Cylinder kits a cottage industry

[Supereibar]

With so many lammy kits around and more in the pipe line is it safe to say theres not as much in the vespa world..?

Serious question..

Andy, I once asked for a kit for a friend of mine at a smallframe forum in Italy. My friend had a vespa 50 and he wanted to take it up a little but not to the extreme.

Well.. how surprised I was to know that aparently the vespa 50 in Italy (that applies to all the ranges of vespa 50's ever made) had about 15 or so different options with a never ending medley of odd cubic measures.... e.g: 60, 70, 72, 75, 80, 88, 100, 105, 110, 112, 115, 125, 140, 144

I made these figures up, but I swear they gave me about fifteen different figures in cubic centimeters for different kits in the market that could be bought cheap as chips.

Best,

J.

[RICSPEED]

isn't everyone saving up for a Super Monza???

I am.

away dude send us one

[lifes a drag]

Think if memory serves the challenger kit was originally designed by BOB MONKHOUSE and chiselspeed took the kit over and developed it further ,ive got a barrel somewhere and i think TREV HARRISON still has one on his sprint bike

i spoke to bob about this the other week and he seid Harry Barlow started it and he finished it, there was a lot of work involved and it was a five port barrel, Bob was working at chiselspeed at the time i think

[lambrettasam]

would be nice to have an overview in one topic of all the currently developped barrels like the GT, MB, Harry Barlow (excuse me if i forget a few) and to line up the differences between them.

Anyone fancy doing this? I would if i had the data and specs.

Cheers,

[RICSPEED]

would be nice to have an overview in one topic of all the currently developped barrels like the GT, MB, Harry Barlow (excuse me if i forget a few) and to line up the differences between them.

Anyone fancy doing this? I would if i had the data and specs.

Cheers,

just hit the "new topic" button

[mnpes]

I"ve seen some of Bob"s work " Impressive "
His TS1 Tuned Barrel is Humongous
His own tuned GP200 will pop most TS""s
Bob keeps his hands in " So to say " doing a touch of tuning on Rotary Engines

A Top-Man "You can speak to him ~ He always makes time"

[lifes a drag]

I"ve seen some of Bob"s work " Impressive "
His TS1 Tuned Barrel is Humongous
His own tuned GP200 will pop most TS""s
Bob keeps his hands in " So to say " doing a touch of tuning on Rotary Engines

A Top-Man "You can speak to him ~ He always makes time"

Dont get him talking about Rotary Engines for god sake,
i think he would love to put one in a Lambretta frame ha ha

[OAP]

Interesting thread, seeing as I’m about to blow my brains out I thought I would add a bit. First off Airsal, I think would be nearer to 40k for a die cast cylinder, and yes I have spoken to them as well.
As for the other figures it’s I would add about another 10k. If I had a 100,000 to invest I could have produced a kit retailing at £150 less and made more money.

Why make a cylinder kit? Beats me
For me the easiest thing to do would be to design a high revving kit but commercially what would be the point as there are already too many. The other thing for me is that what ever I did, it would have to be different to anything else on the market. It is just in my nature, in my time I had a barrel that was tuned different to everyone else, my exhaust was a one off and so on I have never copied anyone and I was not about to start now.

So I took the view to look at what was missing, right or wrong I have come up with a kit that is completely different. Will it make commercial sense and make money, I very much doubt it.
The problem for me is that once I start something I cannot put it down, the more obstacles that are put in the way the more determined I am to get round them.

As Rich said I will need to sell around 300 to get my money back but that is without any of my time or running around the country chasing pattern makers, foundry, machine shops and banging your head against a brick wall because people do not do exactly what you have asked for.

So why did I keep on to produce this kit? I have not a clue, bit like asking why people climb mountains because as sure as hell there will not be much money in it.

Still there is something to come out of all this, at a Dyno test at JB Tuning , John had said that most of the well known kits have a temperature reading of 140 degrees C after a Dyno run, my lump of alloy had a reading of 90 degrees! The rest of the anorak stuff will be out in about a week.

Will it have been worth doing? Will the scooterist like it? Have I got it right?

Bad news travels fast, so I will know

One other thing I know Harry is playing with a Vespa kit

[lifes a drag]

how about a powervalve cylinder ,,,,,,,, please

and while your at it better cooling ( heat kills engines )

and a split head cowl that you can remove the top bit so you can
check the cylinder head nuts,

thats all ,,,,,,, for now

[damdam]

There also few possibilities to see a P-range cylinder kit becausa as told before he works alone and it's full time on smallframes.

let keep our fingers crossed, I went to Lauro's workshop past week and saw the cast mould and protoype cylinder...

he's very busy in producing smallframes kits indeed, but never say never!

I think we all must say thank you to those who spend time and money to keep us happy with old scooters performances, as Ron and Rich explained is not so simple