2017 SSR Motorsports Lazer 5 Sport & A Story
May 17, 2018 18:16:07 GMT -5
190mech, ryan_ott, and 8 more like this
Post by 90GTVert on May 17, 2018 18:16:07 GMT -5
I was browsing craigslist a month or so ago. I'm not an avid craigslist searcher, but I was looking off and on for a bit to see if any sport bikes or sport tourers came up at a great price. Probably wouldn't have bought one anyway because I just can't afford another big bike and it's insurance, but I can dream. Anywho, I stumbled upon a 2017 SSR Motorsports Lazer 5 moped for sale in early-mid April. I like mopeds just fine, but I wasn't looking for one... so why did this one interest me?
Well, some of you know that I got my start on motorized 2 wheelers on midbikes in the early 2000's. They're basically a step up in size from a pocket bike. Fair warning, this will get long-winded. Here are a couple of pics of my first bike. A Cateye 49cc piston port 2T bought from AutoZone for something like $300. This was right after I got it. I immediately painted it flat black and took off stuff I didn't need.
My friend with the other cateye in the pic above actually got his just before I bought one. He brought it over and I told him, "That thing is stupid. What the hell are you gonna do with that?". He said, "we'll find a parking lot and we're gonna ride it tonight." I offered some resistance, but gave in and tagged along... mostly figuring I'd get to watch him crash it. Turns out, the little bike was a blast. It got up to about 20-25MPH with me on it and it was in no hurry getting there.... but I didn't want to get off of it. Long story short, I bought my own within a week. Very shortly after that, the guy with the mini-chopper in the pic above bought that.
We became a group of parking lot buffoons/racers. These things aren't legal on streets here, so we'd load 'em into our trucks and meet up in a parking lot without much around late at night. The two cateyes had their pegs ground down so it took more to shoot sparks on turns. The poor chopper just couldn't keep up. Of course, they got modified in the competitive spirit. I recall porting all 3 of their cylinders one day. Just raised the exhaust port roof 1-1.5mm IIRC. The 2 cateyes ended up with more work. Mine got a Sidewinder tuned pipe that really woke it up. The other got a high compression racing cylinder kit and could only run on 100+ octane. There were of course other mods along the way, but those and sprocket changes were the main things that mattered.
That went on for a while, but the chopper guy got bored with not keeping up and we wore the engines out. The owner of the other cateye gave it to me and I kept it going for a bit, but I started looking around online and found a different type of midbike. 4T midbikes; commonly in 49cc, 70cc, 90cc, and 110cc versions at the time. I ordered one as soon as I could get the cash together and enthusiastically informed my riding buddies that I had something bigger and better on the way. It was a 110cc semi-automatic X12 midbike. Some also called these super pocket bikes. Still a cheap Chinese miniature motorcycle, but with more power and speed. It went near 50MPH stock, and I had an exhaust for it before the bike even arrived.
Of course my 2 old riding buds had to have their own. We packed into the little Mazda truck so I could drive them to Ocean City, MD to a scooter and motorized toy shop basically (same place I bought my first scoot actually) because they had to get them immediately so we could ride. Roped in another friend that always raced Mustangs with me. My garage ended up looking like this.
Parking lots weren't good enough. We decided it would be alright to take them on the road in the middle of the night. Some of us modified them to add better lights or just any lights, aside from performance mods like big bore kits and sprockets and carbs and so on. Here's what my X12 ended up like.
We had a lot of fun riding around and racing each other on back roads all around the area. Every weekend we'd all meet up at my garage and everyone lived to ride. People girlfriend's got put off and we weren't taking the cars/trucks out looking for trouble as often... we were hooked. Inevitably, before or after a ride myself and the instigator of the whole 2 wheel story would be in the floor fixing someone's bike so it would be ready for that night or the next. The engines were tough, but shifters would bend or there would be throttle issues or any number of little things that need attention on cheap bikes.
That went on for quite a while. Next thing you know, I'm taking mine right into town in the middle of the day because I wanted to ride so bad that I couldn't wait for night and didn't want to go to a parking lot. I told my friends and then 3 of us starting riding day and night on weekends. The fourth killed his engine and threw a panel-smashing tantrum one night when it broke down. That was the last of his riding days.
