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Post by evilgenius on Apr 11, 2011 0:36:22 GMT -6
I dig that chopper, fairweasel. Saw one similar around Toledo last month. For those still paying attention... First cable I got from Scrappy didn't work. Draw length on the cable was just *this* much too short, even at maximum adjustment. Ordered another from Ebay, luckily it got here PDQ. Listed as 105mm draw, it was actually 120mm when it got here, so that much the better. 80" length. Unfortunately, as I have so often found with this scoot, there were complications. When I took the instrument pod apart on the right handlebar, the starter button housing simply *disintegrated*. No kiddin'. Brittle, brittle plastic basically dissolved when exposed to light and air. Broke apart at literally every corner/angle or other plane it could-there were nothing left but flat pieces. No biggie, I just need a new button. My searches come up with nothing compatible. Some complete pods for way too much, and no guarantees on wiring compatibility made me a sad 'genius.  Ever the intrepid engineer, I figured I'd try my luck at replacing the switch myself. A trip to Advance and $3.99 later, I'm out the door with this little jewel: shop.advanceautoparts.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_Plastic-Toggle-Lever-Switch-Black-Momentary-On-Function-Dorman---OE-Solutions_5471443-P_N3138_A|GRP2037_____Big honkin' toggle switch, this baby's about 1.5" long. ;D Momentary on was perfect too. Like a big dummy, I ran off and left the housing at home, but I was able to size it pretty closely with the plastic 'button' piece, which I did have enough presence of mind to remember. Unfortunately, my in-package visual estimation was off by about 0.75mm, so I had to break out the trusty pencil grinder to make a smooth fit. A little stove black blended in the shiny edges from that. Had to angle off some of the round edges of the switch base also, in order to accommodate a step in the pod housing. Clipped & stripped off the ends of the wires running to what was left of the former switch, crimped on some shiny new spade connectors, and plugged it all up. Things were looking good at this point, so I went ahead and threaded in the end of the throttle cable in with the handle so the housing would be ready to assemble. Bolted right back into place and plugged in the molex. Turn the key, hold the grip, cross the fingers, and hit the toggle -- and the starter cranks, and she fires right up. Much happiness at this point. $4 toggle switch vs. $60 pod I'd probably have to rewire anyway -yeahhhh, I'll take that. I dig the big ghetto toggle switch too, it gives character! ;D The rest of the job was fairly benign - ran throttle cable, seemed to be perfectly spaced - very little adjustment required once I hooked it up. I did find my idle set too low, had to up that a bit. I'd pulled my rectifier off the frame to get access with another hand on the cable hookup, and scrubbed some nasty green funkies out of the connector, so hopefully that'll help the electrical system a bit while I'm at it to boot. While I had the front fairing off, I pulled the windshield and hit the bottom of it with some stove black where the crappy OEM black paint was cracking and peeling. Still not great, but at least it's solid now, so it's an improvement. Replaced a couple of missing/broken nut/bolts for the windshield too (!). Somewhere in amongst this, I managed to sneak in an oil change too, with a squirt of some Lucas just to help things out in that department. Took 'er out for a 2-3 mile test drive, all backroads 25-35mph give or take. Back end felt a little mushy, otherwise fine. Got ready to go out for a ride today, absolutely gorgeous here in beautiful KY -85° and sunny! Put the skirts back on and check tire pressure...to find the back holding about 10lbs. D'oh! 10 seconds later, I'm pulling the offending culprit from my tire - a 1cm spike of something that had plainly been on the pavement getting ran over for a long, long time before finally winding up in my tire. Boo. Not gonna stop my ride, though! Grabbed the trusty plug kit and socked it to it. 5 minutes later, tire's aired up and ready to go.  Plug kit is now a part of the "i can do everything mechanically conceivable to this scooter with this tool roll" under the seat (should have been in the first place, I know!). In the end, spent a gorgeous afternoon riding. New hardware performing optimally. Next: time for gear oil change, and check exhaust flange seal - almost sounded like maybe it had loosened up a tad. Not backfiring or putt putting, but just a little tone change maybe. Could just be the exhaust corroding. ;D No biggie, got an extra donut last time, so I can replace if needed. Other than that...looks like some new rubber's in order. Sucks, but I've been wanting to anyway. I'm still on the *Nylon* Hongdous that came on it, which I've been most displeased with. Front wants to walk into every crack in the road. The rear I suppose I should give at least a grudging credit to for staying inflated at all with that hunk of metal sticking out of it, but it's gotta go all the same. Goal for this'll be better handling for the front, and something fatter on the rear. Maybe even up to a 13" low profile or something if there's clearance. Make that ratio a little taller!  