Florescent lights and EM fields. I love learning about stuff like this. So when you have a second and some spare bulbs go out dig a 6inch hole under some high voltage lines, place the bulb in it and light up the night. I can’t wait to try this.
As Klyer has just pointed out, it is the end of Summer with school kicking back in swing. Which means that this project I have started has now lapsed into its 6th month. Weee! Hurray for worthless suppliers of parts! I want to be sympathetic with these poor people I’m getting my panel from but its going on the 2 (3?) months now and I still don’t have my Pigeons parts. If it doesn’t get here in the next week or so I’m doing a full write up on it so you readers can be the judge. Every email sent and received, who I got (tried) to get the parts from, and every last drop of info I have. Hopefully this will save some other Pigeon owners a lot of wasted time and money when they try to get parts from one of the only vendors that’s out there. We will have to see though…So I here’s some pics since words suck:
Ugly shot, it looks better now.
OOoooo! What is this? Could it be a new high performance carb? Well, maybe not “high”, and maybe not “performance”, but it is a carburetor none the less. Getting sick of making gaskets for that teapot carburetor that was on it forced me to find another solution. Err.. I was b****ing about it leaking to my bud Chad and he pointed out that this was a better carb. Thanks Chad. But this little Tillitson is for some small two stroke but works fantastic on here. Just had to make a slotted gasket so the pulse pump would work and then drill out the stud holes since the ones on the motor were larger diameter. Runs awesome and sounds like it will rip off your arm and beat you with it. No throttle lag, no hesitation, just Vroom!
Here’s the flywheel cover I have to work with. Tried to patch it with aluminum sheeting but it looked really awful so I gave up on it. Happens out that a Kohler 8hp engines flywheel cover is the same depth and diameter so with a little force full mounting and brackets it will fit on to the little Mitshubishi.
There it is in all its mis-badged glory.
This about made me sick. Of course I could order another clutch from the people who advertise parts but I like to get things when I send checks in the mail, so it may not work out. The clutch for what ever reason had decided it wanted to spin on its rectangle keyed shaft. Which it did quite successfully, twice. The aftermath of the second spin made the clutch shaft explode when it expanded cracking it. Normally this is not a big deal, but the clutch also houses the kick starter ratchet gear and is kind of dependent on that. It also stripped the threads when I put the pullers on it to get it off. Oh well, more money and stubbornness will patch this up. $200 in new Comet belt clutches will be here in 2 days and I’ll have a machine shop make me some spacer shims to fit the under sized bore on the crank shaft.
There ya have it, I have more recent stuff done but no pictures yet so I’ll get that up soon. Just the wiring and clutch left before I can drive it. Body work can wait till winter. And send my side panel if your reading this please.
Schools back in, and it sucks! Someone tryed to tp the school and it was by far the worst attempt i have ever seen. Someone else has already gotten the crap beat out of them in a fight that the cops had to break up. And that was the first week. A couple weeks before school started my dad picked up a minibike, frame engine wheels and all. Of course it could never be that easy, the engine didn’t start. After several really retarded mistakes on my part, my dad figured out the problem and i got the stupid thing to run. So, like the impatient person i am, i took it for a ride. At about that time i was heading towards a bunch of trees going fast enough to hurt myself when i found out the trottle stuck and of course i had no brakes. On a side note, thats not a good time to find out you can’t find the kill switch… The good news is i somehow managed to hit the kill switch and stopped before hitting anything. That got fixed and now it actually runs pretty good.
Well no new pictures of my poor scooter for this post, left my camera at home. But words are worth, like 3 pictures or something.
The Pigeon is still being stubborn, although it does have most of the engine done now thanks to some help from a deceased Kohlor 8 horse and my cousin. I some how managed to pull most of the sheet metal off of the Kohlor and mash it on the the lil Mitsy motor in a respectable manner that actually cools the engine quite well. The Carb was also replaced since I did not like the way the little teapot carb was working. So thats in a box now and a nice little Tillotson carb took its place thanks to a drill press, grinder, and my cuz. It looks very mean, and makes the old engine just scream and wind out. I doubt that other Pigeons sound like this and rev as high and quick as this one does now. I’ll have to watch the revs now and make sure the motor doesn’t throw up its insides. Also a new clutch is on its way since mine is trashed. Some dumb arse welded a chain setup on a belt clutch and its all screwed now. So a new $200 Comet #30 Torq-A-Verter is in the mail on back order :[ .
And to round out the news my Side Panel I order is still no where to be found even though its been 2 months now. The one part I needed that I can’t make and I can’t get is still not here. I guess if worse comes to worse I could have a buddy that owns a hotrod shop Fiberglass me a mirror of the one I have, but even that one is horribly dented and tweaked right now. GARRRRGHHH!!! I feel like Charlie Brown getting pushed around and ignored. I never thought getting a stupid side panel from the only advertised Pigeon parts collector would be such a pain. Others take warning here.
Well we are almost heading into fall now, already midway through August. Just thought I’d remind everyone (the 2 people who look at this site ;P ) that summer is closing fast. So if theres something you ment to do you better get rolling on it.
Also heres one of my new favorite sites, all about dumb customers. Man customers bug the heck out of me. The service industry freaking sucks. Heres the Link.
Yeah I cheated a bit above here and spammed my own title. You see Google is a big robot that reads every bit of information on every page it happens across and puts the results of what it finds in its search database according to importance. By writing both different word sets of what you might look for I’ve hijacked the Pigeon searches and funneled them here for my only shenanigans.