One Saturday morning, 3 of us were cruising down a back road when red and blue lights rolled up behind us. We were all going around 45-50MPH, which was above the speed limit. We pulled over and a sheriff approached us. First off, these weren't legal period on the road. Second, even if they counted as scooters that required no registration back then, they were over 49cc. The sheriff said there were quite a few complaints about loud little bikes at all hours of the night all around the area. Pretty sure that was indeed us. That wasn't really a problem though. The problem was that the nearest classification for these was motorcycles. None of us had motorcycle licenses, tags, insurance, etc... He gave us a break and told us we could go home, but said that it is on record and next time we would get tickets for no license (M), no insurance, no registration, the bikes would be impounded, and some other infractions that were not as major. IIRC no reg was $1000, no insurance $1000, and I don't remember what the no motorcycle license fine was. It was definitely enough that we couldn't afford to have that actually happen, so we did heed his advice and that was the end of us riding on the road.
We went back to parking lots. 2 of us even took my 114cc engine and put it into a go kart frame. The kart burned through slicks like crazy, so it was quickly too expensive to play with beyond drifting it around in the yard. No, it wasn't that powerful, but it ate tires up quickly from taking turns as fast as we could.
I ended up transplanting my 114cc engine into the little cateye. Had to cut away part of the frame and weld in some 1/8" steel for mounts, but it barely squeezed in there. 114cc, power wheelies in all 4 gears (would flip itself over if you gave it too much throttle in the first 3 and possibly even 4th), and over 50MPH on 6" wheels and tires. I didn't even have any brakes on it at first. We had to put our feet down to stop it. Eventually I put a 10" front wheel and brake from my X12 on it so it would at least stop. You had to take your foot off of the peg to shift, so you'd know it's gonna wheelie and you gotta kick your leg out to reach that shifter. It was a death trap that we enjoyed the hell out of in the yard or in parking lots.
At one point I put the 114cc back in my X12 and an 88cc in the cateye. The 88cc had a really firm auto-clutch, so when you hit it it banged into gear vs most others we had that sort of slipped in. That ended up being the death of the cateye. I took it and the X12 to a parking lot with 2 friends one day. The X12's transmission died while I was riding it. Meanwhile, my friends were taking turns seeing who had the balls to WOT shift the cateye and it ripped the sprocket right off of the wheel. I never did fix that and stuffed it under the stairs in the garage.
That was the last time that any of us rode midbikes. The other cateye owner and I wanted to keep riding and ended up buying scooters. They were the closest things we could find to the midbikes that we liked so much. I got a Vento Triton 49cc 2T (what I now call T1) and he bought a Baja SC50 with the oddball 139QMB that had a 1E40QMB CVT. That's how I got into scooters, so in some roundabout way the scooters that I now love are around because of midbikes and especially the 4T midbike engines.
Here's a vid I just tossed together with some old clips of the cateye and the kart. Had to put YouTube music over a lot of it because I had copyrighted music over it when edited long ago.
Still with me? Alright, back to April when I saw the SSR Lazer on craigslist. I immediately noticed that it had a 49cc version of the engines that my midbikes used to have. Ever since I had midbikes, I have wanted a street legal bike with that engine. It would be more commonly known now for pitbikes or the older Hondas that it was cloned from BTW. Stuff like monkey bikes/trail bikes or the XR50. The issue has always been that they were expensive. The Sachs Madass is what I really wanted for quite some time, but it was expensive compared to other scooters and I've never seen a used one in my area. Don't think I've ever seen one in person period. I saw some others for $1000 and up over the years, but I never wanted to put that much into one stock, knowing I'd have more into it later.
The Lazer was listed at $450. I couldn't resist sending out an offer for $300. I thought they'd decline it and I'd be off the hook so I wouldn't end up with another project. Wrong. They said they'd take $300. Crap. I didn't want to spend the money, so I made myself think about it for a week. Again, I kinda thought it would be gone. It actually did go offline, but came back. Damn.
I talked to a friend about it that used to ride with me. He said, "I'm not going to be the voice of reason here. You need to buy it. Like, now. I wanna ride it." That didn't help at all. That night I went home and tried to give myself one more out. I sent a message saying, "I thought about it and I can't spend $300. Sorry, but if you can go $250 I will buy it." They got back to me quickly and said, "I said $300 and that's as low as it goes." I said, "Fine, what's the address? I'll be there with cash in an hour if that's OK." I really held firm on that. lol
An hour later, I was indeed at their house at about 8PM on a Saturday night with cash in hand. The guy came out with the paperwork and handed that to me before I said more than hi. He said, "It runs great. I changed the oil every 500 miles and I kept it around 28-30 (MPH)." It fired right up for him and he walked beside it to the back of the truck. We loaded it up and I handed him the cash. He said thanks and started walking away, so I asked if he wanted to count it. He replied, "Na. I trust you". Never met him before in my life. His eagerness to get it outta there worried me a little, but I drove home happily with the style of scoot/moped I've wanted for over 10 years in the back of the truck.
