I Made a Bigger Motor Fit

Got a new toy recently on craigslist. A Chinese clone of a Honda SS50 that hadn't been run for over a year and had a broken sprocket hub on the rear wheel, but was all still intact otherwise.

I got it home, got it to start roughly just on the old gas left in it, and called it a night. The next day I went to the local motorcycle junkyard CycoCycle, and managed to scrounge up a close match to my broken hub, only it was cast with about twice the aluminum and looked much sturdier. After getting it fitted and installed I managed a shaky and sputtery ride around the yard with the motor jumping around under my feet.

One cleaned carb, properly replaced engine anchor bolt, fresh oil, a newly fabricated chain tensioner, fresh gas, a new fuse, cleaned fuse holder, and a new battery, and I had it running..... WORSE. Actually it was running much better, but I'd managed to lose the carb settings while cleaning it, and couldn't manage to get it idling properly. It would get up to 40MPH without trouble, but that's all it had. Not bad for about $150 invested in it including gas and oil, but I was wanting more and not wanting to mess with tuning a carburetor if I could help it.

I went online to Planetminis.com and found a nice looking 110cc motor that looked like just the trick and got it for a decent price with the carb and all pulled right off a running bike. A few days later I dropped the original motor and heaved the heftier 110 in place. Then all I lacked was finishing.

Finishing turned out to be a little more involved than I originally planned for. I had to rewire the stator plug from the original (my cheapo 12v impact wrench was fantastic for this), pulling the flywheel to make sure I matched the correct wires to the original plug. I then installed a fuel cutoff valve since the original was MIA, swapped the original motor's drive sprocket on, installed the throttle cable, and was then struck with some problems:

* No spark
* Clutch cable won't reach on new motor
* Mounting bracket hole for muffler doesn't line up
* Foot pegs won't fit between bigger motor and exhaust pipe

I wound up having to figure out the pinout for the gear indicator light, which also acted as a kill switch if the bike wasn't in Neutral when kicked over. After that was sorted I just wired the N pin to ground and wrote "ON" over the neutral light. Now I won't forget the key in there! :P

The clutch cable wasn't too hard to fix. It would have had the same amount of travel even with the right cable, it just needed to be a couple inches longer. After sizing up the situation I ground a notch in the side of a bolt, welded a nail to it, and slipped it in place between clutch arm and clutch cable. Works perfectly!

The muffler mount just needed a notch cut in it so it could slide far enough forward to meet up with the slightly longer motor and still meet up with the bracket's bolt hole.

The foot peg was a serious pain. After trying to shave down some meat to make it fit for about an hour so I wouldn't lose the proper positioning of the peg I gave up, lopped the original right peg off before it bowed up to hit the motor, and welded a new bit of steel rod sticking out while it was all bolted in place so I knew it'd have to fit cursing and burning myself with the welder the whole way. I then eyeballed the foot peg and welded it in place, putting solid beads in with it all in my vice so I wouldn't have to curse and burn myself as much. After that it slides in place great through.

Now on a test run through the neighborhood I can get it up to 50 and I'm guessing it'll make it between 55 and 58 on the open road. Once I toss an air filter on there I'm not sure if I'll sell it or keep it around and put new tires on it. It's very fun to drive and is nimble enough to almost treat like a dirt bike.

I Made Motorcycles

Well, a model of a motorcycle anyway. Gears, a ball bearing, and some various hardware bits combined to make this fine little bike. I forgot to add foot pegs and exhaust pipes, but I may go back and do that. To give credit where credit's due, I got the idea from these guys in Thailand. They're really talented. It's about 20cm (8") long.

Edit: Made this one too.

I've been making things

It's been a little while since I posted last. That's been somewhat to do with changing jobs a couple times, working between 40 and 75 hours a week, and now going to school while dealing with other stuff that life's been tossing at me like barrels down an 8-bit ramp. Fortunately for my questionably existent viewers here, I've been making things other than ends meeting as of late as well. Here's they am.

Sock Monkey:
There were far too many socks that were worn to paper thin or full of holes and they were piling up, so I decided to make a sock monkey from them. A proper and classic sock monkey calls for some basic sewing and cloth working skills and either a lot of free time or a sewing machine. Being as I don't have a sewing machine, but I do have a hot glue gun I made use of the latter to fashion and attach his various body parts. He's stuffed with socks. Daniel's more or less claimed him now so I guess sock monkey's a success!

Pit Bike Bodgery and Robbery:
A couple months ago I'd done some horse-trading with someone for a 110cc Chinese dirt bike and a lot of extra parts. It ran fantastically, but was pretty wimpy in the slowing down department. The old owner had plenty of brake gear to be cobbled together, but hadn't gotten around to putting it all together, so I did. I ground the caliper mount off of the stock small swing arm and welded it an a piece of angle iron into place on the nicer swing arm. I also had to put the brake rotor on, requiring some fastener scavenging from the extra parts bin as well, which also required me to put a bottle jack in the swing arm to stretch it wide enough to fit the rear wheel back in after prying it out. Unfortunately, after a quick spray of paint and a few days of work, someone stole the bike right out of my back yard along with a Honda XR70 I was rebuilding the motor for from the extra two motors I was given for my brother and nephew, so I never got to properly bleed and test the lines. I had big plans for franken-bikng a scooter front end and the pit bike's back end together for a pretty funky little ride. Whoever stole it better hope I don't catch them.

