Puch Monza - From San Francisco (USA)

Hey Cats,

A few months ago I was lucky enough to find a Monza down in Los Angeles. I drove 500 miles each way to go get it. ;) It was posted on Moped Army one of the cool moped sites in the States. Here are the photos that were posted on MA before I bought it.

It looks pretty good in this photo - and there is a lot of good, and a lot of hidden things that need to be fixed. =8<>

The faring looks pretty good. I had to remove it to work on the bike. I found that there is much work repairing the faring in the future, and because of that I've left it off.

I didn't realize it, the side panel looks good, the other side is missing, and so is the hardware on which to mount it! This one in the photo has been cracked and repaired with some what looks like JB weld. Basically they will both need to be replaced and to do that the frame will need to be repaired with a mounting bracket.

The seat has holes in both sides, and because it is like a Nurf Ball it is difficult to just recover it. I plan on doing something special for the seat. :P The rear tank mount was completely broken off and that why on both sides of the tank the paint and decals are worn down to the metal.
The engine looks pretty good. It ran okay until it had been running a while then it would start to miss and have problems running smoothly. The fuel lines were hard and rotten. The stock air filter had been cut and some other put in its place. The oil plug was so rotten that when I tried to take it out it crumbled and fell into the cases!. You can see the JB Weld on the back of the side panel.
The front brakes needed a lot of work and were scary! It's hard to see in this photo, the paint on the wheels has chips, the rear is a bit worse. The fork seals were completely blown and there was almost no oil in the forks.

This is going to be a long project, and I'll try to keep you updated as I work on it. I've done a lot of stuff, and each time I fix something I find three or four more that need fixing! It also takes an inordinate amount of time to fix each thing - nothing has been a simple easy straight forward fix. Even something as simple as adjusting the chain required a lot of effort because the pieces were stuck in placed and had to be throughly cleaned, lubed and then adjusted.

The guy that sold it to me was very cool. He gave me the history of the bike as far as he knew and pointed out the things of which he was aware that needed attention. I paid a lot of money for the bike. I feel that it was a fair price because I know of only one other like it in the States and that increases its value. Still my wallet is hurting. I will soon have more money into this bike than I have in my Wicked GPR.

-Rob-

One of the first things I did was take it down to San Diego - my sister lives there - where I could give it a cleaning and see what I had gotten into... In the right lighting it looks pretty good!

-Rob-

Once I had gotten it home it was time to get to work. I rode it around a bit, and then when I got paid I bought a Gilardoni kit, Mikuni carb, and a few other things with which to put it all together.

Here is the cylinder opened up. It is clear to see that this engine had at one time a big bore kit installed. On one level this was good news - I wouldn't need to grind the cases to fit the Gila kit. On the other hand - well who knows what's been done to this engine!

At Treats they sell lots of yummy goodness for the Puch, and while the Monza isn't their usual fair they still had a kit for the Monza. The Gilardoni reed kit. Here it is installed on the Monza. Now color me purple - I called Rufus up at Treats and asked about the nuts and bolts because in this kit they were missing. The answer - they don't come with hardware! So it was off to the hardware store to buy some stainless steel action.

It's kind of too bad I didn't take more build photos - my hands were rather busy at the time. Inside there are brand new studs, and lots of nice engine building grease. I also did the trick of putting one wrist pin clip in the piston, put the piston into the cylinder leaving just enough space to slide in the wrist pin, and then put the cylinder on to the bottom end, adding the final clip at that point. This was a trick I had read about on the net and it make a world of difference for a single person jorb.

My buddy David had just fitted a Gila Monster to his Magnum and I was thinking - well if I just copy what he did I'll have a very good start on the Monza. He had fitted his bike with a 24mm Mikuni - and so did I.


The issue I had is that for the intake manifold I had to get creative. I trided very hard to find one that I could buy. The only thing Treats had in stock was a straight out 28mm monster. So I got that, and then I fixed a 45 degree piece of radiator hose which I bought at Kragen. My cuts were far from straight using a hack saw. Still it works pretty well. :P

With the Gila installed the pipe would no longer bolt on - it was hitting the foot peg. I tried a bunch of thing and eventually I took it to an exhaust shop where they heated it up and bent it. This resulted in a dent in the pipe for which I was hopping to avoid. Oh well - ten dollars later I had a pipe that would bolt on only now the rear exhaust hanger no longer connected - no problem that's what zip ties are for...


Once I got all that neat kit installed it was time to run it in. As per my expert two strokin' friend AJ suggested I did multiple heat cycles letting it come up to temp and then completely cooling down to cold to the touch metal. Each time I'd run it a little longer. Then I started doing this with a little bit of low RPM riding, and then a little more etc. Eventually I took it out on a small ride, and then a longer one, and so on. All of this without over reving the engine or even approaching WOT.

