Two-stroke smoke! A community blog about scooters, mopeds, and motorcycles. Based in Madison, WI!
This is super cool… It’s a comic featuring mod/rude boy/punk/scooter boy culture set in the 80’s! The author is looking for help to get to fund it so it can be printed. $12 gets you a signed copy of the first issue and for donating more you can get a cameo in the comic. Pretty cool stuff.
Also, if you aren’t familiar with kickstarter.com, you should really check it out. People with ideas post them on kickstarter and ask for help to fund their project or product, and the people offering funding get various incentives for doing so. There are some really interesting projects on there right now like this comic and The Banjo Project.
My poor scoot. I didn’t bust out the cover before it snowed last week. :(
My 77 Bajaj Chetak after finishing the repair work.
And finally, here is my current ride. It is a 2005 Vespa PX 150. I picked it up from a shop in the middle of nowhere, WI. for pretty much nothing. It was a theft recovery bike so I had to get it re-titled as salvage even though all the damage to the bike is what you see on the legshielf. Just a crease and some busted trim! I have done a lot to this bike since this picture was taken but I can’t find any recent shots.
I’m not a huge fan of riding such a new bike, but it was so cheap I couldn’t pass it up. The fact that it runs every day and has a front disc brake is pretty cool too :)
1977 Bajaj Chetak. This is a bike that I picked up in Chicago for $150. It was literally frozen to a fence. I spent quite a few hours getting this bike going. I replaced the bearings, seals, and gaskets in the motor. Put on new cables, brakes, clutch plates, cruciform, seat, tires, rims, brake levers, bulbs, points, and I am sure a bunch of other bits. It was the first project I ever really went through with. Very rewarding. But, just like all my other bikes….I sold it!
Here are a few shots from the process of fixing it up:
1965 Puch Allstate Compact. Cute little bike and another one that I pawned off on friends! My buddy Mark owns it now and I’m fairly sure it’s in a few hundred pieces.
1957 Lambretta LD. WORST. SCOOTER. PURCHASE. EVER. Seriously. Unless you have deep pockets and a whole lot of patience, do not buy an LD.
1980 100 Sport. This scoot was my baby. I spent countless hours (with help from my buddy Kevin) getting this thing going. It was my first Vespa and I still regret selling it. It was a huge pain in the ass though, I think I soft-seized it three times! Yeesh.
