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23 Posts
Well a couple weeks back a few buddies bought Giovanni bikes on ebay and showed me the pics of their fun during a nice evening campfire- promptly I cruised into the house and hit buy now times two... GF gets one too haha.
I found another on Kijiji and brought it home in the meantime. It's not a bad little bike, but had to do the standard fixes. Brakes adjust, chain tension, clutch and drum clean/resurface, carb cleanout etc etc.
Handy tip- being an ex-mechanic of ten years I have tooling and leftover goodies- of which I found that the brake caliper pin lube works fantastic in the throttle grip where the cable just wraps around the plastic radius.
So last night my two Giovanni bikes arrive and I found that I had to go over just about everything I wouldn't want to be a kid riding one of these straight out of the box- geesh.
Started with my black one and fixed the major brake adjustment issues, loctite'd everything, aligned the chain, lubed the throttle cable, castrol chain lube on the chain etc etc. Ran it through 6 thermal cycles using my IR camera to monitor (I'll post up the pics later) FYI the emissivity of the cylinder and reflected apparent temp mess with measurements using a spot type IR thermometer. Not that this is overly critical anyhow.
This bike seems to get stronger and snappier with every cycle- The difference is quite pronounced and I haven't even rode it yet. I'll do a few more then ride a couple tanks and swap the plug for a good NGK.
Did the GF's red one next. Same drill but didn't have time to get it running. Took a bit more work with chain alignment and lube to get this one freed up and smooth. Should be a good toy soon...
Thanks to all who post in the forum, I got alot of useful tips for sure. And more to come I'd bet. Here's a couple pics.
Cheers
Eric
I found another on Kijiji and brought it home in the meantime. It's not a bad little bike, but had to do the standard fixes. Brakes adjust, chain tension, clutch and drum clean/resurface, carb cleanout etc etc.
Handy tip- being an ex-mechanic of ten years I have tooling and leftover goodies- of which I found that the brake caliper pin lube works fantastic in the throttle grip where the cable just wraps around the plastic radius.
So last night my two Giovanni bikes arrive and I found that I had to go over just about everything I wouldn't want to be a kid riding one of these straight out of the box- geesh.
Started with my black one and fixed the major brake adjustment issues, loctite'd everything, aligned the chain, lubed the throttle cable, castrol chain lube on the chain etc etc. Ran it through 6 thermal cycles using my IR camera to monitor (I'll post up the pics later) FYI the emissivity of the cylinder and reflected apparent temp mess with measurements using a spot type IR thermometer. Not that this is overly critical anyhow.
This bike seems to get stronger and snappier with every cycle- The difference is quite pronounced and I haven't even rode it yet. I'll do a few more then ride a couple tanks and swap the plug for a good NGK.
Did the GF's red one next. Same drill but didn't have time to get it running. Took a bit more work with chain alignment and lube to get this one freed up and smooth. Should be a good toy soon...
Thanks to all who post in the forum, I got alot of useful tips for sure. And more to come I'd bet. Here's a couple pics.




Cheers
Eric