made this… pretty much sums up what my life has been about the last 3 or 4 weeks.

From saltyfest

I remember being a kid and really hating fall. The beginning of school, the end of summer, weather getting cold. A real drag. Lately this has been changing for me, I really have come to love fall. Dry air, a chance to wear all my snazzy sweaters and cold weather duds, and finally camping without having sweaty sleeping bag stuck to you.

From saltyfest

Last weekend was truly the best of fall in wisconsin. SaltyFest 2 was all that makes mopeds great, with good friends, cheap booze, beautiful country riding and, oh yeah, 100s of cars getting smashed. Not enough you say? How about this FREAKIN JET CAR!

From saltyfest

Oh yeah, its melting two cars stacked on top of each other. MELTING THEM! They dont do this in france, son! Only one country has figure 8 BUS RACING!

From saltyfest

Figure 8 Trailer racing! Some crazy dude jumping a ford tempo off a moving ramp at like 60 miles per hour. THIS IS THE USA BABY! Where’s my bruce springsteen when i get all jacked up on america ‘n stuff.

Christine and ‘her girls’ got radical on some shots!

From saltyfest

We drank like 20 pitchers, or maybe more like ten but it was a lot. Oh yeah, fireworks too. Super rad weekend, thanks again Salty!

Awesome wednesday night ride last night…. well not super awesome because I’m still pretty sick, and was being kinda a party pooper, but the puegeot finally made its Wednesday debut and was cooking along pretty well, definitely keeping up with the pack. Its really hard to get a feel for how fast this bike is because it is so quiet and doesn’t really rev out or have the raw torque i’m used to from my maxi. The engine is eerily quiet at full speed, which is probably somewhere in the upper 30’s.

It should have a lot more in it with proper tuning. I’m also not sure what the exhaust port looks like in these things stock, but the way it dies on the top end, i wouldn’t be surprised if it was pretty restricted. Seeing as most accounts have them doing about 35 all bone stock, i’ve probably got a fair bit of tuning to do before its running at full potential.

In other news of awesome, the Sachs is running. I spent about an hour on it yesterday. The spark was weak and intermittent so I poked around a little bit and found that the internal coil unit was way too far away from the flywheel. I popped the flywheel off and used my masking tape trick to get the coils crazy close for maximum magnetic fluxin’. There is no flywheel key in this because i got it from crazy euro kids who dont believe in that sort of thing, so the timing is kindof a guess. There are timing marks on the flywheel but who knows if its in the right place. Either way everything looks really good and its now blasting out a fat blue spark.

True to form for this awesome kit, it fires up halfway through the first kick. Even with a massive air leak due to a missing manifold bolt it popped right to life. For some reason the chain i took off it is way too short… cant imagine how that happened seeing as it should be the same exact gears and motor from 1 speed to 2 speed, but somehow i’m about 7 links short so i decided to go ahead and put the tomos rear sprocket on. At first glance these looked compatable, but trying to fit them i found the tomos mounting bolt holes are a smaller diameter pattern- crap!

Since this is a fairly important part, i dont really want to fudge it so i think i’m going to rotate the sprocket 90 degrees and drill a whole new bolt pattern using the indexing table on the mill. I might also upgrade to a slightly larger bolt (maybe SAE rather than metric) because the little cast nubs inside the hub that are supposed to hold the nut when you tighten the bolt are all ground off from having changed this sprocket many times. All they do now is prevent the use of a socket wrench to hold them.

Either way, a productive day. Not sure if i’ll have time to get both the puegeot dialed in (including switching out handlebars) and finish buttoning up the sachs all in one day before Saltyfest this weekend, but it looks like this chain/sprocket thing is going to dick me… oh well, looks like i’m moving the release date on the sachs back to bombourbon run. That will give me time to design/build the ultra-luxo-cruiser long seat and modular luggage system i’ve been fantasizing.

This pipe has tempted every Peugeot owner since it came up on treats and 77 a couple years ago. Its unreasonably cheap, looks like it should mount with minimal complications, and from the pictures appears to be a halfway decent shape for stock-ish bikes. The scary part is that there is almost no information. I got my first Pug a couple weeks ago, and nobody could say for sure ‘I’ve ran this, its good’ besides somebody saying Fred (all your moped are belong to us) had a couple bikes running mid 50’s with them, kitted.

So after a couple days of homework, i took the plunge and invested the 45 dollars in it. When it showed up I measured it. Here are the measurements:

Faco Dimensions

It looks to be about the same as a puch proma GP, maybe closer to a Jamarcol.. never measured one. The only dimension that is really wrong is the convergent cone. This one has a sharp taper and is only 4″ long. In theory, that should result in narrow powerband that shuts down abruptly, not exactly what i’m looking for on a stock bike.

The other thing i noticed right away were some suspicious-looking spot-welds right in the belly section of the pipe. Since i knew i wanted to build an integrated silencer and i wanted to re-do the convergent cone, I figured i might as well get to hackin’ to see whats up with those spot welds.

