A few mods/projects for my TaoTao Atm-50 A1 By glavey (Read 25,078 times)

[glavey]

The place I was thinking about putting the temperature probe before the radiator is about as close as I can get to having a probe in the sump itself.

I would be putting a tee fitting right where the oil exits/gets drawn out of the crankcase and putting the probe there:


I do have another probe/temp gauge, but it isn't as accurate, it's mechanical (meaning all the vibration from the scooter will make getting a reading difficult), and it is in Fahrenheit. The one I have now is in Celsius and is digital.

So it would be a bit of trouble, but I could get a before and after temperature reading like Bashan did when he experimented with oil cooling.

[glavey]

Not really scooter-related, but I fixed my mother's toilet today. She has very hard water and the jet that starts the siphon action was nearly completely clogged with calcium deposits. I used a piece of coat hanger wire to do my best to knock off the buildup. Success! for the first time in many moons (pun not intended, but welcome) the toilet flushes without the assistance of a plunger.

That's my small victory for today.

[glavey]

Tonight, while driving my mother's car back from a local meat market, I had the lovely pleasure of dealing with a flat tire.

Right as I left the store, I heard some hissing coming from the front of the car. I looked and saw that the front left tire was incredibly low. I was about 5-7 miles from my mother's house. I put the hazards on and drove 10 mph for about 3 or 4 miles before I felt the unmistakable feeling of a completely deflated wheel being ridden on. I pulled over, got the spare out, and got to work.

I was darn lucky is was warm outside, about 40 F. If 2 1/2 years of auto service in HS had taught me anything, is was how to properly change out a flat tire and put on a spare. The whole procedure went surprisingly well.

Once I got the flat tire off I discovered the (MASSIVE) source of the leak - the inside tread was completely bald down to the steel belts, while the outside still had considerable tread left; alignment issue. My mother had known that the car had a bad alignment. Many parts (totaling $800) needed to be replaced before an alignment could even be performed, so she elected to just buy new tires since, to be honest, the car was on its last legs (wheels?).

I drove the rest of the way to her house at 10 mph again, hazards on, avoiding main roads, waving past tailgaters. When I did get to her house I noticed (facepalm/irony/murphy's laws/oh come ON!) that the spare was almost flat as well. Seems throughout all the services she has had on her car, none of the mechanics had checked the spare tire's pressure.

She plans on one of her relatives coming over on Monday and if the spare can make it to the nearest tire store, they will follow just in case. If the spare has gone kaput, I told her I would take the other front end wheel off and we would bring both front wheels to the tire store in her relatives car, they will put new tires on, and I would put both wheels back on at her house.

This thread is starting to turn in to more of a diary than a project documentation, I am sorry about that.

[cyborg]

No problems here,,, gotta get those front end parts tho,,, eBay to the rescue!!! Probably do the job for $200 in parts and a day doin it,,, but have to have a proper alignment done when finished

[glavey]

[cyborg]

Geez dude that car has a crazy camber problem,,,A arm bushings? Can't be ball joints,,,if they were bad enough to do that they would have failed already,,,,and the tire isn't feathered so it's not a toe out issue like steering joints going away,,,,looks like the bushings for the eccentrics have disintegrated & now it's the pin inside the eye of the A arm ,,,not that hard to change and cheap on eBay

[glavey]

The last time the car was in for servicing, the mechanics listed everything they found wrong with the car. I'll see if I can find it and price out some of the parts. I'm pretty confident in my ability to work on her car at her house.

