Since Memorial day was closing in fast and the Pigeon was frustrating me with its lack of bolt on parts I decided to see if I could bring a little z50 back from the dead and maybe take it up north to go trail riding. I could have just took my Kawasaki 125 or Honda 350Xl, but decide that since I would probably do something stupid and break a leg or one of the bikes that I would rehab the little honda z50. So this is what I started with.
My dad picked this little honda up from some guy that stopped at the store who was just going to scrap it. It had a pretty rough life thats for sure. When it first came home I did manage to get it running but the front tire was off a lawnmower or something. If you don’t ride bikes then you probably don’t realize how bad a square tire is to ride on. They constantly want to stay flat and don’t really let you lean in corners, one on a front tire is super awesome. This one also had the much looked for option of being flat. The seat was some type of school bus vinyl wired over the original seat foam. The front left handle bar was broke off at some point and brazed back on. The carb throttle cap was also the wrong size so when it was running it pretty much had one speed and just did what it wanted to. So anyways, on to the tear down.
And then out with the motor.
When I had it all ripped apart I waxed and polished every little part. Yeah its rusty and beat but now its SHINY! Shiny rusty things are way cool.
Wooo! New parts! I ended up ordering much more then I thought I would. Got some new tires, misc. hardware, and decided to skip rehabbing the 50cc lump that was in it and got a new Lifan 70cc 4 speed from Hooper Imports. That ended up getting shipped to my house since it was 20 bucks cheaper then having it go to my work for some reason.
New parts!
Heres the shiny new Lifan ready to rock it out like China town.
Uh oh. First problem here, this will not clear the frame since it needs to be on an angle like the honda one. Also you can’t swap them out since the Lifan cover is deeper to cover the wider 12v flywheel.
Sawzalls are your friend here, just wack that extra crap off and keep going ahead.
Next issue is the new Lifan’s intake is being a pain and is too tall. It rams the carb into the frame and nothing will clear. You have two options here, cut and make it fit or buy the right parts. I did both and kind of wished I would have stayed with the make it fit hose clamp one since the fancy new intake ran the carb into the gas tank petcock and didn’t really solve anything. So save the $60 and just hose clamp the sucker unless you have to have a solid intake.
Hose clamp’s for the win!
Heres the TB part, this way with all the spacers caused the carb to hit the petcock on the tank. Weee!
Here it is again with some of the spacers removed and I put some fuel line under the rear tank mount to raise it up out of the way. Still a tight fit. I have ordered a 90 Degree petcock off ebay for a 50R that should solve this problem. I’ll keep you posted. Also note that the TB intake causes the carb overflow to rest very close to the jug. I pulled the overflow hose off cause I was scared of it melting itself to the engine and making a mess of things. Okay back to Lifan issues…
You also can’t reuse your stock Honda shifter on the Lifan. Since the flywheel cover is wider it wont clear it far enough to ratchet up and down like it should. The Lifan one will since it has a longer shaft spline mount. But it also had a heal-toe shifter that I assume was for a Honda trail 70 that it was supposed to go into. So get Mr. Sawzall out again and chop that sucker. If you don’t the heal part will hit the foot peg and you can’t shift down.
At some point the rear wheel had came off the hub and someone decided to keep riding the bike. How it even moved missing bolts is anyones guess, but they royally F’ed the rear hub up doing it.
New tires! woo! Also check out the fog lamp thats filling the headlight space and the recover job I did on the seat.
And the last Lifan issue, look at the gimpy wide kick starter. Had to replace that so I could actually fit my foot on the foot peg.
Gimpy handle bars. Thought the one was okay but after putting on the new one… Ordered a new one.
So just to recap everything, If your getting a Lifan then it will come dressed for what ever Honda bike it was intended for (prolly). But anyways, intake issues, you will have to cut some things. The throttle cable will not work with the new carb, I had to but a larger stopper on the cable end in the throttle barrel so it would not pull through. Kick starter, I didn’t have another one, probably can reuse your old one. Replace the drive sprocket. And rewiring! Woo!
Other then that its awesome. My 4 speed 70cc one runs just like a Honda, very strong and smooth. Its geared way low so it feels like your driving a semi when you quickly run through the gears. I intend to get new sprockets to get more speed out of it. It was a lot of trouble and money getting all this crap but z50’s are so much fun. I could have just bought a running one for the money I have into this one, or spent a little more and got a full on clone. But anyways I like it and saving little Honda’s from the crusher is a good thing. Now if I can just get the wiring sorted, new petcock, tank and fender it will be pretty much done.