I took it out on a longer ride and some distance from home all of my zip ties had busted and the pipe was loose. I hadn't really paid much attention to this before. I got some help taking zip ties off of my cables and such and zipped it up again. Still by the time I got home even those had busted.

When I got home I tightened up the exhaust. Also at this time the bike was having a very difficult time running. Somehow I allowed correlation to be self evident as causation and figured this running issue was connected to the exhaust issue - it wasn't :P though it took me for a wild ride.

I tried all sorts of things to eradicate the leak - the tell tail signs being black nasty stuff showing up on the fins. First I attempted to tighten down the exhaust bolts. That didn't do it. Then I tried flipping the exhaust gasket. That didn't work either. My buddy Yancie suggested using gasket sealer and whoa that worked great! So I thought - it's back and well I'm some what stumped.

More and more as I progress on this bike I can see the influence of the SF bikes on my work. I've heard this stripped down cafe racer influence called The San Francisco Look.

The fork seals were toast. I found a place in down town SF close to SFMoto (thanks Tony!) that sold seals that were the same inner and outer diameters, and only a 1/2 millimeter short. Hey that's got to be close enough. :P

The real issue came with getting out the old seals. I showed these forks to lots and lots of people and no one knew anything about them. I dug and dug and eventually found a pdf parts book (in Spanish) that showed an exploded view of the forks. I took that into the lab and showed it to my Spanish Scientist Friend. Her husband is a rider so she knows all the motorcycle lingo. She did some translation and boom I understood the forks.

I get home and take them off the bike and pull the bolt that holds the sliding tube on the stationary tube. They still don't come apart. I take them into SFMoto where they have this killer fork vice and we beat on them and they still don't come apart! This is insane!

I go home and think about it. All I really need to do is get the seal out and put in the new one. I use my seal removal tool and like a can opener I go around the seal lifting up the edge removing the orthogonal resistance. I then tap with a screw driver deforming the ring such that I can get a pliers on it and pull. Eventually it comes out. Hazza! That took two hours. Fifteen minutes later the second one was out - I had a system. :P

New seals in the forks - I had to guess the amount of fork oil and the weight because I couldn't find any information. I went with 120cc of BelRay 20 weight (hey it works in the GPRs!).

The dust caps were so trashed I left them off. I'll just have to be vigilant in my care and wipe these down regularly.

From the moment I test rode the bike the front brakes really didn't work. Yeah - pull the lever and nothing. I was able to get them to stop the bike by tightening up the fittings, bleeding, and about four hours of sanding off the rust on the disk. Still they just didn't really stop the bike like I wanted. Hey it's a disk system it should have some stopping power.

I noticed how the Monza slave cylinder looked like an older version of the slave on the Derbi Senda. I mentioned this to my buddy AJ and he said he had one from a parts bike. He hooked me up, and off I went to have dreamy braking action.

Nope. I was able to fit the caliper on the forks - that went pretty well. Getting the disk to line up was a nightmare that would take two days to master. The stock system had a bigger window for the disk to skim through. The Derbi caliper had the same thing with an extra tab in the casting making the window narrower.

The other issue was how the front axel worked. Using spacers and washers it seemed like the disk could be positioned - this erroneous idea is part of what took so long to beat this issue into submission. The wheel is tightened onto the axel and the caliper side fork is clamped onto the axel.

With serious fiddling and filing I was able to get the disk to freely float through the caliper. Add to this the Derbi master cylinder, braided line, and I had solid braking. Next to add Freodo pads and make this sucker rock.

The controls on the bike (I hesitate to call them stock) were to be kind - crap. I wanted them replaced. Louis and I have a GPR parts bike from which we've been harvesting all sorts of treasure for our GPRs. It was time to introduce this technique to the Barcelona.

This upgrade would include the left hand controls from the 2000 GPR - the clutch lever, the head lamp high/low beam switch, horn, and in the future as part of my Blinker Nation upgrade.

The Derbi clutch lever uses a much larger cable stop than the stock cable, meaning that the stock cable would have to go. The Derbi cable was just long enough, and of course fit the Derbi control. Getting it to fit the clutch slave arm on the engine would require some creativity. I didn't want to use the bolt locking system that was in place on the Monza because that meant cutting the Derbi cable - an ugly solution that would introduce fraying and such.

If I were to use the cable lock from the old hand lever down on the engine lever I had a great solution - and that's just what I did. :P

Keeping this machine running has been troublesome. Some suggested that it was a condenser issue since the spark was weak. My buddy Paz hooked me up with the tool to pull the flywheel and several different condensers. Turns out that if the condenser goes bad a good one can be placed inline. Since I didn't have the one actually kind of condenser that the Monza uses I had to once again get creative.

I was able to connect the lead from the condenser to the nut on top of the old one and weave it through underneath the top coil and then use the leads to the outside to hold the condenser against the casing giving it a good ground, I also put a bit of three in one oil on the points felt. All of this and it didn't change a thing! :P

Turns out it was a fouled plug. I put in a one step hotter plug and things ran better - for a while. Looks like the system is running a bit rich and I'll have to address that issue.

