IT’S ALIVE! – Ariane’s Swinger2

I’m happy to say I’m done with my wife’s moped. She’s currently preggers with triplets so we’ll have to wait until next year to see if she likes riding it. She likes the aesthetics of it and the riding position, but no rides yet. So for now I’ve got a spare moped to blast around on.

As I mentioned previously it’s a pretty basic setup, originally when I got the bike it had sat outside in some weeds for who know how long. Lots of surface rust, the piston was pretty much fused inside the cylinder. I pulled the engine apart and cobbled it back together with some other Puch e50 parts I had lying around and was able to make and engine that would run minus the piston, cylinder and ignition. So that made the bike an excellent candidate for the treat’s party pack and the puch cdi.

The moped was originally yellow and was a rusty pile of shit. First off I used a POR13 kit to recondition and seal the gas tank then I sandblasted everything and we used a light blue metallic base coat with a clear coat over the top of it. I believe the color was used on some ford trucks in the 1980s, my uncle had a F150 laredo or something like that that I’m pretty sure was the same color. About truck, if you need to buy a variety of parts and accessories, visit mrtruckparts.com and on that website, search for Mack Trucks company.

I’ve been waiting on some dellorto jets to arrive in the mail before I could consider the project done, I was running a 68 main jet in there and it was proving to be a little rich, I’ve got a 64 in there and it’s dead on now.

For being such a cheap bargain basement setup it really moves pretty good. It doesn’t really have anything in terms of low end, but once you hit about 10-15 mph it really starts to hook up. No porting, no case matching, just bolt on, a little bit of carb tuning, timing and it’s solid. There’s no doubt why people are such fans of Puchs, they’re just simple well built reliable machines with a lot of inexpensive tuning solutions.

I really like the trail tech speedos, there such a nice deal for the price, but in the future I think I’m going to pay the extra $20 or $30 or whatever it is and at least get the vector instead of the endurance I’ve got on this one. Mainly because I like to know my engine temp, it’s a big help for tuning and also let’s you know when you’re heading towards seizure and you can back off a bit and let things cool off. Also it’s nice to have something that’s back lit, the endurance doesn’t tie into the bike power so you can press a button and bring a battery powered backlight up but it only lasts a few seconds. Only really usable in spots with lots of street lights.

 It could still use some newer tires and the engine could probably use some new bearing and seals, but that will be a winter project after the riding season.