Honda Elite 50/GY6 150cc swap

This was a fun project, this old Elite 50 had a blown motor, lets swap in some 150cc power!

Some poor old chinese scooter died for this!!!

First things first, lets get the motor under the frame and begin to visualize the fitment and shape of the bracket that will need to be fabricated.

Want to make this one low and sleek, but maintain usable ground clearance. Best to keep the engine case near parallel with the ground to maintain the engineered geometry...

Probably the most important thing in any motor swap is alignment, I take a lot of time and measurements before any cutting or welding takes place.

You can see here I am using steel pipe to align the wheel to the frame. We want this thing to go straight down the road!

I utilized the center of the original motor mount and used heavy gauge tubing to join it to the new frame.

Here is the new mount, just tacked in place so I can recheck the alignment before I burn it in...

I used smaller tubing as a gusset to triangulate and stiffen the mount.

Motor bolted in, time to check things out.

I used some heavy angle to fab the rear shock mounts, the ends are boxed in with steel plate.

The rolling unit! I handed to my customer at this point and he finished the work, new front end, wiring up the motor, adding the carb and exhaust, and firing it up!

Quite the transformation,eh?

Cagiva T4

A friend dropped off this cool Italian enduro bike that he found on Craigslist. Cagiva makes great bikes for the rest of the world but sadly they were never 'officially' sold in the USA.

This bike is an '87 T4 500, 4-stroke street legal enduro. A very well built bike , this one was in pretty good condition but had been tinkered with by someone with little mechanical knowledge. They had connected the right side fuel valve straight into one of the overflow vents on the carb!! I was surprised it ran at all, super rich and pissing gas all over the show... :)

I was surprised to see a positive ground electrical system, rare indeed ! Starter solenoid was fried so it had been disconnected. I had a nice used one in stock so I got her going on the E-start, much nicer than kicking over a high compression thumper!!( single cylinder bike )

Once the electric and fuel issues were sorted it got the standard Hyde Park Scooters treatment. New spark plug and air filter, tune the carb and wheelie down the block!!!