Thinking about leaving the handlebar covers off as well. I not only am partial to the 'take something off every time you can' theory, but I like the look of the bars better than with the covers on. Unfortunately a little rust there, so I topped that of with -you guessed it-, a little stove black. Some atrocious burrs around the cutout too, some file work done there to make it somewhat presentable. Might get a cap for the main pipe too. I worry about water getting in, but I can't see that the handlebar covers would do that much to keep it out either, so I'm kinda questioning it. Not like it's out in the rain if I can help it anyway, but it could happen while I'm inside at work or something, and I don't wanna come out to fried electronics. Hmm...will have to consider this more, but leaving them off for now and just being careful not to get wet - which is unfortunately also rather difficult to do in the spring here. ANYway...that's my story for now.  |
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Post by evilgenius on Apr 3, 2011 22:14:17 GMT -6
Thanks, sprocket! Problem hopefully solved! <crossing fingers> I've got an "80-ish" length cable (79" sleeve-to-sleeve), with 4.5" of draw on the way. Thus gaining about 29mm of usable cable length, as well as some breathing room for wire routing. I'm thinking this should be about perfect for my app. So...to the OP: First, pull all the slack to one end and see how much draw you have total (metric pocket scale's perfect for this). Next, mock assemble and estimate how much more you'd need for things to assemble smoothly at mid-adjustment settings. Consider length you need for routing, and see what you can find! It's kinda difficult to find vendors who'll list the actual draw length, oddly enough. Some ebayers list draw length in a roundabout way. Scooterpartsmax seems to have good visuals regarding:  |
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Post by evilgenius on Apr 3, 2011 16:25:36 GMT -6
OK, I think I may have some info with some bearing on this. If you've seen my recent thread, you'll see that I'm dealing with throttle cable issues too. I ordered what appears to be the same cable you did. Long story short, I've hooked the cable up and the carb side of the cable takes up virtually all of the slack at maximum extension adjustment. My throttle grip is like yours, and the others are correct about you having the peg in the wrong position. Even in the correct position, mine was holding @1/2 throttle at all times. Note that the cable itself had slack on mine, but it was the overall cable draw that was too short. I did adjust all adjustments to their maximum (or minimum, depending on how you look at it) in order to get maximum draw length, and still it was just *this* much too short. Total draw between both ends was @85mm at max. Basing on the 72/76" quoted dimensions, there should have been 101.6mm of draw. No matter how I adjusted, that was the proverbial "it". I tried to trim back the sheathing and buy myself the extra 15mm or so travel that would put me back in business, but encountered epic fail when I accidentally nicked the cable when cutting away the loom. Metal coil-wrapped loom, this is a real pain to try and cut, only try as a last resort, because one slip and you'll kill it like I did. The cable itself is listed as being applicable to your body type. I noticed yours is a 150 variant on the same frame that a lot of 50's are built on. It may be possible that the shorter draw would work great...on a 50cc carb, which *could* be smaller than ours, despite having the same connecting hardware. My carb's a basic Walbro-yours is...? Of course, there's always a possibility that Wang was having a bad day at the throttle cable factory and decided to have a little joke on us by cutting all the cables 15mm too short. Just as likely, really.  Edit: Thinking best solution may just be a bigger cable. Anybody have any info as to whether throttle cables scale proportionally? I see 78-80" cables on Ebay, but the question is whether the longer cable length is indicative of increased draw, or merely more cable length with same draw... |
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Post by evilgenius on Mar 18, 2011 18:13:11 GMT -6
Hehe...it's great seeing all the scooterists waking from their hibernation. Be safe, everybody!
