Triple Carb. Vespa Ciao

Triple Carbed Vespa Ciao

I would like to introduce one of the latest editions to the family. It is a beautifully manufactured Vespa Ciao with three carbs. A friend of mine built this back in the day (about two/three years ago). He had it up for sale and as rare as it is, I couldn't let this one go.

It still has some small fine-tuning issues to be taken care of.

Let me first give you the full specs:

- Polini Speed Engine (electronic)

- Polini 42mm Aluminium cylinder (30mm exhaust port)

- EuroCilindro liquid cooled cylinder head (milled to 42mm)

- Giannelli Mega exhaust (custom cut and welded for Vespa Ciao, 30mm exhaust flange and header)

- 13/13 Dellorto carb (rear inlet)

- 13/13 Dellorto carb (side-inlet, REED VALVE)

- 18mm Dellorto carb (top cylinder inlet, REED VALVE)

- Polini radiator

- Polini Speed Control variomatic (with a custom 25-degree plate)

- Stock 1:13 Piaggio variomatic transmission

- Aftermarket variomatic clutch (100mm discs, yellow Malossi tension/pressure spring, stock central clutch spring)

Additional parts to be changed or added:

- Pinasco elec. flywheel (weighs only 698 grams).

- Polini waterpump (If I can make this fit on the center opening of the engine cradle)

- Polini reservoir (If I can find one)

- Most importantly, a decent and original clutch with a red Malossi pressure spring and yellow clutch springs)

- Last but not least, Malossi 1:9 Racing Gears

I basically took it over as it is. The only things I will most likely change are the parts mentioned above.

Polini 42mm Reed Valve Adjustments

What my friend basically did as he built this engine and Ciao is the following:
He milled away a large part of the fins on the top section of the cylinder to fixate the Polini Reed Valve kit. By the way, this Polini Reed Valve kit is officially for Puch Maxi.

The side-inlet is also custom. He adjusted the crankshaft for the side-inlet.

Furthermore, it has a 30mm exhaust port.

Fine-tuning

You may ask yourselves whether such an overdose on carbs would ever work. I ask myself the same question. In theory, it should work. In reality, it is extremely difficult to get this right. Which carb needs which jet is hard to determine when fine-tuning something like this.

After having driven it twice (only), I feel that both the side-inlet carb and rear-carb need a smaller jet. The top carb (on the cylinder) may need a larger jet, if not a larger idle-jet. The two 13/13 carbs run correspondingly. The 18mm top carb runs on the push-start-lever! This carb can only be engaged at higher RPMs, otherwise the engine will stall due to, what seems to be, an overkill of fuel.

Also, even with the crappy tuning, the bike is slow off the line. Once I'm going 30 (km/h) and engage the 18mm top carb, it boosts away incredibly. However, when I play with the throttle at and near 0-15km/h, it revs up too much. Clearly, this has to do with the aftermarket stock clutch.

Updates will be added soon!

Fred / MoParts-Webshop

PROJECT: Sprocatti

This project is one of my all time favorites. A long-term project with no time limit and no expense/money limit - I work on it as often as I can.

It's a show bike to the fullest and a drag/race bike any day of the week.

This bike has been nominated throughout several of the biggest scooter/moped custom shows in Europe.

It's live view count, the amount of people that have seen this bike LIVE at custom shows, exceeds half a millon, which is quite an achievement for a bike that was born and built out of a (pretty much) stock garage!

INTERMOT 2008 and 2010
We attended Europe's biggest two-wheel-motorcycle fare, the INTERMOT in 2008. This show attracted about 200.000 visitors over a four day period. We were up against some of the best and most hardcore custom bike builders in the world - take Habermann Performance as an example.

As this is an every-two-year event, In 2010 we were invited to the INTERMOT once again with about 220.000 visitors - that is quite some publicity!

Scooter Center Custom Show (Cologne, Germany)
As expected, we did not win any prizes at the INTERMOT fares, which is reasonable as the competition is world-class. However, we did win prizes at several Custom Scooter Show in Germany, such as the Scooter Center Custom Scooter Show in Cologne. We attended in 2008 and took the third prize for BEST ODDITY (3rd out 180 contestants). In 2010, we again won the third prize for BEST ODDITY at the same show, this time with less contestants, but to compensate, all contestants were pre-qualified based on their custom creations, meaning that it was already a win-win siutation if you were even invited to compete!

3rd Prize - BEST ODDITY

Sprocatti Specifications:

- Franco Sprocatti Motori Rotary Valve Engine

- Parmakit/Sprocatti 50mm (bore) cylinder kit - Liquid Cooled

- 46mm stroke crankshaft

- Dell'orto VHSH 30 carburetor (30mm)

- HPI Internal Rotor Ignition system (custom)

- Sprocatti hand made exhsust (chromed and polished muffler/silencer tips)

- Custom cut and calculated CNC-machined subframe/cradle (specially designed for the Sprocatti engine)

- Reich 12Volt waterpump

- Killswitch

- Double disc brake system (front wheel, fully hydraulic)

- Disc brake system rear (under construction)

- Stage6 12" FULL SLICK tyres

- Yamaha Aerox (Minarelli) Radiator (polished)

Colors:

- Powdercoated white wheels and front end.

- Flip flop pearl orange frame

PROJECT: Simonini NT



This build is actually a project that I am doing for one of my two wholesalers. Both are greatly into bikes, mopeds, karts, racing, drag races and so on. As I've been building several bikes for show-purposes, such as my Sprocatti project bike, they wanted me to build one for them.

