My real name is James. I live in New Albany, IN (just across the river from Louisville, KY). I work for a shop the sells and repairs Chinese scooters and dabbles occasionally in older Japanese and Italian scooters.
I have a couple of project Hondas I've been playing with. Thought I'd post up and show some pics of what I've been up to.
These are my two babies just days after buying them. I bought the Aero 125 for $350 running but not well. I bought the Spree for $200 not running assuming it just needed some carb work from sitting.
I wasn't a fan of the Aero's stock color scheme, and the plastic was in pretty bad shape. Some of the screw lugs on the inside of the front panel were broken off, you can see that there was a hole where one of the screw lugs was broken off. So I used a plastic welder to replace as many of the screw lugs as I could (all but one) and patched the holes and cracks and rattle canned the whole thing.
The problem with it running was the carb. One bolt hole was cracked off, the other was stripped so it wouldn't really tighten down. The air leak was so bad, it would only run with the main jet removed.
So I made an adapter to fit an Oko 28mm carb on the stock intake tube.
It worked OK, but not great.
So I bought this.
And made this adapter plate for it.
And now it runs like a champ.
This winter, I'll be pulling the engine out and rebuilding it - if I can find an OS piston and rings... If...
My girlfriend and I have been riding mopeds for a while. She has a nice Puch Maxi that she loves, and it used to regularly outrun me on my Batavus HS50 moped. But now that my 125 is running, she's having trouble keeping up. She wants to kit her Maxi, but I think she might find a modded Spree more to her liking. It's got a glovebox (her Puch has no storage space) it's oil injected (her Puch is premix) and it's electric start (the pedal start gives her trouble sometimes).
So I'm thinking about putting the Spree together for her this winter with a different engine. Like maybe an AF16 if I can find it. The Spree needs a cylinder anyway, and it's hard for me to justify spending too much on a non-variated, choked down engine when it would be a similar cost to rebuild something better.
I know it still wouldn't keep up with the Aero in top speed, but it would have no problem going as fast as she'd ever go.
And just so it doesn't get it's feelings hurt, this is my third scooter project that has patiently waited on the back burner while I've been working on things more practical.
It's a barn-find 1977 Bajaj Chetak. 150cc 2 stroke, four speed manual. Basically a Vespa VBB built in India. Once I get two reliable scooters riding, I'm going to be completely rebuilding, restoring it from the ground up. Hopefully running by the end of next summer.
So anyway, that's me. I'm sure I'll start some kind of build log on the Spree once I get busy on it. Just need to find an engine.
