Topic: It happened again!!! The 2015 PseudoMoto "Scrapper 24" $500 challenge

[Tugboat]

Wow those are way too nice for our scrappy machine! If we were doing it up for real, I'd get those in a heartbeat.

[Tugboat]

Well the bike is still down in Alabama getting some finishing touches. We had hoped to get it back in Nashville this weekend but some parts got lost in the mail and their replacements won't arrive until Monday. I got the bike registered and (hopefully) titled. In Tennessee it's really easy to title a bike as long as it's 30 years old or older and/or worth less than $3k. As long as the VIN doesn't come back stolen I'll probably have the title in my hand next week. Got a plate for it though! Made a mount for it & the little LED tail light. We have another with a red lens we're going to use.



I cleaned the tank with Evaporust & lined it with half a Caswell kit. It had a big hole in the side under the chrome covers, so I just put some tape over the hole and let the tank rest on that side after swirling it around for about 20 minutes. Taped up all of the welded seams - only a couple of small leaks that were filled. Nice welding by my partner evidently. Should've taken a "before" pic but didn't. It was all brown inside but there wasn't anything rattling around or anything. This is during:



Flipped it over to get the top, since it was leaking out the bottom


After:



Big hole


Taped seams



After the Caswell treatment it basically looks like the "after" pic but shiny. The epoxy likes the extra surface area that some rust can provide, so it doesn't need to be spotless inside... just not flaky. The hole sealed up nicely.

In the meantime he has added an oil cooler by welding a tab onto the frame and attaching it there. We're still waiting for the adapter plate that goes on the side of the head - got lost in the mail.





Got the headlight mounted using a butter dish. It's super bright!





Reg/rec will go in the air filter hole.


Coil will go in the intake tube


Battery is for a security system, I think.


Bicycle speedo


Getting closer!

[Tugboat]

Got it out this past weekend - 63+mph! Still some little bits to fix but I'm hoping to have it back in my possession this weekend. The oil cooler adapter plate got lost in the mail so we're waiting on another one before we can hook that up.

[strynboen]

nov you just need this Honda vings...(vas on my cb 77)

[Tugboat]

Oh man that's super cool!!! We're gonna make some custom badges for the tank for sure.

[Tugboat]

Turn signal switch is our kill switch. R = Run.

[grcamna2]

Tug,
How far can you go at a steady 60 w/ that little bike  ? you'll be lying down flat 

[Tugboat]

Whoa! Gotta be careful with grabbing a handful of throttle in first, I guess.


Oil cooler has been hooked up. We've also hooked up an aux headlight that will go where the stock speedo would go. This serves two purposes: it throws a good 30 feet beyond the regular headlight, and is there in case the (other) cheapo Chinese LED light goes out.




Headlight bucket is full of wiring for the LED.



And here is the Vapor electronic speedo we're using. Had to epoxy the rare-earth magnet to the hub, then drill/tap the brake hub to hold the sensor.





That's about it for the build, kids. We're waiting on a 40-tooth sprocket to come in from England. The current one is 45t and we think that 18/40 will be the sweet spot. We've got a 17t front too that we might use for the heavier guys. We also picked up a windshield on ebay for $10 that we may or may not use. Bike will be back in Nashville this coming weekend for test rides. As it stands, we'll be coming in just under budget: $496.33.

We have our route chosen too. I don't want to say too much about that though until later.

[Tugboat]

And here it is in all its scrappy glory. Got it out for some road tests this past weekend. Motor is really strong, and cruises well at 50-55mph. Max power @ 7500 rpm, so we'll try & keep it there the whole time. Seems to make it up hills okay, but we think it's still running a little lean. Currently has 95 main (came w/ 85) so we'll bump it up to 97.5 or 100 & see what that does. We dropped a new back sprocket on and that seems to keep the revs lower - was a 45t, now 40t. Vapor speedo/tach thing works great! LED tail light is really bright, as is the headlight. Handles like a scooter.

[grcamna2]

tug,
it'd be faster w/o that flat windshield.. how many gears does it have ?

[Tugboat]

The windshield is pretty small, actually. Only comes up to my chest when I'm on the bike - good for keeping wind off you during the chilly (50 degree) night. I doubt it's having any significant effect on our speed. In fact, we're dialing it back a little by only doing 7k rpm the whole time instead of pushing it to the max. Anyway, we'll probably take it off during the day and snap it on at night.