I also mocked up the pipe on the bike and found out that the mounting brackets are too short. The flange wouldn’t sit flat, and the belly of the pipe was hitting the little nub that holds on the flywheel cover. Might be designed for a knock-off of the puegot with a CDI stator, or something like that. Either way, it needs about 9/16″ added to each of the mounting bracket arm thingies.

After chopping the pipe in half i found this:

From Pipes

Oh man, that sucks, not only is it almost impossible to remove without chopping a huge chunk of the belly section out, but it is most certainly a major restriction. It pretty much defeats the entire purpose of an expansion chamber and turns this into a stupid looking muffler that doesn’t muffle much. If I didn’t care, i would probably just cut out the inside of this with a torch or something and weld the pipe back together as it was, and slap an aftermarket silencer on it, but i like skinny long pipes for stock bikes, and this looks like with a little work it could be really awesome.

So i cut out the restrictor, and lost most of the belly section of the pipe. In order to get the integrated silencer to clear pedals and stuff, i had to cock it out so i beveled the cut a bit outwards and welded in a new chunk of belly section, a bit longer than necessary. I formed a cone out of some sheetmetal for the convergent cone, and welded that to my new stinger, which was drilled for perforation. The new convergent cone is a bit longer and has a larger stinger outlet, hopefully giving the effect of a longer duration power band.

I test fit the pipe, and now the angled belly section was hitting the little nub on the stator where the rubber tab bolts on. Easy fix- put the pipe in a vise and bend the header and all the mounting tabs over, so now the pipe is tipped down a bit on the outlet side. The stock mounting brackets should do the trick now also, because i dont have to drop it down to clear that nub anymore. The muffler has to come back up to clear the 2.25″ gap between the pedal and the kickstand, so I welded the cone back into the belly section tube with a slight up-kick. I’ll have to put a turn-down or something on the end of the stinger to keep from greasing my rear wheel but no biggie.

I’ve also gone to a smaller muffler canister, 1_3/4″ tube instead of 2.25 to clear the pedals a bit more easily. The sound dampening might not be as good, but it will still be better than those proma circuit exhausts.

From Pipes

As of now, its mocked up and tacked together. I’ll test-fit it tonight. I’ve hooked up a 14mm bing carb with a shim to the stock intake, reeds. Hopefully this will have things running well enough for tomorrow night, and we’ll be able to do a little shakedown before grand rapids.

UPDATE 8/19:
Mega boner kill, Caite and I had a serious talk yesterday at lunch and decided we should probably pay the power bill instead of going to Grand Rapids. It would be fun, but both the Sachs and Puegeot are in the early stages of tuning and probably not rally-ready, we’re both broke, and I have a huge backlog of work to catch up on from summer vacationing too much at the beginning of the month. Maybe if my paycheck comes in tomorrow and is huge, i’ll hop in someone’s van at the last second, but its doubtful.

The good news is that the pipe fits perfectly. It variates perfectly through the gap between the pedal and kickstand. The bike fired up on the first kick, and revs out like a cross between a wounded cougar and a chainsaw, but something is keeping it from idling, possibly timing, possibly something having to do with the super random assortment of bing parts that i turned into a carb. The pipe is amazingly quiet, like, quieter than a tecno estoril, quiet.

The fan wasn’t working in the workshop yesterday (again) so between a kinda-iffy bing needle and lots of exhaust fumes i couldn’t get things dialed in before i asphyxiated myself. Pictures and final tuning results later tonight, maybe I’ll get the sachs cabled-up and assembled a bit too.

Update 8/23:
Finally got this thing running pretty well after replacing the condenser. Small job turned into 2 hours of beating on a flywheel with a hammer because i didn’t have a peugeot puller. Damn. Its running a lot better, but now it seems rich. Its running a 70 jet in a 14 mm bing, which would be huge for a stock/piped puch, but its really bogging out bad on the top end. Methinks timing might be way too retarded at 1.65, or maybe it really is sucking in that much air. The variator is also pretty much useless with the current weighting because it variates way under the power band of the pipe. That needs to be fixed as well. More later

Bonus: the sachs is fully cabled and almost ready to run, the shifter cable is perfect but it keeps slipping off, i’ll have to do something about that.

Update 8/24:
Awesome success last night, finally got things running perfect-o, blasting right up to a solid 25 then slowly climbing to about 35… meh, sounds like those tiny little flippy-flappies are choking me out. it four-strokes like a mother when it revs out on the stand…. yep, restricted reeds, indeed.

luckily my patron saint, blaze, lent me some nice generic black plastic reedy things, until i can get some thinner gasket paper and chop up my flap-holes. frabjulous!

maybe wednesday i can duck out of work early and finish the sachs, it is so painfully close right now. shifter, clutch and everything seem to be working good. still have to find a plug for my voltage regulator chinese scooter special, and do a tiny bit of rewiring for the 12v system. oh yeah and the pipe needs a little persuasion as well.