A good ride

I took a good ride on the Champ, about 5 miles.  Had to tank up since I hadn't for about a month... I took $4 in to the Cumbys and said "put it on pump one." put in 91* and I only made it to $3.50 so I went back in to get the change and the lady says "you must have the smallest car in town." I said "no, it's a moped."  She laughed.

Then it was off to a bit of off road riding, you will notice I have rigged a makeshift coffee cup holder on the front rack, quite handy though not at all practical since I have to stop to actually drink.  The cup is held on with a bungie cord, so I was able to let it cool off a bit on my ride from the gas station, drink er down and slap the empty in my storage case.

 I've been thinking I might need to make some sort of carry rack for my two skateboards that would attach to the front rack.  Now I'm not too certain why I would need to do this, since I don't really skateboard anymore but since I have a moped and I'm riding part urban and part off road I figure having a couple skateboards with, just in case the mood hits me sounds like a good idea.

Before and after

So here's a few shots to give you some idea of what a Champ looks like without the splash guards (you can see the large crack I repaired),

personally I haven't found them helpful for anything which is why when the left side broke half way off again yesterday I figured I'd just cut them both off.  However it is also a cover for some of the the electronics which are on the front of the frame,

 so I will leave the cut off version on as cover.  So I took the dremel and smoothed out the edges after I cut them off to try and make it look nice and pretty.

I think the profile with the guard cut off is actually pretty good, and it will do the job of keeping the electronics dry.

Also note the more "aggressive" profile with those Shinko's!

Why not dirt!

So I decided after a day of gutting my house, and filling with the roll off with all the crap that I would

 

do some "radical" chopping on the Champ, so I too my dremel and.....

 

you know what that is, the left side was broken off anyway and I haven't been able to find any type of glue that really binds well to the Champs plastic parts anyway, and I really wanted to go a bit dirt bike looking anyway so I figured this wouldn't be too bad of a butcher job.  So here's the wide angle.

 And here's the up close, but mind you this is not finished, I'll smooth the edges so it's looking nice and fresh!   I'm also considering welding some dirt bike foot pegs on.

New service manual page

I decided to move the service manual for the Champ to its own page.  You can find the page over on the right side of my blog.

You now have two options for viewing the manual, one is just .jpg images of the pages loaded like I had in the previous post, and now I've added a link to my Google Drive with all the pages in downloadable .PDF format. 

Enjoy, your Champ will love you!

Finally Shinko on the front!

Well my front Shinko got here today, so after working on the house after work I decided to swap out the tires.  Just as I got the front wheel off a torrential downpour came out of nowhere and because it was warm out I was sitting half in and half out of the garage I have my makeshift shop in - I got soaked!

Anyway I kept working and the front tire came off without a problem, of course I have a slow leak in the front tube too so, after having already run
around town looking for a 3.5/4-10 tube and
nobody, and I mean nobody has one, I just
decided to break out the plastic and buy a
couple of new tubes off BikeBandit and
while I'm at it order new brake shoes for the
front and rear too. 

I have to say the Champ looks sweet with those knobbies, and after a few late evening laps around the local parking lot (it definitely hauls with new rubber and Seafoam in the tank) I'm ready for just about anything.  Going to do a little off roading this weekend maybe.

While I love the old Jap bikes (those guys were engineering wizzards), I never thought I'd see the day when I had fu$&%ng moped parked next to my XR!!!  FYYFF!

Out on the trails

Took the Champ out on the local putt-putt trail, and it was kind of fun!  Not XR 250 fun that I normally have, but while I'm working on the new house this is a totally minimalist ride.
Remember I weigh 185 so this thing is doing pretty good hauling my ass over terrain.

Now I have to start thinking of more farkles I can add... You know totally useless stuff on a moped.  Say maybe my old GPS?

Shinko 421

This is totally just showing off the Shinko's I think they speak for themselves, this shot is from the other day when I still had the original street tire on the front,  knobbies look awesome on the Champ! 

The more I ride with them the more I think it numb to have anything else on, they just work so much better than street (especially the old baldies I had) especially if you want to cut across the football field or park.

 I've been pleasantly surprised in how well Shinkos grip the pavement too, though at 35mph top, I suspect my dirty socks grip the road pretty well too!

So you're not convinced the Shinko's look swell on a Champ, here's another shot.

My latest dilemma is what to do about that broken and cracked rear fender... The more I think about it, the more I think I want to take my dremel and cut it to clean it up and give it more old school dirt bike look.  Maybe even rivet on a bit of black innertube mud flap?  Is that getting too crazy?

Going off road

I know that maybe a Champ with knobbies is a bit over the top, but I really could not handle the bald tire in the rear and soon to be bald front tire.  So I ordered up two Shinko 421's from Bike Bandit!  Well one tire got here late today, the other shipped separately from CA so I can see it's getting here Saturday.  But I just had to pull that tire old tire off.

Just look at that sorry old dry rotted piece of junk, it certainly did the trick letting me putt putt around but even my son said "oh yea it feels a lot more smooth" riding around in the parking lot next door.

It's definitely a better feeling ride going around corners that have loose sand.  Unfortunately I just couldn't wait for the new inner tube to get here before mounting the Shinko so I paid the price, realizing there's a slow leak in the old tube.  Oh well this was one of the easier tire mounts I've done with my little road irons.

Of course when I had the rear wheel off I realized that my break pads are well warn and need to be replaced too, but otherwise everything looked in good shape!

So my next project will be to replace the tube in the rear  once my new front tire gets here and then find a good pair of brake shoes for rear and front, might as well replace the front while I'm at it!