[cyborg]

Most big brand chain auto parts stores rent or even loan tools for free with a deposit (they do here) ,,,,watch a couple YouTube vids and if you're confident and have the tools to do it ( or rent them ) BAM!!!!!!,,, helped a guy put a whole front end and rear shocks on his Toyota tacoma in 3 hours ,,,and not really hitting it hard either,,and I used no pneumatics,,all by hand except for my impact to get the wheels off,,,easy peasy baby,,,then he drove to get it aligned,,,he called me an hour later and the guy at the tire store said we had it so close it was creepy,,,we were only a few degrees off of toe and camber,,,,nice

[cyborg]

Oh I meant to say I recently switched from napa to Oreilley auto parts for most of my parts now ,less expensive , get parts faster ( if they don't have it in stock already), and crazy long hours,,,till 9 most every nite,,,holidays,,,crazy good

[Guitarman]

Our car (Betsy) was given to us about a year and a half ago. At the time, the guy said it had a leak. So I discovered the water pump was bad and leaking. The nightmare was that to get to the water pump, I had to remove the front half of the engine. Rad, fans, trans cooler, oil cooler, engine cover, timing belt, and the idler pulleys. Had I known that before I started, I would've scrapped it. but, I got it done and set the timing by hand, which on that car is crazy difficult. And I had to do it on the street. I had trouble walking for 3 days after that one. GET A CREEPER. LOL

My point is, If I can do that with basic tools on the side of the road in under 4 hours, you should be able to fix the front end in a nice garage. As long as you don't have to press any bearings, you're gold man.

EDIT:

Since that happened, Betsy developed a crack in the water jacket on the block.  That repair is beyond my budget so she just makes trips down to the grocery store about 1/2 mile away now.  Runs awesome as long as you don't go over 20mph.  Just waiting for the replacement to turn up on CL or somewhere then Betsy will be retired.

[glavey]

Just got back from the tire store, we made it on the spare. Turns out the other front tire was in the same shape as the one that went flat, so two new tires.

Thanks for all the encouraging words, fellows. Now I just need to find out what I need to replace for this to end. I'll be digging through the glove box for the receipt form the last service.

Regardless of weather or not I can fix it, my mother plans on getting rid on the car one way or another. She is saving up for a new-to-her car, but isn't quite there yet. I agreed to let her have my car until she can buy one for herself. It really isn't a big deal for me, I work from home.

No progress on the scooter tachometer, but I have a few mental leads on what to do.

[glavey]

Small update on the tachometer; I think I got the servo to stay put and not give erroneous readings, almost by accident.

I tried using a separate power supply as I mentioned in a previous post, that helped the arduino not reset every time the servo had to move a long distance; turns out the 9v battery I was using to power it was nearly dead. The arduino and thus the servo were still giving erroneous readings every now-and-again.

Up until now, I have had the hall effect sensor hooked up directly to the 5v rail and giving 5v pulses from the analog output directly through to one of the interrupt pins on the arduino without going through a resistor. I tried putting some resistors between the sensor and the arduino and that helped ever so slightly.

I hooked up the o-scope to the output of the sensor to see if the sensor was actually giving those bad readings to the arduino or if somewhere between the arduino and the servo the signal and calculations were going bad. The output of the sensor checked out, it was as it was supposed to be. That ruled out the sensor.

Next I disconnected the servo from the arduino and used the serial monitor on my computer to read the rpm. The random intermittent signal was still there. That meant that the problem was somewhere between where the sensor connects the arduino, in the arduino (code), or between where the arduino connects to the servo.

I changed a few things in the arduino sketch to no avail. By then I was running out of ideas, so I just started changing how the sensor was connected to the arduino. As I said before, I have had the analog output from the sensor going to the arduino with and without a resistor between them. I tried changing to the digital output from the sensor; the servo was either pegged at one end of the scale or the other, nowhere in between. I put a resistor between the digital output of the sensor and arduino and... no more jittering rpm signal!

Here is a video of the result of my accidental fix.

[cyborg]

Good,, lots of things get solved by trial and error

[glavey]

I got a wee bit bored today and took apart the chinese analog tach that I had on my scooter. Don't worry, I was careful not to damage it so I can put it back together. I wanted to see what kind of circuitry it was using to get a signal from the primary side of the ignition coil.










It appears that the tach uses a diode and a voltage divider to lower the voltage to useable levels.

Also, as is apparent, the tach's movement is done with (I believe the correct term is) an air-core gauge, not a servo or a stepper motor.

[cyborg]

Interesting