The Toadette TaoTao

[eclark5483]

Apr 2, 2017 20:41:28 GMT -5 SandStorm said:

I love the flag on that spree xD
She's doing good, actually way better than many people I see daily riding.
She goes careful and not reckless, and that's good

The flag is required by law here in Iowa to drive a scooter. It must be at minimum 5 feet off the ground and have the florescent orange color. Top speed before being considered a motorcycle and not a scooter, is 40 mph, so a scooter must do no more then 39mph.

Yeah, only scooter I have that WON'T do 40 or better, is sitting in the corner of my garage torn apart, waiting on it's own BBK setup.

I want her eventually to step up to a full blown motorcycle endorsement and get into the 250cc class bikes. But if she doesn't, she still always has her pink scoot that will do most everything she needs.

[pinkflames420]

I guarantee she will want an upgrade...Scooters are perfect, unless she is willing to learn to ride a clutch, then I would start off with a 250 Ninja Then again, if she's looking to cruise, then I'm sure dad wouldn't mind her getting a sweet Harley 😁 Makes it all easier when you have your own personal mechanic!

[eclark5483]

Harley?? Really? I take that as an insult.. Consider what I do for a living.

[greggkinney]

Apr 3, 2017 16:56:06 GMT -5 eclark5483 said:

Harley?? Really? I take that as an insult.. Consider what I do for a living.

dont you work at floyd123s body shop? lol...jus kidding. had to thow that out there.i. thought that had to be the funniest thing ive read on here. i think yall finally got him straightend out and doing better tho.

[pinkflames420]

Apr 3, 2017 16:56:06 GMT -5 eclark5483 said:

Harley?? Really? I take that as an insult.. Consider what I do for a living.

I didn't mean for that to be an insult eclark!
And I've seen most of the posts by floyd lol, I'm not sure what to say there besides him being given great advice!

[dan50]

You live in a state that allows 40mph!!!!!

MI. only allows 30mph but up to 100cc's. (licensed as a moped even though it's a scooter - NOT A F****** moped!!!!!)

[eclark5483]

Yeah, Iowa has came a long way since the 80's. Back then, Iowa was one of only a couple of states that allowed 14 & 15 year olds to use scooters, but, they placed all kinds of restrictions on them. This is how you got the Iowa Spree, Iowa Elite, Iowa Express, etc.. They all had lower jets, lower gears, and washers welded into the mufflers and were slower then their regular model counter parts. They were all limited to a top speed of 25mph. The idea at the time, was they didn't want all these young kids on scooters driving at a high rate of speed where the chances of serious injury or death were greater. Well fast forward a bit into the future, it finally dawned on them, that it was actually MORE unsafe to limit the speed to 25 because motorists were more likely to try and pass them, and it impedes traffic flow when there is a scooter in front of everyone slowly picking up speed just to reach 25. So they raised that up to a 39mph threshold before the bike is considered a motorcycle.

So here's the problem I have with that.. So OK, lets say you put in a BBK, or buy a bigger displacement scooter and you register it as a motorcycle because it does in fact, travel over 40 mph.. Well, by law, you are no longer obligated to have that orange safety flag, but... chances are, if you are seen driving your legally licensed as a motorcycle scooter without that flag, you will more then likely get pulled over for it.

Myself, I'll just as soon not bother. All of my scoots will be mainly driven within city limits with the exception of going to Wal-Mart where the limit is 45 on that road. So I'm really not concerned with being nailed going over 40 on them. Only time I ever do that, is on the outside of town.

It is my belief, AND CONTENTION, that in all fairness of the law. Just because a scooter can be proven to exceed the 39mph threshold, should it be considered a motorcycle, is not a fair assessment. What if the INTENDED use was to do no more then the LEGAL speed threshold of 39 mph? It brings up the argument just because it CAN, doesn't mean it WILL be used to violate the law.

EDIT: Interesting to note... since Iowa and only a couple of other states sold the "IOWA EDITION" scooters, not many of them were sold. Nobody wanted to buy a slow scooter, and since they were available in only a couple states, these "vintage" scooters are actually pretty rare compared to the standard Spree/Elite/Express. Because of this, I restored mine and am restoring another. I don't really intend to use them much at all except maybe during bike shows. I'll keep them in the garage, up on blocks, and covered with a tarp. Plan on making those beauties last another 30 years in the least.

[greggkinney]

id never heard of an iowa edition until i read up on yours and researched some there after. it wpuld be cool to have a 39mph speed limit here in n.c. on days i have doctors and therapy. i find alot of times i enjoy just tooling along at 30 mph site seeing on the country roads around here.

[matt2015taotao]

Very cool!
I had a red 86 Honda Spree, it was my first scoot. After that I got an Aero 50, think it was an 88'. I haven't looked to see what those are going for nowadays but it's neat to see they are still around.

[eclark5483]

So, we did a couple pulls on the dyno today to see what's up. The results are a little hard to read. I guess first of all, it's pretty obvious I need to do some serious CVT tuning. One thing I was testing for, was to see if the CDI is restricted... it isn't.. However, the stock muffler is. Found that out when Shawn went to put in the Air/Fuel probe. He said if I wanted to later on, he has a tool he can stick down in there and drill that out. Told him I won't bother since it's just for my kid and what the BBK gives is enough. But anyways, also tried to determine if the A9 cam raises up the power band...meh... I wanna say yes, though I'm not sure what stock RPM peak is. From the readings I got, it looks like it peaks at about 7500rpm.. But that just doesn't sound like it should be right... maybe it is?? It was a little oddball to say the least. Had to give the drum a kick start in the last run just to compare full stop run to where it was when spinning. A 1,000lb drum on a scooter is a bit stressful. My Spree pulled it just fine after fine tuning, but the TaoTao..not so much, but it did pull it. HP/Torque readings were way lower then what one would expect, but then I think it's pretty safe to chalk alot of that up to Chinese bullshit misinformation and advertising. Peak HP with BBK and A9, was like 2.63.

Here's one of the dyno run videos, this run corresponds with the chart below it.

EDIT: You'll notice the A/F mix seems way off, again, we couldn't get the probe in where it needed to be, so this reading is inaccurate.

[eclark5483]

At work ATM, and I'll explain it more when I get home, but the dyno pulls are showing the CVT needs more then just a roller adjustment. HP/torque should be much higher.

[drc174]

Not a fan of A/F on the 2T. EDIT: I AM AN IDIOT, I thought of your spree.....

So here is how I approach CVT. In an ideal case, you block the cvt, so it does not open (can be done with a spacer, or a special kit which i doubt exist for your engine though). Then you do engine pulls that are rather short but rush through your powerband.

You then get a reading when your engine peaks. Afterwards, you tweak your transmission/CVT to then shift as close as possible/exactly on that point.

Now, as it comes to the issues that you are having. Do not change six things at a time. Document. Change one thing, do a pull, see whats up. Keep doing that. Does it get worse? go back to the prior setting.

Etc.

[eclark5483]

So here's the issue that the dyno is showing and why the conclusion is the CVT needs more work then just rollers.

So if we zoom in here on the dyno run image, you'll notice a very jagged fluctuation in the 1 and 1/2 to 2 HP range. On a well built CVT, this should look more like a solid arc, or in the least, show a steady trend.



What this jumping around tells me, is one, or a couple things might be happening. On my Spree, it was easy to isolate, it told me the clutch was slipping. There was no other conclusion to make since the Spree does not have a CVT. On the TaoTao however, it could also indicate a weak contra, or even a poorly sized belt. Keep in mind not only was the engine exerting force to spin the belt, but the scooter had to manage the inertia force coming from the drum. It was able to spin the drum ok after it got up to about 10 miles an hour or so, but struggled a bit from a full stop. This tells me the power coming from the engine being transferred to the rear is getting hung up somewhere besides the rollers. And I agree with you drc174, it's gonna be a step by step process. I think what I'm gonna need to do first though, is get that dyno arc a little more consistent and not jagged. I don't suspect the clutch or the springs are a problem as she has only about 6 or 700 miles on it, so I'll start the focus at the contra and the belt. Unless someone else has other thoughts on this, I'm all ears. Also need to change out my pilot. It's too rich. The A/F on the carb is turned out 3 turns, way too much IMO. It bogs a bit at 1/2 throttle but take off and initial acceleration is FANTASTIC!! So yeah, still some tweaking to go (ain't there always??), but I got the entire riding season to get it right. Gonna go riding with her this weekend, then pull the plug and see how we are doing there since we couldn't get the probe in right on the dyno.

But anyways, got some more pics of the scoot coming up here in a few minutes, as well as a video of the underbody LED's.

[eclark5483]

OK, this set is images of it in the day time with all the graphics in place.

[eclark5483]

This next set, is a video of the LED underglow lights, as well as some pictures of it.