Grand Rapids in the HOUSE!!! Literally.

This week was F-U-N. And exhausting.
Gabe Bandit along with his friends Derek, Caleb, and Esther came to Seattle because they had a film in NFFTY.
Not content to merely attend a film festival and explore a new city, the Michigan natives decided to participate in a Grand Rapids 24 hour film festival remotely, submitting their project online.
If you're not familiar with the concept of a 24hr film fest, the idea is that participating film-making teams are given a theme, location, spoken line, and prop that must be included in all of the competitors films. Then you have 24 hrs from that moment to create a short film using only footage shot within that 24 hr period.
I tagged along and actually became the villain in the movie!

DEATHped made it's riding debut, and after a manic night of riding mopeds all over, and one narrow escape from the authorities, we wrapped filming at 9 am.
The judging for the film fest ends this weekend so once that ends perhaps I can get a vimeo file of the final product posted up here.
Derek, who acted as the Director of Photography snapped some really great shots over the course of the weekend and he graciously allowed me to post them up.





So like I said earlier, right before those crazy mid-westerners invaded Kastle Kvernmo, I finished DEATHped. I rode it quite a bit this weekend during shooting, and on Sunday I did some more fine tuning at a Mosquito Fleet fix-it day. I asked Derek to take DEATHped for a ride so that I could do a plug chop and when he returned he informed me that DEATHped had claimed it's first victim. In his words, "I was riding down 8th and it was hauling pretty good, and this little bird swooped in and it bounced off the headlight and into my visor. This is the final poop of a dead bird."

So apparently DEATHped is carnivorous.
Based on the advice of Naz and Shannon, I'm running it super rich right now, every once in a while I've gotten it to rev up high enough to actually hit the powerband and that's when things get exciting. For the most part though, it just kinda feels sluggy. Once I feel like it is broken in a little bit I'll get the jets a bit more tuned in. I think I may also switch out my front sprocket, I'm running 18 x 45 gearing right now and I'd like just a bit more torque. One thing that I need to change ASAP is the carb needs an air filter. I've heard that Gilardoni kits like to spit gas, but hooboy, my pant leg smells like I've been refining gasoline as a hobby. I walked into a bar and was asked if it was me that smelled like gas, because otherwise they were worried that they might have a natural gas leak in the kitchen. I like this filter and I'll check it out soon.
In other news, this blog is moving. Yes, moving to my other site; joelkvernmo.com. I'm trying to flesh out my site a bit more and I thought it would be nice to take my blog over there. I'll continue posting on both blogs for a little while but at some point I'll abandon this blog and continue over there.
Stay tuned for some rough cut moped footage from the 24 hr film and perhaps the finished product.

The coolest moped part I've ever made.

Well, DEATHped is finally coming near to completion. The final missing pieces are in the mail, and I am just putting the finishing touches on the bike.

About three months ago, I started visualizing what seat would look best on the bike. I wanted it to be like a cafe seat but minimal, totally unique and sturdy. I started by making a small paper mockup about an inch long. I just sort of figured out what sort of folds I would need to do to make it work. Once I had a mockup, I disassembled the little paper seat and scanned it into my computer. I traced the template in Illustrator and extrapolated it to full scale. Then I printed out the template onto a cereal box, assembled the full size mockup, and tweaked and refined ad naseum.



It's really nice to be able to set a cardboard facsimile of a seat on your bike and scope out the lines and work it out. Eventually, I came up with a design I was happy with.

On Saturday I was lucky enough to get some time with Michael Mike down at the wizard lair. That guy is super generous with his time and skills and most every amazing moped project coming out of Seattle has his fingerprints on it. I filled him in on my plan and we quickly set to work.
First I transferred my template to the stainless steel.


Then I started hacking away with an angle grinder.


The Wizard himself began fusing the metal. If you look closely you'll see that he is actually absorbing the energy of the welder into his hand and welding with his magical fingertip.




After the welding was done I spent a significant amount of time shaping the tail section and this is what I came up with.





I'm pretty proud of it.

So this leaves me with only a couple more steps before I can declare DEATHped complete and ready to ravage. I'll be tuning the carb and clutch over the next couple of days and my final little bits should arrive today (monday). All that is left is to black out any chrome, (DEATH TO CHROME!) and take pretty photos for posterity. I'm very excited.

I just have to mention one more time that I couldn't have done any of this without the generous help of Michael Mike, Phil, Haulin' Colin, my supportive wife, and probably other people that are escaping my memory.

