A Custom Honda P50 Chopper

Yesterday a long email arrived from Dominic Campillo, along with a number of photographs. I'll let Dominic speak for himself:

I owned my first Honda P50 in 1973. I was fascinated by the originality of this moped and by the complexity of its engine: when the rear tyre was punctured you had to take the engine out! I was a Japanese motorcycle enthusiast in the 60’s/70’s (Honda PS50, Honda 125 MK5, Honda CB450). When I start working, I left that passion… I earned money, I became adult.

In 2000, I made a trip in the USA . In a little town of Arizona , I saw in a road a riding CL350 Honda Scrambler as new… I remembered “Vanishing Point”, “Easy Rider” and all my youth with girls, bikes and Rock&Roll… and the passion came back.

A French importer (Alliance Motocycle) sold me a CL350 Honda, as new!!! Then I bought a CL450 as new, too. Then, came Ebay: I sold a 500 Kawasaki H1 (everyone has to have at least one H1 once in his life). Today I still have and use all theses bikes (and more).

My son Martin was growing. I decided to make him a perfect genuine P50 for his 14 years Christmas. So I bought 2 old P50 and 1 old engine more.

Then, with him, I chopped the other one, selling all the useless parts, and buying parts for Schwinn bicycles, BMX, etc... and in 2009 appeared ... "The Wild Child"

We conserved only the frame, the wheels and the engine.

The idea was to find parts, perfectly adaptable to them and the one to the others. The aim was to reach a perfect aesthetic harmony and equilibre and to give to it an Old School Chopper Look.

During one year I looked at Ebay to find all these parts:

• Schwinn Stingray Handlebars
• Chopper Bicycle 20'' vinyl seat
• Chopper Bicycle Fork
• Genuine grips, Hodaka Ace levers, Rupp throttle assy
• Maltese Cross Taillight and Mirror
• 36 inches high sissy bar for muscle bicycles
• Triumph Cub type muffler ... a real megaphone with removable silencer
• Amal type choke & decomp. levers.
• Mini chopper headlight with genuine P50 switch
• Honda CL 160 Badges
• BMX Footpegs
• Bullet dust cap
• TNT air filter

Then:

• I restored completely the engine
• I made weld an aluminium tube with Fuel Tank Filler Neck Bung and Vented Cap
• I made polish the aluminium crankcase and tank
• I made made a Muffler adapter and stem adapters
• I painted the rims and hubs in black (because they were in bad condition!)
• I made a Taillight sissy bar bracket/plate to hide the sissy bar back
• I made all the cables

Then we painted and varnished the frame and sissy bar plate with sprays (It’s not totally perfect… but it looks like). And we assembled all that stuff.

You can find more photos of Dominic's superb custom P50 on Flickr.

Solex Tripoteur

Just in from Fred David, our regular correspondent in France: a three wheeled Solex! I haven't found any evidence that Solex actually turned out any three-wheelers, so I'm assuming that this is a home made job. Making a Solex three wheeler is relatively easy, as you don't need to come up with a new power transmission system. Both rear wheels can freewheel- although it's a good idea to have rear brakes.

Doing a quick Google search, I also found a few more three-wheel Solex conversion projects here and here.

Rare Bird: The Puch Tri-Rad

(photo from visforvoltage.com)

The Puch Tri-Rad is probably the rarest of all Puch Mopeds, at least here in the US. It wasn't a stock Puch model, but rather a custom conversion made by the Specialty Moped Company in California, and sold as a small, cheap shopping, delivery or vending (i.e., ice cream) vehicle. The roof was a standard option, as was a rear basket and an insulated ice cream box. One source claimed that the Tri-Rad had a differential, but looking at photos it's pretty clear that it had one driven wheel and one left to freewheel. (You can't use a solid rear axle, as the 'ped would tend to hop and skid in turns as the wheels followed arcs of different length.)

This photo was found on eBay- sorry, it's been sold.