Working on a moped on your landlords front porch is a great way to meet new people. About a week into moving to Brooklyn Leah and I had met more people in our neighborhood than anywhere we had ever lived before!
Our neighbor Carlos asked me if I wanted another project. I said I’d take a look. Well to my surprise he had a clean Sparta in his basement. The moped looked pretty good with the exception of having a few broken spokes in the rear wheel. I asked if it was his and he said it QA now…basically it had been his cousins moped and one day while being chased by local cops for riding the wrong way in bike lanes he hid it in Carlos’s basement. But then he ended up moving back to South America and leaving the moped to Carlos! The back wheel was broken when he road it down the steps into the basement with police in chase…with a story like that I had to get it going again.
This was a total stock rebuild. I managers to track down some spokes and fixed the rear wheel, cleaned up the wiring, plugged up the decomp, new plug, flushed out the tank and it started right up. I rode it around the block once and then posted it on Craigslist. It was only on there for a week when a kid came and picked it up. Noah is now wrenching and riding all the time!
Now that I had the Sparta out of the garage I could get back to my main projects…Tomonstr an the Green Machine.