Converting to sealed bearings

Converting loose bearing wheels to sealed bearings has always been a difficult and time consuming effort for me. But I really think that if done correctly the product is worth it. The leleu wheels that I am using have an OD of 29mm. That's a problem because the bearing sizes I want come in 28mm or 30mm.
Yesterday I stopped by the wizards lair and asked phil if they had any pipe I could turn in order to make a shim for 28mm bearings. If you were keeping track that would mean I'm making .5mm shims. That's small and probably too difficult to turn in a lathe. Phil suggested I go get some shim stock. I didnt know that this stuff existed! It's great. I was able to stop by online metals and pick up some .5mm shim stock and since it was scrap they just gave it to me for free.

Anyway, I got the shim material, cut it down with my dremel and trimmed it fit.

All in all it's been super simple and easy. I still need to use some red loc-tite to seal it in place and I need some length of pipe to keep the bearings from being pulled in on each other.


The bearings i used were 6001zz. With this setup I'll be running 12mm axles. Stoked!

DEATHwheels

DEATHped progress

I'm back from Catalina for a few days so I've been working hard on the DEATHped. Man, with a name like that, it would be a real shame if I actually died on it... anywhoodles, it's coming along swimmingly.
I started by meticulously cleaning and assembling the engine, then I wanted to see how it would look with the yellow sebacs I had laying around, and then I figured I should throw some wheels on it to check the stance, and now it's actually looking like a moped. Amazing!

I am for sure not going to use these wheels or these forks, I'm waiting to buy some black EBRs, (unless some benevolent soul wants to give me some?) and Phil is currently powdercoating some spokers for me.
Phil said that he would work on perhaps getting me my wheels this evening. Fingers crossed.

It is really nice to build a bike without rushing it. I can disassemble and reassemble things as I discover issues rather than building it with my usual, "I have to get this done tonight or I won't have anything to ride!" For example I don't want any wires showing if I can help it, so I drilled a tiny hole in the frame near the motor mount and that is where my taillight wire pops out. Another pet peeve of mine is when someone does a meticulous and beautiful pinto build and then bolts the coil right above their front wheel. Like this:
Gross. So I spent some time figuring and I managed to bolt my cdi coil onto the case nice and discretely. There is a small section of case that sticks out like a tab in-board of the flywheel. I just drilled a mounting hole and bolted it in.

And lastly, here is my motomatic N8p all bolted up. They made me this pipe way back in the day and it had gotten really dented and gnarly so last year when we headed to the Latebird Invitational I dropped it off for a restore. They did a great job. They replaced the header, angled the flange to fit a gila, took out all of the dented sections, and generally cleaned it up, as well as giving it a nice new powdercoat job. Their fit tolerances are perfect. I told them it was for a gila on a pinto frame and the mounting bracket fits just right. Also, I'm a big fan of pipes that kick up a little bit, so this thing really makes me happy.


Oh yeah, I threw those sebacs on there. I can't decide if they fit or not. I was starting to feel that when this thing is done there might be too much red and black so the splash of yellow might be a racy contrast. Any thoughts? Bear in mind that I'm color blind so most of the time my color choices are cranked to the max.

Boooooring.

Slowly but surely DEATHped Mark 1 is coming together. I spent Saturday down at the Wizard's Lair working on DEATHped.

I brought Phil my fuel tank and he quickly set to work sandblasting it to prepare it for it's eventual deathly black appearance.


Naz was welding away on Hucker Steves pipe. Look at that crack!


I was busy boring away at my engine case so it would mate oh so perfectly with my monster gila kit.

I think it came out pretty nice. This case is my trusty polini matched case that I got from Seth many years ago. It's amazing that even though the polini cylinder is pretty dramatically different than the Gila, the port matching that I will have to do to match is pretty minimal. Neat!



In other news, I got a job about three months ago. An adult job. Currently I am the Marketing Coordinator for a company called OceanGate. We provide services to researchers that want to dive underwater to depths unavailable via scuba. In other words, we have a submarine and we take people deep. 936 ft. deep.
So right now I am at the USC research campus on Catalina Island. I'll be here on and off for the next month so I'm excited to visit the Latebirds at some point.
Here's the sub!

Here I am learning how to use an ROV in the Manhaus pool.

And here is a vista we saw as we 4x4'd to the campus yesterday.

It's summertime!

I love this city. And when summer eventually arrives, Seattle is glorious.

We've been going to Gas Works park.
Matt Smith contemplated his former life as a world traveling mariner.

We had a fantastic rally. A lot of friends came to visit.

Thanks for the photo Chris.

I just got my pinto frame back from Responsible John, and boy does it look sweet.

This bike is going to look really mean. Little children will cry when I ride by and my neighbors will stare in horror as I run over their animals and the sound coming from the exhaust pipe will lay waste to all glass within one mile.
Travis says that he is going to build one just like it but with reverse colors. The only problem is that he keeps calling it Cherry Red. This is Mirror Red. Geez get it right, Travis.