I will be taking this bike to numerous shows around Europe. We'll most likely be racing it too!

It all started with the frame. I've basically done the same thing as with my Sprocatti Project bike - I took off all the (useless) brackets and mounts. These are meant to hold brackets, fairings, fenders, side panels and what nots into place - USELESS when building a show bike.

Above shows the before and after result of the frame in general. The paint is actually a customised pearl green with a bit of a flip flop effect added to it. I must add, however, that it looks a lot better in real life and light than on pics!

Here's a nice touch we added to the seat pan:

- We've taken a small (160mm long) shokabsorber. This shock was actually meant for minibikes or mountainbikes, but we thought it would look cool as a seat pan spring - and it does.

If you're wondering, the seat pan isn't dusty, it's also a flip flop effect that was powdercoated. Powdercoated black with a clear varnish that has flip flop sparkles in it, so to speak. Again, this pops a lot more in real lighting - the pics don't do it justice! 

Heart of the Lion

Now, let's go to the heart of this beast, you've guessed it, the 2007 NEW TYPE Simonini Engine. We didn't leave this stock either. I must say, even though I am a huge fan of Simonini and sell their parts on a daily basis, Simoinini totally lacked precision when it comes to the general idea of this engine. Sure, the porting in the cylinder is huge and fabulous, but the ignition and cylinder head are what strikes me as weak and unfinished.

Cylinder head

Let's begin with the cylinder head. The head has no decompression kit/valve. This will make it impossible to start as push-starting it won't work, pedal starting it won't work (no pedals, this is a show bike) and pull starting it sounds decent but still not favorable for a show and race bike.

Solution? Build a decompression valve in your current head, OR, take a Honda Hobbit/Camino/PA50 cylinder head. Obviously, as only the stock (50cc) heads come with a decompression valve, and the FastArrow 46mm heads which are hard to find, you'll have to mill the combustion chamber of the cylinder head to 47.6mm. Pics to follow and thanks Terry for the tip!

Ignition
As we are criticising this engine, I would like to turn your attention to the ignition system. The instruction booklet, or should I say single sided piece of paper, that came with the ignition system in the complete kit is a big laugh. The drawings look like they were sketched by a small child! Not to bother though, I guess the Italians didn't want to use computers to animate their instruction booklet/piece of paper, but at least do some effort guys - we are paying top bill for this engine so we expect something in return!

Let me put it to you this way; this engine goes for around 900 to 1200 euros depending on where you buy it. People who are willing to spend such a large amount on a little Vespa/Piaggio engine are most likely also willing to spend a couply hundred more on a decent ignition system. Therefore, in my opinion, Simonini should have brought out this engine with a fitted internal rotor ignition if you ask me - a HPI 2007 Internal Rotor Ignition would suffice, I'm guessing!

And what I'm guessing is what you're guessing - we are fitting a HPI 2007 Universal Internal Rotor Ignition on that little Simonini engine. Why? Because we can and it's a must if you think about it. The stock ignition will most likely blow after a certain period of time at high RPMs, whereas the internal rotor ignition can easily handle 20000 RPMs without a problem - not that we will be able to rev it to that point, but whatever!

I've customised a stator plate for the engine two days ago and the HPI stator fits like a charm. Maybe we will be machining these plates/adaptors on a CNC-machine to resell them on our webshop, maybe we'll even sell complete HPI ignition kits with these stator plates/adaptors for the Simonini engine on our webshop! Who knows :).

The only thing we still have to do regarding the ignition is adjusting a HPI Rotor to its exact conical position. We may drill out an already existing HPI rotor and custom fit a conical instert (according to the crankshaft's measurements) or we will have HPI supply us with a non-pressed rotor that we can insert our own conical press into - Option two is what we are leaning toward.

Exhaust

And again, as stock exhausts on a complete engine kit as these are great, we felt that we needed to do something slightly different.

The name is Fabrizi and these are rare - hence why we want to use this exhaust both for show and race purposes. We always have the ''stock'' Simonini exhaust that came with the kit to fall back on.

How do you stop at full speed? Is what I hear you ask.

And, of course, disc brakes are the answer. This time, we're going another route - a more slim and sexy route if you will. Instead of using thick and big discs and calipers off a scooter, we will be using mountainbike disc brake systems both on the front and rear wheel.

These babies come with 6-piston calipers and 203mm Wave Discs - not bad at all!

We are nearly finished with the rear wheel's disc brake system - Pics to follow.

We had to machine our own wheel plate with bearing to hold the whole system together on the rear end in the cradle/subframe (pics to follow). All that is missing is a bracket to hold the caliper.

The front wheel will be milled out on the opposite side of the brake-hub. We will then fit a solid cylindrical milled aluminum piece and press fit it into position. Then, we will mill a 12mm diameter axle. All this rotates around two 2ZR bearings pressed into place in the adaptors.

Thanks for reading so far and make sure to keep checking us out as we try to update on a daily basis!

- Fred

MoParts Webshop's new blog!

We, at MoParts Webshop, would like to take this opportunity to share our projects and builds with all of our customers and fans around the world. We have been getting plenty of requests from customers and several members on moped forums around the world to send pictures and information on our current projects.

We thought it would be best to post all this information on what we are busy doing on this beautiful blog!

As we are working on several projects, we will try to update this blog on a daily basis - so keep checking us out and feel free to share with us your projects and blogs!

Frederick van der Lugt
Owner of MoParts-Webshop

http://www.moparts-webshop.com/