CGHawk's Blog

Hi There

cghawk — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 19:16:36 +0000

Ya Dude, I Rock!

Life hasn’t exactly been busy, but I just haven’t been posting. I’m not appologizing. All moped related posts for me have been going down on the group blog over at the Mohawk Mammoths site so go check that out. It has been winter for a few months here in the NorthEast and I suppose I may have gotten a little of the seasonal depression that seems to run rampant around here. Anyhow it is sunny today and looking good for the short term. The negative side to that is all the melting snow has ended up being 2″ off water in my basement.

Games

I started playing this last night and lost about 8 hours of my life in one shot. If you have played any of these you probably know what I’m talking about. After about 5 hours tearing through the Aztecs my wrist was hurting from how is was holding the mouse. 3 hours after that my hand was about numb. All in all it has some changes from the 4th iteration so if you liked any of the older ones check it out, or just download it right?

See you soon.

My Car Sounds Like A Harley.

cghawk — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 06:32:02 +0000

Boxed Up

My car started to sound like a semi-truck at first and then went to all out Harley. Upon further inspection I found the flex bend in the downtube of the exhaust to be completely broken. Awesome. So I did some internets shoppings and found a nice new one at 42 Draft Designs hadn’t heard of them before, but they seemed to have a decent product and good reviews. Stainless Steel with tig welds and all quality, this bad boy weighed 18 pounds.

Opened Up

Too bad it is stupid cold here in NY and my garage is too full of cars and mopeds that I don’t have room to fit my car in to work on it. Luckily Graig’s house is not far away and he let me use it and gave me a hand with the swap.

3" of fun

So my car is much quiter and I gained about 12 HP, I’m happy, my neighbors are happy, good times.

Not Recommended

cghawk — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 06:15:53 +0000

Broke

I broke my nose about a month ago. I do not recommend this. Anyhow I got it fixed and that hurt much more than breaking it. So to review, moral of the story don’t break your nose.

Progressish

cghawk — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:10:09 +0000

400 deeegreees

Do it

This weekend I got to try my hand at some sandblasting and powdercoating. The Kromag tank was stripped down and I did the first coat of flat black. Next up will be hittinh the topside with black chrome and maybe even some black chrome letters down the tank. The only bad part was I found two pin holes in the top corner of the tank…at least it wasn’t the bottom.

Oh Boy

cghawk — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 18:54:09 +0000

So the Goose is running nicely, I haven’t opened it up all the way just yet but am close to 50 at 3/4 throttle so that is a good sign. No new pictures there. I stripped the paint of the Kromag tank last weekend SEEEEE:

Looks like metal to me

Also I figured out that the goose will pull wheelies pretty easily and at the same time that I am not very good and certainly not well practiced at them:

Could be worse

Not too much damage to me or the bike aside from the pedal arm:

nothing a big pipe and a bit of pressure wont fix

In other news I have a great girlfriend, but she may have doomed the blog for a while… just found out she reserved and picked this up for me today:

plus this:

Books; Check 'em out

So long outdoors.

Sorry.

cghawk — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 19:17:28 +0000

It’s been quite a while since my last update. I have no pictures to put and it has been cold and rainy up here in NY. I case matched my Treats 70cc kit and through that on the goose with a 19mm PHBG clone. Since it has been so cold and rainy I haven’t really gotten the chance to tune ‘er up and see what it can do. Not so thrilled to have to ride in pants and jackets and wear socks. As I adjust I will start getting stuff going again…

Mohawk Mammoths

cghawk — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:48:21 +0000

It was a great weekend for the Mammoths. Saturday saw almost a full day of work on mopeds. Andy tore into Andrew’s Sachs G3 engine in hopes of unseizing it a second time and Paul helped on the rebuild and tweaking. By the end of the day it was all back together with good compression and spark, the carb was the only hang up. He has his tank in effort to clean out all the rust and such so they uesd a single shot size 99 Bananas bottle as a mini resovoir. Meanwhile Scott and Graig worked on repacking wheel bearings on a few different rides.