The next morning, I got up and did a little photo shoot, so here's what it looks like. Notice it's not officially a moped I suppose, because he took the pedals off of it.
It's a 2017 model, but was first registered in early 2016. Still, he's put some serious chinometers on it.
The big selling point to me.
It has dual rear shocks, but they aren't stiff enough for me.
Front disc, rear drum.
One side panel is cracked and the trunk was cracked. The trunk is already in the garbage.
Rid safe.
The seat lifts up on this too, but it just reveals some specs on a plaque.
It runs like crap. Starts and idles well, but after that it's got nothing. Gets me up to 5-10MPH in the yard, then tries to die. I unsealed and cleaned the carb, set the valves that were at 0.005"/0/007" to 0.002"/0.003", checked compression at 170+psi, did a leakdown test that it passed, checked spark on a large gap, and some other things. It all looks OK, but the plug is black and it is clearly rich. I think something is up with the carb, but I don't really care about this engine enough to try a new carb. I'd run it through the ultrasonic cleaner and see if that helped, but that crapped out on me and ended up in the garbage recently too.
I finally went and got this titled in my name today, but I didn't try to get it stickered for use. I don't plan to mess with it till probably next year. Don't have the funds and I have enough scoots to deal with right now. I hope to put a bigger engine in it and replace the rear shocks and service the front forks (they're soft too) at a minimum. Most likely a new headlight too. Gauges? It will likely either end up full manual or semi-auto. For those not familiar with these; full auto is what you'd expect. That's just like our scoots where you twist and go. Semi-auto means you have to shift, but you don't have to operate a clutch. Full manual is just that, and you can get different shift patterns in these so you may get say 1 down 3 up more like a motorcycle or it could be 4 up or down for example. From what I've seen you get the most power to wheel with the full manual versions, but that requires figuring out how to operate the clutch and rear brake both. Shifter for semi or manual shouldn't be a big deal.
I do worry a bit about something say 125+cc that needs to be shifted when scooters must be automatic here. I guess if I make it that far at some point I'll just have to learn to take off in a higher gear when needed. I asked today if it could be registered as a motorcycle and the answer was no. I expected that because the titles for scooters here now say NOT TO BE REGISTERED, plus past experience at the MVA long ago failing to get M tags. I was at an independent tag and title place though, so I had to try.
I planned to let you know about this sooner, but got so wrapped up with T2 that I didn't have time. It's been hiding under a welding blanket so you couldn't see it in any pics from the garage.
Well, some of you know that I got my start on motorized 2 wheelers on midbikes in the early 2000's. They're basically a step up in size from a pocket bike. Fair warning, this will get long-winded. Here are a couple of pics of my first bike. A Cateye 49cc piston port 2T bought from AutoZone for something like $300. This was right after I got it. I immediately painted it flat black and took off stuff I didn't need.
My friend with the other cateye in the pic above actually got his just before I bought one. He brought it over and I told him, "That thing is stupid. What the hell are you gonna do with that?". He said, "we'll find a parking lot and we're gonna ride it tonight." I offered some resistance, but gave in and tagged along... mostly figuring I'd get to watch him crash it. Turns out, the little bike was a blast. It got up to about 20-25MPH with me on it and it was in no hurry getting there.... but I didn't want to get off of it. Long story short, I bought my own within a week. Very shortly after that, the guy with the mini-chopper in the pic above bought that.
We became a group of parking lot buffoons/racers. These things aren't legal on streets here, so we'd load 'em into our trucks and meet up in a parking lot without much around late at night. The two cateyes had their pegs ground down so it took more to shoot sparks on turns. The poor chopper just couldn't keep up. Of course, they got modified in the competitive spirit. I recall porting all 3 of their cylinders one day. Just raised the exhaust port roof 1-1.5mm IIRC. The 2 cateyes ended up with more work. Mine got a Sidewinder tuned pipe that really woke it up. The other got a high compression racing cylinder kit and could only run on 100+ octane. There were of course other mods along the way, but those and sprocket changes were the main things that mattered.
That went on for a while, but the chopper guy got bored with not keeping up and we wore the engines out. The owner of the other cateye gave it to me and I kept it going for a bit, but I started looking around online and found a different type of midbike. 4T midbikes; commonly in 49cc, 70cc, 90cc, and 110cc versions at the time. I ordered one as soon as I could get the cash together and enthusiastically informed my riding buddies that I had something bigger and better on the way. It was a 110cc semi-automatic X12 midbike. Some also called these super pocket bikes. Still a cheap Chinese miniature motorcycle, but with more power and speed. It went near 50MPH stock, and I had an exhaust for it before the bike even arrived.