RABBIT HOUSE!:
The old rabbit pen has seen better days, and was probably more a danger to the rabbits than their escaping it's confines, so I decided it was time to rebuild it with some nicer materials. I went to [home improvement gigantorium] and found that they'd left me some slightly warped porch railing for 51c per ~4ft piece. Add to that a bucket of oops isle grey and a couple boxes of nails and I was all set. The pen is almost the same dimensions as the old one, about 6'x6'.

The old cage material was reused, as were a few of the 2x2s and the chain link bottom of the cage. The frame went together pretty easily, and with some scabbed together pieces the ~4' rails spanned the 6' width of the cage nicely. for the roof beam I bolted tow pieces together with a red oak scab and shingled the whole thing with corrugated plastic signs that were in a neighbor's recycle bin. I accidently made the design capable of still watering the grass in the pen (as well as any rabbits that may be within it) by laying the shingles down from the top working my way down rather than from bottom to top. Ohh well, the rabbit's don't go out when it's rainy anyway.

The door is made of the frame of my homemade rabbit pen's bottom since the pen has been replaced lately, and a couple of small eye bolts, a 2" bolt, and a nut make a latch on the inside to let you go in without fear of the door swinging open. This would undoubtedly leave the neighborhood flooding in 3' of rabbits.

Music-upon-opening Ammo Can:
I've been wanting to plant a Geocache somewhere for some time, but not wanting to just plant any boring ammo can in an out of the way place, I decided to make it so when it's opened it'll play some music. I had just such a birthday card laying around from last year, so I gutted the card of it's speaker and circuit board, soldered the contact points for the card's switch to the points on an old telco relay which had a nice leaf switch to it. This was all then glued into the side of a normal ammo can with a large plastic nub to hold the relay switch open when the can't closed. The small speaker vibrating with the whole side of the can as it's speaker "cone" really lets it get loud.

Super Spotlight:
My new (and hopefully permanent for some time to come) job is working retail and tech work for Batteries Plus here in town. This has already afforded me a couple good opportunities to snag some still functional batteries which would otherwise have been discarded. One such set was 6 lead acid batteries around the size of D cells. I decided that together they would make a great flood light power source, so I put them together and shrink wrapped the whole thing for a nice 12v, 2.5AH battery. To give it something to power I got a $10 12v, 20W garden spot light from [the large construction supply house which shall remain nameless to protect the accused] and proceeded to cut the spiked bottom off of it. The two together will run for around an hour before the light is noticably more dim and the working voltage starts to get kinda puny. Cool thing is it's as bright as a car's headlight, so I might mount it to my bike some how or maybe I'll just come up with a nice casing for it all that won't melt from the lamp's heat.

Toga:
I did manage to find myself at a toga party for my roommate's friend, but finding ourselves short on ancient grec0-roman attire, we went to the store and each got 6 yards of cloth. I got a nice dark orange. It's pretty easy to do, just sling it around your waist, throw it over your shoulder, and tie off any extra like a belt to keep the whole thing in place. Feel free to play where's Waldo with me in that photo.



Hammock:
With all that's been going on I've been needing somewhere to relax. The evenings are getting just about bearable, and with a few days of nice cold snap I decided to repurpose my toga as a hammock. Two pieces of rope with loops on the end knots tied in the ends of the orange cloth and I was all set. I've since replaced the orange cloth with some nice flannel since it's stretchier, softer, and stronger. I just slip the knots out of the ends and carry the cloth inside when I'm done so I don't have to worry about a wet butt when I go out to read or chill out.

I Made My Niece and Nephews Have Fun, and Make Things

I feel it's my duty to pass the spark of taking things apart, hoarding random interesting bits of things, and fixing things that others would simply toss to the next generation. Since I don't have kids of my own yet to pass this trait onto I practice on my brother's kids and their friends. To their friends I'm usually introduced to their friends as "uncle Ronnie, the one I told you makes all those weird things". I'm not sure how many kids I'm not the uncle of I'm uncle Ronnie to. It's kinda cool.

Anyway, on the way to work today I picked up a Razor electric kids chopper from someone's trash. The speed controller and batteries were long gone, but those are always the first things to die in these cheapie kids' rides and the drive train was still there. When the yung-uns came over this afternoon and saw this they wanted to know immediately if I could make it work and if we could do so before they left. It was already kinda late, but when my youngest niece came in and asked I couldn't say no. So I set them all to work helping to get it functional. My nephew holding wires and helping solder, his friend grabbing, stripping, and cutting wires, and my little niece testing that the beefy power switch made it go once it was all together. I used a couple mismatched, but fairly equal capacity batteries I had around for power, and we were ready to go. This was all frantic as it was already past dark and they were worried they'd be headed home at any moment.

We aired up the front tire with my air compressor, grabbed a flashlight for a headlight, and they rode it up and down the dirt road a few times on whatever power the batteries had. They had fun and I also got the chance to teach them about basic electronics, soldering (using my 40 year old 200w soldering iron), the precautions to be taken with big batteries (after shorting together the batteries in loop), and they were really having a good time trying to beat the clock and bring the little chopper to life. It's a squirrly little ride that ought to be on paved cul-de-sac rather than dusty dirt road, but it's fun none the less and I think they had more fun getting it running than from actually running it. We'll see if that changes when I get the batteries to full charge.