living in the land of Derbi

i’ve been real busy. sold the hobbit, no more hondas. from here on out it’s derbi, yamaha, and minarelli. for now. blog name change soon to come.

gettysburg ride was real fun. i especially had fun having a faster 65cc derbi than brian.

flattrack was a big success. look out for lots more coming soon.

here is my brother Dan jockeying the safari:

dalanna and i successfully conceived the very first real live human bean about 7 months ago, so that’s been keeping me pretty busy lately.

otherwise i still have a million 2 wheel things happening:

completely reinvented gold safari, dirt track style, V1LKS big boy
derbi still ripping as always
building monster rd350 engine, 250 stays for the winter.
rd200 acquired for sometimethisyear rebuild for wife bike
disassembled, painted, rebuilt suspension and am re-assembling dt250
bought a 97 yz125
MAYBE building a dt400 flattracker on my it250 frame

i’m going to miss the pittsburgh rally this year, it was always my favorite. enter sentiment.

i’ve been busy. long time no post…wordpress wasn’t loading right on my computer and all the sudden it’s back so here i am.

hobbit is 98% done. IT RUNS. STRONG!! i had a really weak spark because of a bad coil, so i just decided to bite the bullet and buy the HPI and it’s golden. took it for a run up and down the street and it’s FAST. i’m happy to have the satisfaction after such a long build.

dad had a great idea for adjusting the rear suspension. it was a little too low with the motor mount set back so far, so we made brackets with adjustable height settings for the rear shocks.

moved the rear end up about an inch. perfect.

by tomorrow i’ll have my rear wheel completely rebuilt, laced, and trued, and all i need is a new belt and i’m in blast city.

i need to finish the seat.

in the meantime i’ve been keeping the faith, but translating it into something a liiiitle bit bigger. my new summer love:

1975 RD250. 2 strokes to the wind

moped madness tomorrow at rob k’s ride.

after getting everything back from powder, i’ve been itching to get it all together. there are still some details that will inevitably push back the fire-up date to a couple weeks from now, but after today a good chunk of it is out of the way.

cleaned and regreased all bearing and contact points with the gooey red good stuff

while i was doing other things, the tank was tossin back some evaporust. she’s clean as a whistle now.

the hobbit athena stud holes are way bigger than m6.

have you ever seen torque ratings for m6 vs m7 before? it’s a no brainer. 7.8 vs 12.75 foot pounds. that’s almost double.and i have the m7 studz so they’re goin on.

of course everything else will require some modification as well..

drill and tap the case

drill the head

i’m using this hobbit head, decked and modified by graham motzing, until i can get a source for welding cast aluminum so i can get my derbi flat reed head setup properly for the hobbit. but he did great work. see:

so all in all, lots got done, and LOTS more still to do, but it was a good day.

this still gives me a boner and i’ve been looking at it all day:

that’s all you get for now. thanks for tuning in to this weeks episode, i’m your host haldehumanyouneed, see you next time

hobbit frame parts have been at the powdercoaters for 3 weeks now..it’s killin me, because it’s all i need to put everything together and RACE IN JUNE.

in the meantime..bought a 50v for 200 bucks down the street. i’ll finally have a nice looking stock (even better..variated) moped that i’m going to leave relatively untouched. new tires, a 15.15sha, and some mild porting is about all i’m gonna do and i’m stoked on that.

it ran with about 5 mins of lovin, but the tank is a terrible, terrible mess of rust, so for the past 3 days i’ve been soaking it overnight in a vinegar/citric acid solution that’s doing a pretty great job of cleaning it out in a manner safe for the environment and safe for the existing good metal in the tank. by tomorrow it should be rust free and clean as a whistle. here’s a few shots of hosin it down today

at some point in it’s life an owner installed a small pulley on the face of the variator with a notch in it for a knotted rope. i tried it with about 6 feet of rope and it fires right up. AWESOME! and he was smart enough to leave the center open to remove the variator nut and/or grease it.

down at the cycle shop i noticed this box sittin on the shelf. yamaHAHA.

more hobbit news coming soon

thanks to all of the bandits for organizing and executing wb3. 14 hours there and 14 hours back in the burritobego, 300 some mopeds, 3 hangovers, 1 moustache, and zero beans wrecked.

i met a lot of excellent people

went face to face with “quatto” of “the internet”

blasted hard late at night trying to find nacho bar and got caught by sambo. acr rides fast

lost it all on a few hard rounds of cee lo

put in about a hundred orders of double ribs, double sauce, celery on the side

received more text messages in one day than i ever thought possible. thanks maggie.

got soaking wet in pursuit of a burrito.

oh and the metal poonies pooned out.

DIDN’T TAKE ANY PICTURES cause there’s gonna be a billion on the internet any minute now anyway.