Of course my 2 old riding buds had to have their own. We packed into the little Mazda truck so I could drive them to Ocean City, MD to a scooter and motorized toy shop basically (same place I bought my first scoot actually) because they had to get them immediately so we could ride. Roped in another friend that always raced Mustangs with me. My garage ended up looking like this.
Parking lots weren't good enough. We decided it would be alright to take them on the road in the middle of the night. Some of us modified them to add better lights or just any lights, aside from performance mods like big bore kits and sprockets and carbs and so on. Here's what my X12 ended up like.
We had a lot of fun riding around and racing each other on back roads all around the area. Every weekend we'd all meet up at my garage and everyone lived to ride. People girlfriend's got put off and we weren't taking the cars/trucks out looking for trouble as often... we were hooked. Inevitably, before or after a ride myself and the instigator of the whole 2 wheel story would be in the floor fixing someone's bike so it would be ready for that night or the next. The engines were tough, but shifters would bend or there would be throttle issues or any number of little things that need attention on cheap bikes.
That went on for quite a while. Next thing you know, I'm taking mine right into town in the middle of the day because I wanted to ride so bad that I couldn't wait for night and didn't want to go to a parking lot. I told my friends and then 3 of us starting riding day and night on weekends. The fourth killed his engine and threw a panel-smashing tantrum one night when it broke down. That was the last of his riding days.
One Saturday morning, 3 of us were cruising down a back road when red and blue lights rolled up behind us. We were all going around 45-50MPH, which was above the speed limit. We pulled over and a sheriff approached us. First off, these weren't legal period on the road. Second, even if they counted as scooters that required no registration back then, they were over 49cc. The sheriff said there were quite a few complaints about loud little bikes at all hours of the night all around the area. Pretty sure that was indeed us. That wasn't really a problem though. The problem was that the nearest classification for these was motorcycles. None of us had motorcycle licenses, tags, insurance, etc... He gave us a break and told us we could go home, but said that it is on record and next time we would get tickets for no license (M), no insurance, no registration, the bikes would be impounded, and some other infractions that were not as major. IIRC no reg was $1000, no insurance $1000, and I don't remember what the no motorcycle license fine was. It was definitely enough that we couldn't afford to have that actually happen, so we did heed his advice and that was the end of us riding on the road.
We went back to parking lots. 2 of us even took my 114cc engine and put it into a go kart frame. The kart burned through slicks like crazy, so it was quickly too expensive to play with beyond drifting it around in the yard. No, it wasn't that powerful, but it ate tires up quickly from taking turns as fast as we could.
I ended up transplanting my 114cc engine into the little cateye. Had to cut away part of the frame and weld in some 1/8" steel for mounts, but it barely squeezed in there. 114cc, power wheelies in all 4 gears (would flip itself over if you gave it too much throttle in the first 3 and possibly even 4th), and over 50MPH on 6" wheels and tires. I didn't even have any brakes on it at first. We had to put our feet down to stop it. Eventually I put a 10" front wheel and brake from my X12 on it so it would at least stop. You had to take your foot off of the peg to shift, so you'd know it's gonna wheelie and you gotta kick your leg out to reach that shifter. It was a death trap that we enjoyed the hell out of in the yard or in parking lots.
At one point I put the 114cc back in my X12 and an 88cc in the cateye. The 88cc had a really firm auto-clutch, so when you hit it it banged into gear vs most others we had that sort of slipped in. That ended up being the death of the cateye. I took it and the X12 to a parking lot with 2 friends one day. The X12's transmission died while I was riding it. Meanwhile, my friends were taking turns seeing who had the balls to WOT shift the cateye and it ripped the sprocket right off of the wheel. I never did fix that and stuffed it under the stairs in the garage.
That was the last time that any of us rode midbikes. The other cateye owner and I wanted to keep riding and ended up buying scooters. They were the closest things we could find to the midbikes that we liked so much. I got a Vento Triton 49cc 2T (what I now call T1) and he bought a Baja SC50 with the oddball 139QMB that had a 1E40QMB CVT. That's how I got into scooters, so in some roundabout way the scooters that I now love are around because of midbikes and especially the 4T midbike engines.
Here's a vid I just tossed together with some old clips of the cateye and the kart. Had to put YouTube music over a lot of it because I had copyrighted music over it when edited long ago.