First Day of Spring!!! Its all better from today on. First off heres a truck load of dead coyotes for your viewing pleasure. The picture is apparently from the future, some one needs to change their cameras clock.
Okay and last but not least, I have added a couple more bikes to the Silver Pigeon page. Its spring which has made them come out of the woodwork on Ebay, so enjoy.
So here we are in March now, the grounds a muddy mess, and the weather seems to have A.D.D. as it swings from freezing to raining. So last weekend I took advantage of the balmy 45 degree weather and bolted some of my new parts on the bird. To rewind back to December when I got the first panel that was missing…
So this is what the rear of the bike looked like with the sheet metal I had. The red panel was the new one I got, so you can see how funkered up the rear of this thing was. So after so ebay hunting I got the center and other side that you see on it now. And heres everything bolted on from last weekend.
Oh, and I got a new front fender as well. But sense one of the front fender mounting brackets is broke off, and the forks have to come completely off the front of the scooter to take the old one off, I didn’t put it on yet. Heres me wearing it as a hat during lunch.
So there ya go.
Chris
Hey everyone, here’s a little update on a project that the talented code master Zach and I have been working on. After looking at the Microsoft XNA development tools, thinking up some ideas, and deciding to plunge head long into the dark, what you see above is a piece of concept art for our very own Xbox Live game. Its going to be a long road ahead but its a challenge that I think we are more then capable of doing. Just a lot of good old fashion hard work. I have most of the animation frames done for the bears walk in Illustrator and Flash. Just need to get them converted to sprite sheets so Zach can start tearing it up.
Look at that! My Mac hard at work for once with its Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube keeping it company.
And on a side note, heres this thing I made. Its kind of freaky looking…
So, I realised today that in the last month and a half I have dropped a crap load of money on music. It’s a random selection of stuff too. I’ve gotten everything from The Rolling Stones to The Verve, Smashing Pumpkins to Godsmack and The Who to The Killers, plus more that I really don’t feel like typing out. But who cares about the money, everyone likes a lot of music. I recently celebrated my birthaday and am now another year older. I don’t feel any older though, kinda lame really… Also, if you are interested in Legos, pizza, epic battle scenes, stupid storylines, bad youtube videos or any combination of the above, go to youtube and check out the videos me and my cousin made. When your at youtube, search for adventures of lego pizza delivery guy and look for the one from bliss crow (my cousins account). Warning in advance, dont expect much…
Kyler
Edit: I added a youtube plugin to the site for you Kyler see the note pad after the main login screen for more info
Been a while since anything was posted on here. I blame it on winter, the cold, and… uh…. the government or something. But its time to put one last post on before the new year roles in. So here is ‘The State Of The Pigeon”
As of April:
How it looked on Ebay
Okay, and:
How it looks Today
I have got some more sheet metal for it now, and a couple of whitewall tires but its still about the same as what you see above. Some day there will be more posts here, just keep checking back after the ground thaws
As I have given up on titles, imagine that there is one there. Like I said before, the week after homecoming we got destroyed. It was bad, we didn’t even score. But who cares about crappy football teams. More importantly i got a new truck. By new i mean i’ve had it for less than a week. It’s a 1995 F-150 with four wheel drive. Its standard transmission which sorta sucks because now i got to figure out how to drive the thing without stalling in the middle of the road or getting whiplash from crappy takeoffs. It’s a little rusty on the outside but the inside looks like a brand new truck and somewhere along the line someone replace the old radio/cassette player with a really nice CD player. The four wheel drive is the kind where you have to get out and lock the hubs in but that’s cool because there’s less that could go wrong… i hope.
What’s with the psychotic laughter you might ask? My school won our homecoming game last night, and i suck at coming up with titles, but thats besides the point. Now you may be wondering why that would be such a big deal? Here’s some facts for those that dont know anything about my school’s football team. Out of the last 33 games we have lost 31. We havent won a home game since the 90’s and the last time we won a homecoming game was in 1959. In short we pretty much suck…bad, really bad. The game was cool though, it was 53 to 25 and i don’t think I’ve ever seen that big of a number on our side of the scoreboard. There were three injuries all on the other teams side and they had to call an abulence for one of the guys who was lying out on the field for 20 minutes before they took him away. There is won more game this season and we’ll probably get destroyed but that doesn’t matter because now we are unquestionably the second worst team in the area.
Building a 39′ Chrysler