The stock setup

The mod

ToraTora, the fact that realizing these to this monza, we are charmed with good work
To see these machines all over the world

Also the text if you it translate to the Spanish podran many people are of benefit that
Visit your paguina and this way sera mas easily

A greeting from Majorca Spain

Muy bonitas las fotos y la moto esta muy bien pero no puedo ayudarte en nada pues no entiendo nada hasi que aver si otros compañeros te pueden ayudar un saludo desde España (sevilla)

jaja, muy bueno el espanglis, manapuch!a ver a mi si me entiende algo,

tora tora please, can you translate the text at the same time at you post?
example,
tora tora, puedes traducir el texto cuando lo postees?
you can use the google translator, make a copy-paste, its easy way and the people gets grateful to you,
regards

Eso decirle que lo tradusca el... nosotros la mayoria no entendemos ni papa es que con tantas H y tantas W metias por medio la verdad no me entero de nada

Hey Cats,

Thanks for the nice words and the warm welcome. My Spanish is extremely limited. I can say goofy phrases like donde esta me cervasa, and ombre kayes mui loco, and that's about it. :P Yeah I know my spelling sucks.

If I write in English at least the thoughts will be clear and people can then use Google translation when they need it, and it seems that all of you know how to use the translator. :)

-Rob-

http://translate.google.es/#en|es|Hey%20Cats%2C%0D%0A%0D%0AThanks%20for%20the%20nice%20words%20and%20the%20warm%20welcome.%20My%20Spanish%20is%20extremely%20limited.%20I%20can%20say%20goofy%20phrases%20like%20donde%20esta%20me%20cervasa%2C%20and%20ombre%20kayes%20mui%20loco%2C%20and%20that's%20about%20it.%20%3AP%20Yeah%20I%20know%20my%20spelling%20sucks.%0D%0A%0D%0AIf%20I%20write%20in%20English%20at%20least%20the%20thoughts%20will%20be%20clear%20and%20people%20can%20then%20use%20Google%20translation%20when%20they%20need%20it%2C%20and%20it%20seems%20that%20all%20of%20you%20know%20how%20to%20use%20the%20translator.%20%3A)%0D%0A%0D%0A-Rob-

Husa este enlace que la mayoria no entendemos un carajo de lo que dices ennn ?

Hi ToraTora, I was looking your post and my girlfriend had to help me with the translation. But is a little difficult because she doesn't have any techniccal vocabulary, but more or less we have translate your post.

You have done a lot of work and we can see you have a really good supplier!

If you have a big problem, just send me a privat and I will try to translate the question to spanish so somebady can help you.

asin anda q no vamos a enterar de na

Eso, digo yo.....donde esta mi cerveza
Un saludo

Hi Simoserra,

I saw this section of the board as a place to describe the restoration process - so I thought I would share what I have found and have done on my project.

I understand there is a language issue. We live in a world with more and more connections. The lab in which I study has scientists from all over the world and a crazy number of different languages. English is the only common ground in the lab and as such is used the most - though not exclusively. I am very grateful to have a scientist friend from Spain who has been helping me with translations of Spanish. I can speak Japanese and quite enjoy having conversations with people in Japanese.

The automated translators frequently screw things up, and I've found it is best to put the actual English as a reference. I was once interviewed in Japan and the text translated to Japanese. There was a mistranslation. A dear friend of mine couldn't believe what I said and for years wouldn't talk to me. One day I asked why and was told about the interview. I had another friend look it over and he found the mistranslation - it was pretty bad. After that every thing got cleared up. Because of that experience I favor the actual text over posting automated translation.

If I do have questions, I'll post them in the proper locations on the forum. I've actually already posted about the wiring diagram, and the chain guide. :P

Thanks!

-Rob-

Oh my cat ...



¿Do you think to do a photo session in the Golden Gate whit your Monza...? Please, if you can, do it



Welcome to the boards

Hey Jose,

Yeah that would be cool. I've still a lot of work to do on it though. :P

We are having a huge moped rally at the end of the month in San Francisco. The Creatures of the Loin are hosting it. They do this every other year and hundreds of riders come out from all over the country. I am very busy getting the Monza and a Magnum ready for this rally. I imagine that there will be an opportunity during the rally to take photos of the Monza and other cool bikes in the park. :)

Yeah, its fine


I think that Monza can go along the Golden Gate into...5 seconds??? Its a powerfull engine kit, I had a Metra Kit many years ago but that Gilardo is the top...keep it care!



So looooooong stairs in the photo....



I like to know there is a Puch Club in San Francisco, its really cool



Greetings from Madrid

manupuch
si usas el google chrome te da la opcion de traducir la pagina del ingles al espaniol y podras leer todo lo que se pone un saludo