Velo Solex Times Two

[cheesy]

Originally Posted by Ascot500

What is that car in the background?

Car? If you mean the the green thing with the red fairing, that's a 2007 Ural Gear Up side car rig from Russia. More fun than you are legally allowed to have and, like a Solex, a butt simple machine.

[lokie56]

I had a Bitsa VeloSoleX that was part early 1960's frame and 3800 engine that I found at a garage sale in boxes for $60. It was fun, they do get nearly 200 MPG. It was my favorite garage sale shopper, slow little bike for a lazy summer weekends cruising backstreets and alleys for estate and yard sales.

[lokie56]

Originally Posted by cheesy

Never thought about polishing the piston top. Worth a try.

Mufflers. See the round black things next to the front wheels?

Them's mufflers. Believe or not but the exhaust pipe is 6mm. Header pipe is 13mm. My understanding is that the Hungarian Impex muffler is prized for it's 16mm header pipe and 8mm exhaust. All I know is that purchasing and importing an Impex would cost more than I spent on the bikes.

BTW I have an extra Impex muffler..

[cheesy]

Wow, almost 3 years.
I've been messing with these stinky little turds recently. Actually, quite a bit. They are great for cruising our 'hood and very cheap to run.

I recently fit a bike cyclometer to the 77 and got that calibrated. No easy task as the goofy French tires are not listed in the ETRTO charts and a pain to mount the sensors. I did find out that I can hit a fear inducing, GPS confirmed, 19.1 mph on the flats.

The 73 is in the process of getting LEDs head and taillights. No easy feat, either. First task is to convert the weird (read:French) lighting coil AC output to DC. Probably the easy part. Second is to make that DC usable. That takes some soldering. The output is not 6vac, it's 28vac. That is another can o' worms. Rectified DC is 1.41 that of AC, so somewhere in the neighborhood of 39.4vdc. When not taken into consideration, the smoke gets let out.

That was a 470uf cap, rated at 25v. Since replaced with a 470uF rated at 250v. I want this board overbuilt.

I tested ver.2.0 on the Solex yesterday and got a steady 28vdc between the cap and the 7805 regulator, which is the weak link in the system. It's rated at 35vdc. It works well, but a lot of heat. May survive, may not.

While digging around in my electronics drawer, I found this.

I think I bought this when I was dealing with the temp gauge voltage regulator on the Maggot years ago. I didn't use it because of the size. It's pretty big. Inputs and outputs weren't marked, either. I'm going to trace the 'puts this afternoon and see if the works a bit better. If nothing else, it doesn't look like a 4-H project.

[cheesy]

So, still dicking around with the lighting system on the 73 Solex. In order to fire up this turd without riding it requires a 14mm socket on the business end of an electric drill. In this case a 20v 3/8" B&D. The only 14mm socket I have easy access to is a 6 point Stanley. Almost perfect but it has an internal taper to help slip over a hex nut. Doesn't work so well with a thin nut. Rounds it off quickly.

The fix? Remove the taper. Standing at the grinder, I look to the left and there is the 90 year old lathe. Dope! I've gotten almost able at centering a 4 jaw chuck, so I chucked up and centered the socket, then faced it a lot faster than grinding it.

As far as the lighting goes, the regulator/rectifier on the green PCB won the bid. It works better than the one I built. It's getting installed this weekend.

[cheesy]

I thought I'd get this done today but I stood up into an open metal cabinet door. I sat down really frickin' fast, too. Once the stars faded, I said screw it for the day and went in the house.

Bits.


Reg/rec mounted.


Five minutes later, I tried to make myself shorter.

[cheesy]

Well, hell. It worked, until it didn't. I let the smoke out of the bridge rectifier. Thankfully, the DC side of the board is fine and I just need to replace the rectifier.

What did John Wayne say? "Life is tough. Life is tougher when you are stupid."

[cheesy]

Note to self. read the datasheet first. Or at least wear your glasses.
The board was rated at 23VAC input. Output of the lighting coil is 28VAC. Overdrove that bridge rectifier just a tad.

On the advice of a VeloSolex god and Ojibway brother in NYC, I went with an LM2596HV board. It has an input rating of 50VAC, so it don't care. Smaller than the Audiowind board I was using and cheap, too. I got two for under ten bucks. It works really well.



I think I'll use the other board I bought in the yellow Solex in the future, with a smaller box. I replaced the smoked rectifier on the Audiowind board and think I may wire that one into one of my bicycles that runs a hub dynamo and dual halogen headlights.