Well, Here We Are

I love things with wheels, especially bikes. I love to work on them. This blog is where I'm going to record what I do to my bikes. If you follow along hopefully you can laugh with me and learn a thing or two, or at least laugh at me.

My current project is something new for me because I have only worked on pedal bikes up to this point. I bought a moped... noped... scooter thing on craigslist. It's a 1980 Honda Express NC-50. A little 50cc 2 stroke scooter. When I bought it, the ad made it sound like it didn't need much work to get going, but I should have known otherwise because, ya know, craigslist.

I got a rolling heap and a grain sack of parts. At least it was cheap.

Every time I fix one thing on it, I find something new wrong with it. The piston rings fell out in pieces when I went in to put a new head gasket. When I went to clean the carb, I found aluminum shavings in the reeds. The carb was also missing a bunch of stuff too. In hindsight, it might have been better to buy a new carb. The oil injector was also missing parts. The muffler had some horrible weld job and couldn't be attached to the bike. The gas tank was full of rust and while cleaning it, I found that the window to look at the oil level leaked. It had the wrong spark plug installed. The brakes did slightly more than nothing. But it was cheap, and I wanted a project with a motor, so here we are.

So far, things I've done:

new piston rings

new cylinder and head gasket

cleaned and adjusted (correctly?) the points

new ignition coil and condenser

new spark plug and wire

added the missing parts to the carb

hooked up throttle (it didn't come with a cable)

mostly cleaned and patched the tank

sourced and installed the missing oil injection parts

ran gas/oil lines with filters

puchased and installed an exhaust/gasket

Things I need to do:

run wiring (the old wiring harnesss was melted together by someone's welding)

put in new brake pads front and rear

hook up the front brake with a new cable

put on front and rear lights

hook up the choke

Get a Helmet (it's the law here)

Things I should probably do:

New tires/tubes

Register/insure the bike

Make the turn signals work

Change the fluid in the case thing where the centrifugal clutch lives

Make the seat less likely to fall off/fall apart

Things that concern me:

crank/piston pin/bearings

piston ring size

The wind up starter. Some honda express models use this wind up rachet mechanism instead of a kickstarter and they are known to fail. I'm quite sure some jerk on the street

Where am I going to store this thing?

Is anyone going to buy this from me when I want to get something bigger/better?

I didn't put in that oil seal when I put the new rings on... I think I should do that.

Spark plug boot and wire are very chewed up because of a previous roommate's cat.

How much I've spent on parts, part of me wants to know, most of me is scared to know

Things that don't concern me:

Speedometer, I don't think this thing is going to go fast enough for that to matter. Hell, it doesn't go at all right now.

Haggard paint

Lack of fenders

Running this thing without a battery

the lack of key ignition situation (it's not like I just don't have a key, it's that there's no place I could put one if I did have one)

I've got a lot of work to go and this should be interesting so come back for more. Maybe subscribe or something. Shout out to all the Honda Express riders out there!