Mammoths at work

On the work desk I set out to unseize the e50 for my project – Longhorn. The piston was nearly fused to the cylinder and it was not a walk in the park. After lubing and continuously wailing on the cylinder I finally got it free. Here is what I found once I split the case:

What story is this open book hiding?

Amanda was nice enough (much to her dismay) to hold the case while I bashed it so that it wouldn’t fall on the floor.

Rust Crank, sounds delicious...

one half some nice rust and some liquid

The other half completely rust stained

On a totally unrelated note I came out my backdoor and found my young watermelon had been ravaged by some beast… It was a sad day indeed.

Who does this!?

Summers End Ridin’ Dirty

cghawk — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:01:06 +0000

It’s getting late in the summer days which is sad. Here in upstate New York the impending cold is hanging over us like a dark storm cloud. This is sad for mopeding, but ok for skiing… The other night Amanda and I rode over to a little place called Wine N Diner for some dinner. I’ve yet to get a second moped running so I decided to hijack Scott’s red stock Magnum. It isn’t registered or plated or anything, also the seat and tank aren’t exactly bolted on and it has one pedal…but what the hell, right?

Parked at the Wine N Diner

Afterwards we took a cruise down to the Normanskill and then the long loop back to the Wigwam, not a bright idea considering the lights weren’t working either. I later realized that I left my debit card there so Scott, Juliet, Graig, Amanda and I went back there again for dinner.

Poop/

Birth of the Wigwam; Lab 17

cghawk — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:00:28 +0000

Project Center

Well I have not posted anything in sometime now due to one part vacation and one part travel for work. I don’t have much to report on those fronts so onto Mopeds. Much work was put in this weekend as Graig, Scott and myself pushed to convert my garage into an actual Moped workshop. Until now we did a lot of sidewalk wrenching, some front porch action and even right in a living room or two. I will post some more complete pictures later, but for now check out Scott’s blog. I have a bit of a problem with picking a project and sticking to it, instead I like to start as many as possible and surround myself with half down ones. Outside of the garage is an ’00 Civic Si and just inside is an ’82 Monte Carlo (which hogs about half of the garage). The other half the garage was filled with various tools and plumbing products that I “let” my dad store there. So after about 6 hours or so of work we have a nice section carved out and Graig even threw together a little fire pit in my backyard. Also Scott got his $100 Magnum running and finished work on Bill’s Nostalgia. I put new Sava tires on the Maxi-S (which was just officially named Grey Goose by Amanda) and finished tear down and frame clean up on the Kromag (I named Longhorn due to the super long bikemaster superbike handlebars I put on it).

Nice long horns.

Nice and clean

Less clean; probably going to need a new gas cap...

Barge, Boot and Margarita

cghawk — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:24:08 +0000

Das Boot!

Wednesday was my friend Graig’s birthday so I met up with him and Scott downtown and we went to the Barge for some birthday drinks and the such. Graig has a Honda Ruckus and Scott has the dope Magnum with a Gila setup. After some beverages and a quesadilla Scott had to take off so Graig and I shuffled over to Wolff’s Biergarten downtown. It’s a great place that only serves Bavarian style beers and has the theme of a German Oktoberfest (picture picnic tables and peanut shells everywhere). There always seems to be motorcycles out front recently and it brings me great pleasure to pull up next to them and back the Maxi in next to it. The building is an old firehouse and in the summer they keep the garage door open and you can sit outside. Almost anywhere you go on a Moped people want to talk to you about them and have so many questions. I’m still in the phase where I like that and it hasn’t gotten annoying and I hope it stays that way. On the exit I rode doubles with Amanda with her at the helm and the crowd seemed to be intrigued by this. From there it was up to Bombers on Lark St for their free birthday margarita.

Not your average margarita

I just went and looked at the pictures I took there on my phone and discovered two things: 1. the camera on my phone sucks, it’s time for an upgrade 2. we didn’t need the margarita… On a good note, the Maxi ran great all night, not one problem even when riding doubles, oh I do need new brakes though. I have a massive Treats order coming and a phone with a better camera so I can document things more betterer for whomever reads this. Does anyone read this? I tend to ramble.