Fixing Fixing Fixing

As often happens here at Castle Kvernmo, we have recently run into a veritable moped apocalypse. A steady trickle of things breaking, bending, and rattling off has rendered all of my bikes unridable. (Oddly enough Rosanna's bike is still running strong with nary a flaw.) As I am currently one of the elite persons rich in time and poor in finances, I had to get a bit creative with my moped fixing approach.

First up, the Hercules. This bike is usually a fairly rock solid bike but lately has been showing the results of my daily abuse. I recently noticed that the brake pull rod was bending.

Here's a picture of the poor guy:


As you can see, the rod has been bent due to two things,
1. My vigorous and often excessive use of the rear brake
2. The lack of a proper pivot piece in the brake arm.

When the brake is pulled the rod needs to stay in a straight line and still allow the brake arm to pivot independently. The pivot piece was never on the brake plate when I bought the bike so I just went without. As you can see, it wasn't a good idea.

So, it's time to make a new piece. The proper way to do it would be to machine something out of aluminum. However, I'm trying to fix it now, not later, so I improvised. After putting around my shop for a while I found a section of brake line that had come out of my doomed Chevy van. It's sort of thick metal and I decided it was worth a shot. So I dremeled the ends and drilled a hole, and voila! a new pivot.

Before:


After:


I also worked on the Pinto a bit and got the cdi to work with lights and a horn! Check out the video for more on that...

Janky fixes from Joel Kvernmo on Vimeo.

Also, apparently I broke my stabilizator.