A short time ago, my wife and I had a baby (our second) and some of my personal interests were set to the side for a while. Sadly this has included responding to all the emails from TFR owners and other sorts of moped people.

My hosting is up in a few weeks and I don’t think that i can find a way to really justify the cost of hosting. I will try and figure something out.

70cc polini Kit
13.13 delitoro Carb
Modified Polini Air Filter Box
Base wiring
Cdi Ignition system
Promo circuit Exhaust
Variated Transmission and Lower bracket from Vespa Grande
Hard Tail Mod
17 inch vespa Mag wheels
Perilli racing tires

The following is from a guy in Holland that i have exchanged email with who is modding some bikes. He sent me these pics and the bike with the sprocatti engine blew me away. This is nuts. You have to see Fred’s work:

Ryan,

Nice to hear from you.

This is my Sprocatti (Gilera Citta) project, all the pics;
http://www.mijnalbum.nl/Album=34NUIF8H
This was my old Vespa Ciao project, now traded for my ever so special Sprocatti Engine:
http://www.mijnalbum.nl/Foto-IGV7KGTO.jpg
http://www.mijnalbum.nl/Foto-PZK3QZWJ.jpg

My webshop, still to be updated, is www.MoParts.tk
I know shipping often takes time, but months? I have recently changed my shipping too; however it only takes 4 to 8 days with me!

Fred

Simonini came up with this mod to your crank case that has a reed valve and 3 options for intake manifold sizes. I bought this from Cycle-Tech in Switzerland. They were friendly, but the shipping took 7 weeks. Seriously. No exaggeration.

Anyway, it looks like this:

Assembled:

With 21mm Dellorto PBGH racing carb:

There is a drawback and that is you have to make a hole in your subframe to get the carb through. Once you do, if you keep the carb pointing back, it will get in the way of the pedals. I am thinking about getting a manifold that is bent in a “U” so the carb and filter are not in the way of the pedals.

Oh, i almost forgot to mention that this does not interfere with the old carb in any way. I am thinking about keeping it on in addition to the simonini.

Hopefully I will have this on by the end of the summer. I am working on a couple of other mopeds right now, too. I may start posting about those as well at some point.

You can get Polini Evo engines a few places like:

http://www.50cc.nl

or from one of these two places that are in Germany and Switzerland respectively - unfortunately, their sites are in German but you can use Google language tools to translate and the shipping takes 5 weeks:

http://www.cycle-tech.com/
click through to Enter Now > Mofa

the above sites are a pain because they are in german, but they will blow your mind with how much shit they stock.

here is a link to a polini evo on that site. It comes with a pbgh 19mm carb and airbox and if you get a polini kit with it, the ports are already matched. The price is in swiss franks (not dollars).

here are the parts that you need for another carb that hangs off the side of the engine (from this one from simonini allows you to attach a 26mm carb):
http://www.cycle-tech.com/10309.htm

interestingly enough there is another thread on this forum right now that talks about a vespa bravo that has two carbs. this would allow you to have duel carbs quite easily because the intake on this piece is in a different location and doesn’t interfere with the old intake. So you could easily split your case, replace the smaller part with this simoni reedvalve intake part, hook up a 26mm carb and not even bother to take your old carb off. Then you just have to coordinate two throttle cables. I am guessing that that would be a little too much gas/air for a stock engine, but if it holds up… dang.

One step beyond the stock engine mods is a complete setup from simonini. If you have never seen these before, they should blow your mind. they are abut $1500 and 100cc and there are two models. (again, though you will need to mod your frame):
http://www.simonini-racing.com/piaggio1.htm

Finally, if that didn’t blow your mind, I hope this does - It is a complete 100cc engine with 30mm carb that uses a rotary valve intake system and a CDI from sprocatti motori. the cylinder and head look funny because they are liquid cooled. I have been trying to get my hands on one for a while. They are not very responsive via email, and the whole thing will run you about $2200 with a coolant system that includes a radiator and pump. This requires a hole in the subframe as well, but after that, I think it would bolt right up to a vespa ciao, bravo, grande, or a kinetic tfr.

http://www.sprocatti-motori.com/Kit_completo_ciao.htm

Check out the rest of the site, too. they are making some other sick engines for vespa.

if you do a You Tube search for “sprocatti motori”, you will see a bunch of videos from europe of guys riding wheelies on ciaos.

I don’t think they are being sold still, mine is from 1996, and it doesn’t seem they are very common either. They where sold by some company in Gothembourg called “indo Motors” but I don’t they are around any more.

I also have another call in to Mike, the parts manager at Cosmo. Hope he has some better news than last time. Or at least returns my call. That would be a start.

Anyway, the splitter looks like this:

And the arms fold to accomodate different engines - thus making it “universal.”

In order to get it to fit the Kinetic (or vespa) engine, I needed some additional hardware that I got at the Home Depot. It was 3 bolts, 3 aluminum spacers, and some washers:

The bolts are metric M5 or as home depot calls them “5mm (head) .8 (thread size) 50mm (length)”. The spacers are 10×5/16 x 1″ (length). This combo was right on the money as far as size goes. The trick with this splitter is to get the arms above the engine mounts and the crankshaft inside the splitter’s center cylinder with enough space to thread the main bolt in (if you don’t use the spacers, the crankshaft is too long for this splitter).

The final mod was to drill a shallow hole in the main splitter bolt at the bottom. this is to keep the crankshaft centered inside the cylinder as you are cranking the splitter down. Ideally it should come to a point, but oh well. I used a 3/8 inch bit for that one. And when I say “used”, I mean “ruined.” Rest in peace, 3/8ths. It was a good run.

The whole thing looks like this:

And when mounted on a case, looks like this (vespa grande engine pictured here):

Here is where the spacer has to clear the engine post:

I was trying to increase the airflow through the intake manifold and took a 1/2 in drill bit and drilled the thing out. Unfortunately, this messed with the fundamental engineering of the engine. The crank opens and closes the port as it spins. Messing with the shape of the intake port on the inside like this results in a back pressure disaster, causing gas to be ejected back through the carb and into the airbox. Needless to say, it no longer runs, but dang, there was a TON of gas and air going into that thing. And then back out again. Through the back.

So I have that going for me. I sent Smitty an email about it and he said:

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I have a really bad feeling that you’ve ruined the crankcase half that has the intake… after seeing the inside of the crankcase, I’d think that it’d be a miracle if you can get it to run again using that crankcase.

I got a tip from a moped tuner in Denmark (Arndt - who has been incredibly helpful with tuning info) about a product called durafix. You can apparently use it to correct some mistakes and replace metal on your case. I am interested in doing this even though I have a couple of extra vespa cases that I could use for the kinetic. I will be sure to shoot some video. Meanwhile, check out the video on the Durafix homepage if you can. Thanks again, Arndt!

A soft seize occurs when a piston heats up faster than the sleeve and expands until it breaks the “oil film” layer and gets pinched in the cylinder. I think that this was pretty minor and can be salvaged just fine. There were four places where the piston stuck. Here are some photos of the damage:

When it seized, I was running a Malossi 70cc kit, a Proma Circuit exhaust, a Dellorto 13.13 SHA carb with a #62 jet. I had it wide open and was doing about 40 and still climbing.