Still with me? Alright, back to April when I saw the SSR Lazer on craigslist. I immediately noticed that it had a 49cc version of the engines that my midbikes used to have. Ever since I had midbikes, I have wanted a street legal bike with that engine. It would be more commonly known now for pitbikes or the older Hondas that it was cloned from BTW. Stuff like monkey bikes/trail bikes or the XR50. The issue has always been that they were expensive. The Sachs Madass is what I really wanted for quite some time, but it was expensive compared to other scooters and I've never seen a used one in my area. Don't think I've ever seen one in person period. I saw some others for $1000 and up over the years, but I never wanted to put that much into one stock, knowing I'd have more into it later.
The Lazer was listed at $450. I couldn't resist sending out an offer for $300. I thought they'd decline it and I'd be off the hook so I wouldn't end up with another project. Wrong. They said they'd take $300. Crap. I didn't want to spend the money, so I made myself think about it for a week. Again, I kinda thought it would be gone. It actually did go offline, but came back. Damn.
I talked to a friend about it that used to ride with me. He said, "I'm not going to be the voice of reason here. You need to buy it. Like, now. I wanna ride it." That didn't help at all. That night I went home and tried to give myself one more out. I sent a message saying, "I thought about it and I can't spend $300. Sorry, but if you can go $250 I will buy it." They got back to me quickly and said, "I said $300 and that's as low as it goes." I said, "Fine, what's the address? I'll be there with cash in an hour if that's OK." I really held firm on that. lol
An hour later, I was indeed at their house at about 8PM on a Saturday night with cash in hand. The guy came out with the paperwork and handed that to me before I said more than hi. He said, "It runs great. I changed the oil every 500 miles and I kept it around 28-30 (MPH)." It fired right up for him and he walked beside it to the back of the truck. We loaded it up and I handed him the cash. He said thanks and started walking away, so I asked if he wanted to count it. He replied, "Na. I trust you". Never met him before in my life. His eagerness to get it outta there worried me a little, but I drove home happily with the style of scoot/moped I've wanted for over 10 years in the back of the truck.
The next morning, I got up and did a little photo shoot, so here's what it looks like. Notice it's not officially a moped I suppose, because he took the pedals off of it.
It's a 2017 model, but was first registered in early 2016. Still, he's put some serious chinometers on it.
The big selling point to me.
It has dual rear shocks, but they aren't stiff enough for me.
Front disc, rear drum.
One side panel is cracked and the trunk was cracked. The trunk is already in the garbage.
Rid safe.
The seat lifts up on this too, but it just reveals some specs on a plaque.
It runs like crap. Starts and idles well, but after that it's got nothing. Gets me up to 5-10MPH in the yard, then tries to die. I unsealed and cleaned the carb, set the valves that were at 0.005"/0/007" to 0.002"/0.003", checked compression at 170+psi, did a leakdown test that it passed, checked spark on a large gap, and some other things. It all looks OK, but the plug is black and it is clearly rich. I think something is up with the carb, but I don't really care about this engine enough to try a new carb. I'd run it through the ultrasonic cleaner and see if that helped, but that crapped out on me and ended up in the garbage recently too.
I finally went and got this titled in my name today, but I didn't try to get it stickered for use. I don't plan to mess with it till probably next year. Don't have the funds and I have enough scoots to deal with right now. I hope to put a bigger engine in it and replace the rear shocks and service the front forks (they're soft too) at a minimum. Most likely a new headlight too. Gauges? It will likely either end up full manual or semi-auto. For those not familiar with these; full auto is what you'd expect. That's just like our scoots where you twist and go. Semi-auto means you have to shift, but you don't have to operate a clutch. Full manual is just that, and you can get different shift patterns in these so you may get say 1 down 3 up more like a motorcycle or it could be 4 up or down for example. From what I've seen you get the most power to wheel with the full manual versions, but that requires figuring out how to operate the clutch and rear brake both. Shifter for semi or manual shouldn't be a big deal.
I do worry a bit about something say 125+cc that needs to be shifted when scooters must be automatic here. I guess if I make it that far at some point I'll just have to learn to take off in a higher gear when needed. I asked today if it could be registered as a motorcycle and the answer was no. I expected that because the titles for scooters here now say NOT TO BE REGISTERED, plus past experience at the MVA long ago failing to get M tags. I was at an independent tag and title place though, so I had to try.
I planned to let you know about this sooner, but got so wrapped up with T2 that I didn't have time. It's been hiding under a welding blanket so you couldn't see it in any pics from the garage.
I told them it's a shame I can't just take it over to the MVA and say look at it. It's a Chinese moped with 9,000 miles that hardly runs.