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JOURNAL · N°921 12 April 2017· cyclo· 16 min de lecture

Engine restoration for the Solex brand: a picture is worth a thousand words

LA
Par L' Atelier de la Vigne : Cyclomoteurs anciens
Atelier · Ruy-Montceau
Restauration moteur de marque solex : une image vaut mieux que des mots

Many of you ask me what an engine restoration really brings.

Is it worth spending so much?

What's the end result?

If I do it myself, will it be just as good?

Are all the parts the same anyway? etc etc…

I generally answer these points:

  1. The cost of good parts is quite high, for a moped as well as for a vintage car. You can get "cheap" but you shouldn't expect much.

  2. You don't "tune" an engine. This 50-year-old machine is designed to run between 30 and 40 km/h. This very design makes any completely unrestrained preparation dangerous… a broken flywheel at high speed can hurt, very badly! Not to mention a simple broken connecting rod head, an exploding roller and so on… you have to be careful AND aware of the limits of our old machines.

  3. Installing a high-performance part is useless if you botch the rest, and that's the whole point of the preparation we provide at the Workshop. A healthy engine is an engine with high-performance and reliable parts, but the whole must be assembled in a coherent and refined manner. Some are surprised that I spend an hour preparing a fuel pump… but what's the point of a beautiful cylinder without good fuel delivery, without air intake on the fuel circuit, without any leaks? Not much at all!

  4. Finally, an engine seems simple at first glance, but its metrology and the tools needed for proper disassembly/reassembly are not easily available or, in any case, prohibitive for a single engine. And the use of unsuitable tools often leads to breakage and therefore parts to be replaced.

  5. Last point, this moped is… a bicycle with an engine. You also have to take care of the frame as well as the engine! If the wheel hubs are out of order or poorly tightened, if the brakes rub, if the frame is not aligned etc etc… well, even with an excellent engine, your performance will be mediocre. The Workshop carefully handles this "bicycle" assembly in its restorations.

But all this is just talk, and it seemed more "telling" to make two short videos to show you the effectiveness of an engine preparation at the Workshop.

I took advantage of a recent roller moped gathering to film my 3800 Bicolor limited edition "magpie" in action.