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Post by evilgenius on Mar 18, 2011 18:00:45 GMT -6
First off, "hi" to all - haven't been around much over the winter, hope everyone is well. So...now that I'm getting temps up past that magic 40 degree mark in the mornings, I'm on the road again (and tickled to no end to be so!). Take off this morning and all's well...little dark where DST just kicked in, scoot running good and everything just feeling right. All's well with the universe for those few minutes - you know the feeling.  Pull up to a stop, and turn onto another road. Not 100ft after takeoff, something goes 'pop!', and suddenly my throttle's -dead-. OK...no panic...pulled over. Unfortunately this is a back road with no e-lane whatsoever (just a couple of feet's worth of grass and a creek!) and it's rush hour on the way to the industrial park, so there's maniacs hell-bent on beating the clock coming through in droves. Location really is everything, after all...was contemplating backing up to the intersection, but found a drive up ahead that looked like a promising spot for some impromptu repair work. Sure enough, inspection found my throttle cable (which is just about thick enough to make a pencil lead jealous, I might add!) had snapped off about 8-10" below the grip. Boo.  So, there wasn't much to be done at that point. It was almost exactly halfway there, with home being twisty backroad and work being mostly 4-lane, so I chose the 'continue to work' option. Pushing was decidedly not on my agenda for the morning. I pulled the remnants of the cable through, but could not actuate the cable without running another loop around the back of the scoot - after which, of course, there was precious little length of cable left to work with. What I had was one little nub that reached about to the center of my pillion seat. Having little choice, I proceeded to work, actuating the throttle cable wrapped around my pointer finger on my left hand -behind my back- while steering/braking with the right hand. Woohoo! Got me there, with about a 25 minute delay. Plucked off the old cable at lunch, and sent the Evil Wife around to the local bike shops to try and get something to get home with. Predictably, she had no luck. Crappy Honda dealership couldn't do anything because "he had no way of knowing what the length of cable was", despite having both pieces right in front of him. I swear, our local H powersports are about some of the sorriest lot I've ever seen. Local Yammy dealer was much more helpful (big thanks to I75 Yamaha for their help!), but ultimately no better at procuring the needed cable. In a last ditch effort, went to Tractor Supply to try and find something workable. Quite a few throttle cables, but of course mower-oriented and thereby unuseful. I did find a spool of some much better-looking cable, but unfortunately without any way of making a terminator for it, similarly unuseful. There were, however, some little clamps for said wire that would enable me to put the cable back together. Eureeka! Sure enough, the clamps held the cable back together just fine...may have lost maybe an inch. To my great dismay, I found that my awesome cable repair was all for nought, as routing the cable back down the tree and such with those (now seemingly much bigger) clamps 'as is' was not going to happen.  Having few options left, I stripped the longer remaining cable of it's sheathing, reconnected to the carby, ran it up through a tab slot of a removed body panel on the right side, wrapped it around my right hand... and rode it right the F home. ;D I'm not saying I broke any land speed records doing so, but it actually worked out pretty well for such a desperate measure. Putt-putted on back to the house (even managing to enjoy the ride, such as it were!), and I should be able to get a new cable to install by early next week.  On a more serious note..."don't try this at home, kids". While I'm pretty stoked that I was able to resolve the situation by wits and (minimal) elbow grease alone, I would've been -seeeriously- hosed if I lost grip on that remaining cable while scootin' down the road and got it wrapped up in the back tire. Consider this a precautionary tale, to be emulated in emergency use only. |
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Post by evilgenius on Sept 28, 2010 17:48:30 GMT -6
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Post by evilgenius on Sept 27, 2010 15:52:04 GMT -6
Glad to hear you're relatively OK, cc!
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Post by evilgenius on Sept 19, 2010 21:00:52 GMT -6
You're too kind, ce!
You're not the first person to suggest removing the louvres and replacing them with something else. I took a look at mine when I was fabbing the scoop, but decided to leave them on the basis that A) SOMEthing is needed there, in case I pass by a wayward chihuahua on the side of the road, and B) anything else I put in place of the louvres would likely only be more restrictive, rather than less.
Got any pics of your scoop with the sink screen installed? I'd love to see how you did it. I've looked at a lot of these and it seems like everybody's got their own twists on it.
And yes, just sitting there idling you can put your hand up and feel some seeerious suck action at the intake. Pretty generous southern breeze blowing out the bottom side of the shroud too, I was actually pretty surprised what a difference the scoop made. It's like the difference between blowing out a birthday candle and using a compressed air nozzle - no comparison at all. I'm sure my poor little gy6 appreciates it. Under higher RPM's and ram injection from the air sliding down that body panel, I'm lucky I haven't decimated the local squirrel population just in riding by!
