devilishdesigner
Been Around the Block
Not sure what category this fits into, but I'll go with Tracker for now...
Suzuki F50 scooter. 1970's 50cc scooter of great obscurity. We scored a pair of them for around $100 off ebay. The red one had the motor in bits, whilst the blue looked complete.
Half a day of tinkering with a sticky carb and the discovery that there is no sign of an ignition or kill switch and the old girl fired up. A few quick runs up and down the drive on a plastic bag of 2 stroke and she was running and idling fine, which is when we discovered the only way to shut her off was to block the carb and starve it!
Here's what it looked like when we first got it back:
Removing the top bolts at the rear gave an indication of the intended rear ride height, but the front still gave a problem, having a massive headstem sticking up above the frame
This was attacked by cutting down the headstem, carefully removing the headtube from the forks and moving it downward, then shortening the sides of the forks to match and reusing the upper brace after some minor reshaping of the fork tops.
Some bicycle handlebars provided the basis for the handlebars, welded over solid tube through an original hole in the forks
Some end of day silliness with the original headlight
The original height of the blue against the height of the red
And the beginning of the rear suspension modifications, another subtle hardtail job ;D
The end result will be super clean, super thin, 50cc saltlake record contender
Joe had a play with the exhaust, cardboard form looked great but wasn't likely to do much expansion wise within the bie's meagre rev range:
He's also been working away on a seat pan which is coming along nicely:
Our second exhaust idea looked great too, but sat on the ground when we flipped the bike over
and a possible use for the original head badge:
Suzuki F50 scooter. 1970's 50cc scooter of great obscurity. We scored a pair of them for around $100 off ebay. The red one had the motor in bits, whilst the blue looked complete.
Half a day of tinkering with a sticky carb and the discovery that there is no sign of an ignition or kill switch and the old girl fired up. A few quick runs up and down the drive on a plastic bag of 2 stroke and she was running and idling fine, which is when we discovered the only way to shut her off was to block the carb and starve it!
Here's what it looked like when we first got it back:
Removing the top bolts at the rear gave an indication of the intended rear ride height, but the front still gave a problem, having a massive headstem sticking up above the frame
This was attacked by cutting down the headstem, carefully removing the headtube from the forks and moving it downward, then shortening the sides of the forks to match and reusing the upper brace after some minor reshaping of the fork tops.
Some bicycle handlebars provided the basis for the handlebars, welded over solid tube through an original hole in the forks
Some end of day silliness with the original headlight
The original height of the blue against the height of the red
And the beginning of the rear suspension modifications, another subtle hardtail job ;D
The end result will be super clean, super thin, 50cc saltlake record contender
Joe had a play with the exhaust, cardboard form looked great but wasn't likely to do much expansion wise within the bie's meagre rev range:
He's also been working away on a seat pan which is coming along nicely:
Our second exhaust idea looked great too, but sat on the ground when we flipped the bike over
and a possible use for the original head badge: