My First 60 mile ride

[marshinman]

I own a Marshin Viper with a 4T.
I bought it used and for the past few weeks I have made sure not to go more than 10 miles from the house until I felt I could trust it.
Well on Saturday I decided I would do a 60 mile trip.
I needed to go to the Dollar General store and while there is one about 7 miles from the house I decided to go to the other one that is about 30 miles away.
Going there was a breeze, no problems the scooter ran great and I averaged about 40mph.
Coming back was a different story, about 1/3 of the way back all of a sudden the exhaust got loud and I was on a road where I could not pull over to check it out.
By the time I could get to a place to pull over what I discovered was that the rear supporting clamp which in my opinion was mad out of metal that I would compare to a hose clamp had broken where the bolt goes through. The muffler fell enough to break one of the studs off inside the head and the only thing holding it up was the remaining stud.
I pulled my shirt off and tied it around the muffler and to the frame to support it long enough to get back home.
Yesterday I decided that I would fix it and this would never happen again. I drilled out the broken stud and used a ez-out to remove the stud and replaced it with a new stud.
I bought 2 pieces 10 gauge steel at the hardware store that is 1" wide and 24" long.
I cut the metal into two 17" pieces and bent it to fit around the muffler and also bought two new 10mm bolts for the clamps along with locking washers.
To test it I took the scooter for a ride down a rocky road that is in no way even and did the shake test.
Nothing came loose.
Today I will be removing what I created yesterday (The Clamps) and grinding the corners to be round and painting them.
What I have learned from this is what so many others on this forum have said.
Chinese scooters are rattle traps and you need to check every bolt.
I am not going to buy lock washers to fit every bolt I can find on the scooter so that nothing can come loose as well I am going to use lock tight on every bolt.

[reveeen]

Spring, and Fall, you should be looking at the frame, around the stress points, specifically for cracks.

Sometimes the steel used isn't quite what we are used to.

[marshinman]

I have also noticed that the rubber bushings used in the swing arm are below standards. I replaced them with a set of rubber bushings I had from a Honda XR200R, I had to trim them down a bit but they will never go bad.

[90GTVert]

I hope you get it straight and get to start enjoying some longer trips.


You absolutely need some shakedown runs before you can consider a scooter reliable IMO. You may get lucky and have 0 issues, and you may not. My most reliable scooter is the one that got setup, rode a lot, fixed issues along the way, and then is basically left alone. Lock nuts, lock washers, thread locker (seeing a pattern ? lol), safety wire, proper tuning, and attention to detail will all make your long trips more enjoyable. The more you change things, the more likely one of those changes will cause a problem some day in some way. That's not to say you can't mod a scooter and make it reliable. I've taken many long trips 50+ miles and a couple of 200+ mile trips on my heavily modded 96cc Venus.

With all of that said, never think you won't breakdown. A good tool kit can be a life saver, and so can a friend or family member with a truck.

49ccscoot.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=basicstuff&action=display&thread=1485&page=1

[marshinman]

Not to be defensive, but after working on motorcycles for many years I noticed that all the nuts have nylocks in them and are backed up with lock washers.
I thought that using this same principle would be a good thing to do on the scooter as guess you can say bullet proofing it.
The thread locker I want to use on some of the more heaver wear items that you dont normally have to take off.
A good tool kit, most defiantly is something to have along with some duct tape and electrical tape a extra spark plug and some wire.