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Post by evilgenius on Sept 19, 2010 19:48:17 GMT -6
Thanks for the compliments, Rich! You are right, every time I go to do just a *little* something on this scoot, it turns into a significant engagement. Like you said though, I'm just glad I caught it before the proverbial scheiss impacted the rotational cooling device. Better a week in the garage than an hour on the side of the road! |
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Post by evilgenius on Sept 18, 2010 16:21:50 GMT -6
So I notice one morning that my rear axle is still engaging after the enricher shuts down. Didn't think much of it at the time, wrote it off to carb idle setting needing adjusted due to the fact that it's no longer a bazillion degrees on a daily basis here in beautiful KY. Rode it for a few days, then went to adjust the idle down...to my great dismay I found that there was no idle setting low enough to not engage the axle and keep the engine running. R'uh-r'oh! Sure enough, the clutch was staying 'grabbed' at virtually all RPM. Pulled the bell off, and a chunk of pad and a spring came out with it. Not good. Looks like the shoe snapped right around the 'bottom' hole. Steel looked to be of terrible quality! End result:spring pulls other end down, extending the rest of the shoe out and engaging with the bell all the time. First thing's to get it off. After reading and watching the videos, I go and buy a 'rubber' strap wrench from Autozone to get a firm grip on the clutch bell.  Never do this. This tool was a complete and utter POS. It came, it grabbed, it snapped. End of story. Need a jar opened? Maybe. Not for this app, though. Might as well have used the old belt to grab with, it probably would'a held up better anyway. Next came the chain wrench. I'm pretty sure these are just the evolution of some mideval torture device. Still, the axle nut would not break. There appeared to be some yellow dabbed onto the end of the shaft - I first took this as a 'witness mark' that the bolt had been torqued properly, but maybe it was kryptonite-enhanced loctite. Tough to say. I took a torch to it - nada. Stood on the damn thing with an impact - no dice. Penetrating oils, mineral spirits, P-B blaster...I threw everything I had at this thing and it just sat there and laughed. Finally, I resorted to the method of last resort - I summoned the Evil Wife, who hopped up, laid on both brakes, and held the scoot in place while I heaved at it it with a 4" Impact socket on an 18" breaker bar fitted with the "BFB" - a 3 and a half foot section of cyclone fencing pipe. As Archimedes posited, "Give me a lever long enough...and I will move the world single-handedly." Finally, the nut came loose and off the assembly came. The OEM Bando 835 belt was fairly worn, but still good for a backup. With an eye for tuning, I thought I'd pull the variator and see what kind of weights were in there. Being fairly resourceful, I fabbed a sturdy-looking little variator tool:  It would seem that when Wang hit this thing with the pneumatic at the factory, he had the torque set to the same "WFO" setting used on the back axle. Result: variator drive face breaks into chalky bits. No kiddin'. To it's merit, my tool did not fail. The chunks of 'Chi-luminum' variator still bound to the pegs will attest to it's construction.  What IS this thing made out of? Fired clay?  So that bridge is pretty well burned - one way or another, this variator's coming off! Tried the chain wrench - no go. Kept slipping off, or breaking more of the paper-mache-like fins.  Tried bracing it with a board while I cranked on it with the BFB, to no avail. Variator ate the board.  Subjected the nut to the same barrage of tactics as the clutch axle, with the same predictable result. Eventually, I resorted to a BFH and a sturdy chisel, with which I reduced the drive face to the physical equivalent of a big huge nut, and broke it with the BFB and chain wrench securing the remainder of the drive face. On the positive side, I did finally learn that I've been running on a set of 12.5g rollers. An important little piece of data, that. So...time for parts! After lots of browsing, I finally decided on Battlescooter's GY6 variator kit, a gates powerlink 842 (also from B-S), and a 'mystery clutch' from ebay that turned out to be a fairly sturdy-looking 'yikelup' brand clutch assembly. www.battlescooterstore.com/sess/utn;jsessionid=154c9531fa163fc/shopdata/0137_GY6+150cc/product_details.shopscript?article=0170_Complete%2BRacing%2BSpeed%2BVariator%2BKit%3D2C%2BTGB%2BLaser%2B%3D28GY6TK%3D29Battlescooter got me my parts over the weekend, ebayer took 'till the next week. Following the impeccable logic handed down by Haynes manuals to all would-be wrench turners, "installation is reverse of removal". Clutch assembly went on without a hitch, as did the variator assembly (sticking with the 12.5g rollers). Rubbed