Motor is a 4 speed w/ clutch.

[Tugboat]

And just like that, we've gone from 9 teams competing to 8. These guys bought and fixed up a 1980 CB125S, but somehow never checked the compression on it until two days ago! It was like 50 psi. How is that possible?! That's a bummer for sure - I'd really hoped that all teams would at least start, and hopefully finish! But hell, at least it's not us (knocks on wood).

[grcamna2]

And just like that, we've gone from 9 teams competing to 8. These guys bought and fixed up a 1980 CB125S, but somehow never checked the compression on it until two days ago! It was like 50 psi. How is that possible?! That's a bummer for sure - I'd really hoped that all teams would at least start, and hopefully finish! But hell, at least it's not us (knocks on wood).

The good prep and work your team put in along w/ the required 'set-up' will get you to the finish line;that's a bummer for the CB125S,I like them.

[Tugboat]

The results: the winning team beat the 2nd place team by only 13 miles!

So seven teams showed up to race on Saturday morning:
1982 Suzy GN125


2008 Yamaha Vino 125


1980 Honda CB125


2004 Honda CRF100


1982 GN125


1984 Honda Aero 125


And of course us.




We did a 19.2 mile odometer check to see how accurate everyone's odometers were. They were all off slightly, and in a race like this where everyone is essentially running the same size motor, it's going to be really close and the "mileage factor" will matter in the end. Ours was 1.010.

LeMans start! Here we are, waiting for them to say GO! right at 12 noon.


We were last out of the gate. My buddy Derek from Huntsville had spotted a little fuel dripping from the side of the tank he'd welded.. the little nipple he welded on as the crossover was from a brake line and was a little smaller than the stock one, so he put a 2nd zip tie on it.. no more fuel leak.

It's 7.7 miles from the shop to the bottom of our 28-mile loop, but you have to cut through town so it took a little while to get out there - maybe 20 minutes. I beat the other guys out there and did a loop. Once they got to the Walmart parking lot that would serve as our home base for the weekend, I swapped with the 2nd rider and off he went. Here I am, waiting for him to come back past.


Sweet digs! Derek hooked us up with another buddy's 30' camper. Art, the 2nd rider, came in after 2 laps saying that the bike had gotten really buzzy. Turns out the upper motor mount bolt - original to the bike - had broken. We took the lock & regular washers off, put some red locktite on the remaining threads and had just enough meat to get a nut on there. Another team member ran up to Tractor Supply and got us another bolt, which we replaced after 1 more lap.




We found a nut had spun off the exhaust stud, so we replaced that. Also had to fix this - Derek had welded this on to keep the back tire from rubbing on the center stand, and it had broken loose. Had to hold it down using zip ties.


The bike was running 300+ degrees, and we thought it might have been due to the huge front fender not allowing air to get to the head. So we cut the fender to let it breathe.


Around 3p, Derek - the lightest of our crew - hopped on and was screaming: doing the 28-mile loop in about 22 minutes. At some point we noticed that the headlight wasn't working, and it wasn't the fuse, so we did some electrical magic and had it running directly off the lighting coil, as opposed to the battery. Kept the light on until we could check it out at check-in.

At around 5:30p, I hopped on and rode back into town for the first of three check-ins. We changed the oil and rejetted from 100 to 105. We also found that a soldered connection on the lighting coil on the stator had broken, and that our little alarm system battery had fried. We removed the stator, soldered it back and reinstalled it. Luckily, Batteries Plus was open until 7p, so we threw the bad battery back in (to serve as a load on the system) and sent one of our team members over there to grab a new one. We had a $50 repair budget to use during the event, and this cost us $30 of that.

The score so far. Ram Jam II with 260.3 miles.

[Tugboat]

On the way  back out I noticed that the bike would only pull me around 55mph (indicated) - downhill! Seems that the 105 main jet was too rich, but we'd forgotten to grab the 100 that we'd taken out back at the shop - so we just had to deal with it until the midnight check-in/pit stop. Again, I beat the rest of the crew out to the Walmart, and once they got there they called me in to deal with the headlight that had gone out - again. I ran another lap without a headlight while it was still light outside, and when I got back they had devised a rig to hold another aux light which was powered from a separate, small battery. These are used on mountain bikes. We strapped the little battery behind the windshield. Swapped riders. Dean did a lap so he could get his bearings while it was still light out, before he had to run the overnight leg. When Art got on the bike, he did a couple of laps and then made it about halfway down before his light went out. Luckily some buddies of ours were following him and were able to follow him back with their hi-beams on behind him. Found out that the light itself was bad, and swapped in another light using the same battery. Art went back out and the same thing happened - light died, friends had to follow him in.

