Honda scooter chopper

The following account was taken from an e-mail sent by a Turkish scooterist who transformed his Honda scooter. Those of you who have been searching in vain for body parts might want to take a closer look. Its a project I'd seriously consider next time I run into a 50cc scooter with missing or heavily damaged body parts.

During the past week I stripped the body, and started working on the cutting and cleaning of the chasis minor elements such as the cable holding brackets, instrument panel fixing points, etc. Because it was the first time that I took the dremel in hand, I was a bit excited. But now I feel I lot more confident about what I do.  If we go back to my inspiration, to the chopped scooterss that they build in UK; well, apparently most of them are based on Lambrettas, so they have a single piece chassis, but problem with the honda is that the chasis  starts as a single piece member, connects to a box like a pedestal which has two symmetrical extensions ending on the back of the scooter forming an arch. This means:  I have to decide on where to cut the back part of the chasis (considering I am planing to locate the rider as low as possible, just on top of the cylinder head -which might cause a well heated butt but I hope the new configuration will help to cool the block much better- ). The back arch of the chasis is too long for my project so its got to go. I have to decide on the welding point of the front beam. Its primary anchor will obviously be the most upper point of the steering coloumn, but what about the ending point? It is strongly correlated with the location of the rider but also with the petrol tanks' position. Apparently in the coming week I'll be dealing with these two essential questions. Answers to these two questions will be the determining part of project.

Attached, you can find photos of my project which is right now on the stage of dry-run (test riding before paint).  I'd like to get info about the electrics of the scooter. As you remember our subject machine was a European model Honda 50cc scooter Model 1990. It was used for newspaper distribution, so it had seen a lot of engine and transmission re-builds. As I stripped the scooter I found out to my surprise that the so-called Jap scoot had a chassis made in Belgium and the engine and transmission block made in France!    Anyway, as I mentioned above, I need help about the electrics. In photos you can see that for the time being I tried to enclose the wiring and other bits and pieces attached to the wire in  a stainless box just below the saddle. Yet, when all of the pieces were together, the box looked horrific. The first idea that came to my mind was to restructure the whole wiring (which already looks in its final days) inside the chassis tubes, and to construct a small but elegant fiber-glass case for the battery.

I'll probably make another visit to the upholstery guy this or next week. Meanwhile as you've mentioned in your e-mail, there might be other people who could be interested in this kind of customization, so please do not hesitate to share these photos. For anybody who might ask about the tank, well, that was a Honda CG125 tank bought from a breaker for US$14. On the other hand I'm attaching some more photos of the scoots earlier chassis configuration. In those photos you will find that the seat&back of the chasis looked more conventional. I was planning to keep it like that until I thought "I'm already trying to do what has never been done, let's go the whole hog...". I'm also enclosing some pics showing me and my fiancé on board the final version. See the contrast between the riders on the scoot -me (183cm tall, 90kg) and my fiancé (163cm, 50kg). I think the project, in its' final form will be more practical for rather smaller riders.