a dab of moly grease into the steel inside the sleeve of the variator so that hopefully it'll self-lubricate over time without gooping anything up. Decided to skip on those red springs for now. The battlescooter guy said that basically the color had nothing to do with actual specification - they just wanted 'em in red. Nice. Rather than go to the effort of putting on these 'mystery springs', I figured I'd try what's in the clutch I bought. Especially if they are uber-torque springs, I'm not sure I want to take that big chunk out of my available powerband. Curiosity project for later, or potential "re-bay" materials maybe. Got some new nuts and washers, torqued both to the neighborhood of 40-ish foot pounds, and let the loctite cure overnite.  From an engineering standpoint, this variator looks pretty sweet. Feels to be some higher-quality metal here, for starters. Variator face is a gargantuan 118mm. Variator face has been shot blasted, providing what is no doubt a very aggressive grip on the belt. Ramps look good, with lots of extra travel path cut right to the end.  While amongst all this, I also sealed up some cracks at the angle where the snorkel meets the air box, and replaced the blow-by hose to the airbox with some higher quality hose. Also changed the gear oil, which had been cooked to a nice crispy black from pitting the gears against the 'always-on clutch' too. Put it all back together, crossed my fingers, and...success. Everything fell right into place. Adjusted the carb...oh yeah...she's purrin' nicely now. Back on the road, everything seems to be just fine. Started out slower, and then got a little more ballsy as I got more confidence that everything was playing together nicely. So...what everyone is of course asking at this point: what are the results? Well, going from a non-working scooter to a working scooter is a huge plus. I still have yet to GPS, but the Chi-nometer that used to say 70mph on a flat-and-level WFO cruise now flirts with 80mph. Factoring in all known variables, I have presumably gone from 55-60 top end to 60-65 top end under ideal conditions, so I will certainly take that. Not sure that there was much change in low-end grunt, but getting to top speed seems more smooth now. Overall, I spent around $130 for everything, so I'm pretty happy from a cost vs benefit standpoint. And so, for the past 2 days, I have aimlessly rode around in the warm KY sun, with a big smile on my face, being more or less happy. Not having any true end for this saga, I'll just trail off with a few gratuitous pics: Right side:  Left side:  Of course, man-law dictates that if shiny new parts come with a sticker, that sticker must be applied. In this case, a battlescooter logo:  A little clearer pic of the air scoop, which is still holding up fine:  |
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Post by evilgenius on Sept 10, 2010 19:58:21 GMT -6
Bummer...sorry to hear you got jacked. :0(
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Post by evilgenius on Sept 8, 2010 20:39:45 GMT -6
www.amazon.com/Extra-Bright-Volt-Incandescent-Light/dp/B0034KP184There ya go...for less than $8, and it comes with both lighter plug and clamps. Can't see how it all hooks up with the bi-cord setup, but you might not have to butcher the cables too badly to make it all work. Might be able to cut the end off of the impact cord, put a couple of pins on it for quick disconnects?
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Post by evilgenius on Sept 8, 2010 20:33:42 GMT -6
Personnaly I like the chrome on it. Alleyoopl I like the shiny diamond guard too, but I think there was another shroud around the little outlet pipe that was actually the problem. "Too nasty to put back on", for unspecified reasons. Rust, perhaps? Mine was the same way, a lil' stove black cured it right up. |
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Post by evilgenius on Sept 8, 2010 19:46:13 GMT -6
You should be able to just black it. My experience so far is to use the term "chrome" extremely loosely when referring to any chinascoot's OEM hardware. Chi-chrome? Pseudo-chrome? ;D At any rate, I haven't had any problems getting stove black to stick to any chi-chrome widgets like you would a real stainless or chromed surface. You could hit it with some really fine grit sandpaper or emory cloth to help it tack if you're that worried, if the 'nastiness' you referred to is rust, or if by chance the first coat doesn't tack.
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Post by evilgenius on Sept 8, 2010 19:33:19 GMT -6
Hmmm...comes to mind, one might buy a cheap 'emergency light' and cabbage the wires/clamps off of it? Like all things one really needs in life, you could probably find it at Harbor Freight too. They practically give these things away, so even if it didn't work you surely wouldn't be out much.  |
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