But anyways enough about google abuse. The Silver Pigeon Gallery is live today and I will be adding pics to it as time and new pictures permit. I want this site to be a huge resource pool for any new, old, or up and coming Pigeon Owners out there. I was inspired to buy my Pigeon after seeing the late Marvin Wuehle’s site. Before his website I had never even heard of them and now I’m dumping stupid amounts of money into getting mine up and running again. Its been a blast though and I would not trade my Pigeon for a restored Vespa even though it still looks like it got ran over by a tractor. I just hope that a more current and dynamic site will help others with there projects since Pigeon information is few and far between.
Well here we are plowing into the early days of summer already, time seems to go by way to fast. I’ve spent most of my time this weekend out in the barn forcing parts off from other things to fit on my Pigeon so I could here the stupid thing run. The most I got out of it was about 30secs of running followed by a small fireball it barfed out. It was dark blue and about the size and shape of a glass coke bottle which I thought was cool. It just sort of hung in the air for a bit and then collapsed back up the exhaust pipe. Fire is cool.
Okay, heres a little sampling of what I’ve learned about these goofy little bikes this weekend and what parts can be modifed to work.
1. Points- I picked up a set of new ones from TSC since the old International truck set I had shoved in it before where to long and would not rotate enough in the housing to get the timing back to TDC. So the ones I got where for an Allischalmers or JohnDeere tractor. I drilled one pivot hole in the original points back plate and they screwed in and lined up great. Even fit the new condensor in there too. I’ll be doing a write up on this when I get the stupid thing running.
2. The carb- reminds me of a goofy little tea cup with Japanese writing on it. Its very odd with a detached floatbowl that just hangs out by its self like its to good for the rest of the carb. Its like an Emo carb I guess. But I tore that sucker apart and really liked how simple they are and how easy it was to break down and clean. The float had become un soldered from its meter rod mount and was just flalling around in the bowl like a drowning cat. I tried to re-solder the clip to the float but it wouldn’t stick so I swore at it for a while and finally came to my senses and put a C-clip on the meter rod to hold it into place and it works great now.
3. Sparky- I had mine sparking by itself, but only when I would spin the motor over backwards. My guess is that the magnets in the flywheel are messed up in polarity. Since I didn’t want to screw with this just yet since reversing flywheel magnets is a major ordeal I just hooked up a 12 volt battery charge and carried on. Take that flywheel!
3. Age- Every bit of information I find on the web about these, and my pigeon for that matter, seems to be from old guys. Most of the people I’ve contacted for parts and information have passed on and my scooter was a poor fellows final project. Am I the only college age person working on one? Also it seems people seem to give up when they can’t find parts for these neat rare bikes. I’ve come across 3 or 4 blogs of people who have sold their Pigeons because they couldn’t find parts. Thats pathetic! Start making things and grow a brain already. There just little air cooled motors for ****sake it doesn’t get much simpiler then that.
Anyways after I had all that crap set up and bolted on I tried getting it running today, which it would do for little spurts. A plip-ploof here and a pop-ploop there. It would only seem to fire soaked in gas, but it now had spark so that wasn’t it. It was timed right too. Tons of gas going in. I checked the cylinders PSI and got 50lbs which is low, but still it should run weak. I poped the head off it to check it out and sure enough it was soaked in gas. Drenched more like it. So now Its out on the floor waiting to go get a valve job and some new rings which should help the compersion get back up in the 120lbs range. Then it should run. *Fingers crossed*
Once agian, I realized I hadnt looked at the site in a while. I was kinda confused when it finally came up (my internet connection is sucky as ever) because it looked different. I have to say, I like the new picture at the top of the page and I cant wait to see your pigeon/wounded duck up close Chris. It’s finally summer which means I have 3 months to do absolutly nothing! Also I got a haircut which seems to have shocked everyone in my family that has seen it so far. So I no longer look like a hippie.
Well heres some more words to litter this page. I ran across this site where this fellow mixes video clips to make President Bush sing songs, also there are some other political figures mixed in as well. Its hard to listen to Bush’s own words as they hammer out U2’s Bloody Sunday, brings a lot of problems to light straight from the horses mouth.
Well Just another kick to the websites a## to keep it rolling. (I would swear like a sailor but out of respect to family that reads this I will refrain.) So far this weekend sucks, sucks bad. Its been one of those weeks that you do everything out of respect of other peoples wishes. Which isn’t bad and I don’t mind it most of the time. But for whatever reason people have been riding me particularly hard the last few days. I don’t try to not help out and be disrespectful, but I’m just a loaner who would much rather be left well alone then having to follow orders that someone else thought up. If you think its a good Idea then act on it, don’t point and give the responsibility to me and then get pissed off when I say no. I mean what the hell? Anyways…
Got the powerbook rocking out and running. Took 5mins of harddrive swapping to get her up and going and it took off on the first try. Full of grayscale fun it is! The harddrive I used was pulled from a dead 160 that I bought at Michigan State University’s salvage store so it was loaded with awesome excel docs on moth infestation in apple trees. The dates started in September 1992 and ran up to 96 or so. But it was a trip just to see all the stuff on it like Word and Excel Ver. 2. I’m going to pull em off and add them to the download section when I build it. Good stuff.
Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people, but I got the pistol so I’ll get the Paso’s. Yeah that seems fair.
Zap Zap Fizz
