My love for the Blata Origami started in April last year. I was surfing online and came accross a site selling Blata mini motos. When I saw the Origami B1, I thought, damn, that bike looks so cool!. Then I saw the price tag! �2000. There is no way that I was prepared to spend that kind of douly-mouly on a bike at that time – let alone one without any gears.
Time passed, and the first Chinky Chonk replicas started to hit UK shores. Hmmm, I thought to myself, they can’t be that much different than the real ones can they. . So I bought my Origami rep for a princely sum, with the intention of upgrading parts where possible. That was 5 months ago.
I still have not ridden the bike as I am still waiting on the last of the parts to be delivered.
Below is the post that I made on Pocket Bike Planet (I couldn’t be arsed to retype it. )
Well, it has been 5 months since I first began this project. I bought a generation 1 C1 in October last year. I didn’t even put gas in the bike, I just stripped it down to its bear elements to see what I would like to change/upgrade. My intentions were to build a bike that would be 10HP at the tyre and be a reliable long lasting bike.
I hadn’t intended to go so far with it though.
My thoughts were, stick a decent carb on it, some half decent tyres, a Blata piston head insert, then rebuild with decent gaskets – job done.
At the time of purchase, I couldn’t afford a new Origami B1, but could afford to get the replica and some upgrades later on I thought. Well, it took me a time to get the Blata inlet manifold (about 4 months, mainly due to other comitments) and I continued to build other parts of the bike in that time. Which included rewelding and painting the frame and a whole host of other things, like stripping the case and chamfering and rebeveling the ports.
During this time, I met a lot of people online and learned a lot about the Origami in general. After stumbling accross a Blata supported UK forum, I met Trevor Sellars, and discovered to my delight, that he had some nice Blata goodies for sale. He had a brand new ceramic coated B1 cylinder + flat top piston and high compression head insert, and a new stuffed race crank. Mmmmmmm, I thought, I gotta get me some ‘o that.
So I did.
By now (some 4 months after buying the bike), things were begining to take shape. The frame was finished and parts started to arrive left right and centre. Everything was looking good, until I started to get cold feet on the whole project. I had concluded that I had gone too far with this project and spent far too much. After much deliberation, I decided not to sell the whole thing, but to finish it off and decide from there if I wanted to keep it.
Well, if I am in for a penny, I am in for a pound. I got a Blata crankcase and built the engine with the parts from Trevor Sellars and before I had really thought about it, I realised that the only engine parts of the original bike that I would be using were the coil and pull start. Whoops!
I have done it again! Gone into the building without a clear goal. I am the sort of person that gets totally into things, probably far more than is good for me.
The bike is 98% finished. I am still waiting for a couple of parts to get it running which should be here in a week or so. But for now, here are some pictures to show you all what I have been up to for a little while (it seems like a lifetime ago!)
Here is a list of some of the parts used in the build:
Handbuilt Factory Blata Origami engine (Flat top piston, high compression head, ceramic coated cylinder/chrome piston ring, stuffed racing crank and SKF main bearings and Blata seals)
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