At this point we figured the vibrations were dooming the little LED lights, so we strapped a light and a battery pack to my helmet with some Gorilla tape and taped a little Duracel LED flashlight to the headlight bucket. This actually worked really well! When tucked in behind the windshield, the light projected about 25 feet out, and I could lift my head to point the light way ahead to look for deer & whatnot.

We moved the needle back to the middle position, which helped with the midrange, but did nothing to cure the over-rich main.

I passed a cop who was just sitting there in the dark with his lights off - he didn't follow me, but I was worried that he'd spot my "headlight" on the way back. When I finally did pass him again, I looked in my mirror and saw his lights kick on - #$%*! - but kept going. About a quarter mile later the bike totally died - out of gas. We're running with an inline petcock between the crossovers on the tank, so no reserve. I just sat there and waited for the cop to catch up to me & give me some grief, but he never came. Luckily I was only about a mile from camp and called Derek to come bring me some gas. Finished up the loop and headed back to the shop about 11:35p.

At this pit stop we swapped out the bad stator for new replacement we had, changed the harness plug to match the new stator, changed the oil, rejetted back to 102.5 and put the needle in the middle position, replaced the actual headlight bulb, charged & installed new battery and adjusted the chain. Took us about 40 minutes, so we didn't get out of there until around 12:45a.



The score so far. Ram Jam II with 210.6 miles for the 2nd leg, 473.6 total.


I did a lap once I got out there and swapped riders when they showed up. I let the overnight guys use my helmet that still had the light strapped to it, as a backup. Went to "sleep" in the camper around 1:30a. Between the sound of our bike coming back by about every 25 minutes, the sound of other teams bikes screaming by, and the mouse that was digging through the trashcan in the RV, I probably got an hour of actual sleep overnight.

[grcamna2]

Hey man,that's great that you dudes are 'runnin' along w/ it ! 
How 's it going lately ?

[Tugboat]

When I got up on Sunday morning about 5:30am, one of the overnight riders had already headed back into town to check-in by 6a. We got to the shop to find that the overnight ride had been mostly uneventful, and they had put 251.6 miles on the bike, for a running total of 725.2 miles. We changed the oil, reconnected battery power to odometer that became disconnected during the headlight swap and adjusted the chain, and I headed out for the last time.

Score so far:


Now at this point, we'd been told that we were ahead by a large margin; but after sending our heaviest rider out to do as many laps as he wanted, we got a call letting us know that, no, in fact we were in third place. I should mention here that by this point there were only four bikes left running: ours, the Vino, the Aero 125 (which was in first place) and one of the GN125's, which had actually wrecked overnight and was only running around 35 mph tops. The red Honda 125 had holed a piston during the first leg; the CRF100 had its spark plug shoot out of the head due to bad threads; the blue GN125 had its crank seize.

So after only two laps, we called the rider in and put our smallest guy on the bike and sent him back out to raise h3ll. With a full tank, he was able to stay out for almost two hours, piling on the miles. He came back in and filled up, and did two final laps before I hopped on to finish up the race. Before I left, I noticed that the bike was much louder than it had been - and we found that one of our exhaust studs had broken off.. the same side that had the nut almost come off the day before. So we tried to safety wire it back on as best we could.



I did one full lap and about 3/4 of another lap before heading back into town. I thought I had about 10 extra minutes, so I took the long way in. But, as it turned out, I crossed the finish line with only 30 seconds to spare. The last leg got us 271.8 miles - the most of any of the four legs. We discovered that the exhaust bracket had broken some time back and the whole exhaust was being held on by the one stud still left in the head and the rest was just hanging on the rear brake pedal!



We also wore the back tire amost all the way down.


In the end, only three bikes remained. The Aero 125 seized up during the last leg.

Total miles for Ram Jam II: 997, which was 13 more than the Vino. WINNERS!!!

[knowsnothing]

Nice write up Tug  and congrats on the WIN!

[Bankerdanny]

Way to go Tug. This is so fun to read about.

[faux fiddy]

Like the boyscouts  BE PREPARED. You guys handled the things that came up well enough to outlast those that couldn't.

Good thing for your team  the Aero took a crap!