Triton # 2 (T2) 49cc to 110cc & Nearly Everywhere In Between

[90GTVert]

It doens't seem like it should do that much, but it handles better too. May be related to foot position being farther back or lower as well. Years ago, I had a couple of friends try it to verify that I wasn't crazy or experiencing some sort of placebo effect since I wanted it to be better. I have another Triton and a friend had a Roketa (same 150 I used for a bit) that is basically the same chassis. We went for rides and I had them switch back and forth and they both agreed with me that T2 felt more stable than the scoots left in standard form. The change in braking was obvious. Not that I stop any faster, but I defintely had the feeling that I was getting closer to the bars when braking hard before the brace. Probably wasn't much flex, but no doubt it was there. I've usually been between 275-300lb when scooting, so I'm certainly qualified as a bigger dude.

[oldgeek]

On my naked Kymco ZX 50, I installed a bar very similar to the one Brent has. At first I did not really notice much of a difference. I rode it for a few months with the bar in place, then one day I took it off to work on something and did not put it back on. The next time I rode it without the bar in place I immediately noticed a huge difference. I could feel so much flex and added vibrations from the front I thought something was broken. I did a quick inspection of the frame to see if I could find any cracks and put the support bar back on the scoot. The ride returned to normal, no vibrations. I am also a bigger rider, around 300lbs.

There is no doubt more stress and flexing of the frame depending on how much weight it is carrying.

[map]

Will adding one of these help with a off road build?

[benji]

Dec 22, 2017 17:08:29 GMT -5 map said:

Will adding one of these help with a off road build?

I would think so. Plenty scooters end up bent after a trip to the dirt bike trails. A support bar would help that I think.

[AtariGuy]

I think a support bar would help anyone's scoot

[90GTVert]

The only downsides that I can think of are adding weight and losing the low step-through, aside from maybe adding more steps if you need to disassemble the scoot.

[90GTVert]

Whenever I get around to doing the liquid cooled conversion, I'm going to swap the current headlight and turn signal assembly on the front out and do something different. I've got 2 headlights now, 1 42W LED spot light and one 55W halogen driving light. I'm going to go to just 1 hopefully; an LED daymaker headlight like this link :
amzn.to/2GUebRM

The fact that it's marketed for Harleys does deter me a bit since I'm not their biggest fan to say the least, but it gets a lot of positive reviews, even from people replacing stock motorcycle headlights that are generally superior to small scooter headlights by far, so I'm hoping it will be an upgrade. I currently have 2 switches on the leg shield so I can turn on either headlight or both, but I want to go back to using the hi/lo switch on the handlebars for safety/convenience. Reaching down to switch headlights around isn't ideal. My handlebar switch stopped working some time ago, but I've picked up a replacement from PFS.


I have been considering changing how the light is powered, but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort. I've always ran my LED headlights directly off of the stock headlight wiring with AC power. LEDs flicker, only really noticeable at idle or near idle... so basically my light flashes when I am stopped. Otherwise, RPM is high enough that I don't notice it aside from occasionally in a camera because of the frame rate (not a concern).


I have seen people adding a bridge rectifier and an electrolytic capacitor to supply a smoothed DC current to the headlight. Links to exact units used have been old and no longer available, but I don't think it would be too tough to find out what would be acceptable to use if going that way. The main benefits I see here are that the light should not flicker and some show that the LED will be brighter with the smoothed power supply. Downsides would be adding a couple more parts to the scoot, but neither are huge. One thing I don't quite get, and my apologies if this is a stupid question, but everything shows the bridge rectifier having 4 prongs. The outputs are easy enough, positive and negative DC out. The inputs are said to be AC with no polarity. I don't have 2 AC source wires from my stator going to the headlights, as most scoots don't. I have one wire coming from the regulator/rectifier and then a ground wire. It would make the setup more complicated if I had to run both the lighting and charging wires from the stator to the bridge rectifier. If going with the rect/cap method, I was hoping to keep the headlight circuit separate and not rewire the whole scoot. Unfortunately, the guys doing YouTube vids that I watched were playing around with AC power supplies and not actually showing the setup on their bikes. I could definitely use some clarification here if this could be a simple setup or if it would need to be a more complex rewiring job.


The other thought I had was to convert the entire lighting and charging system to DC using a rectifier/regulator of good quality from Trail Tech like the one in this link :
amzn.to/2FWCvBt

From my understanding, I would need to float the ground on the stator and do a little rewiring. I sent a quick email to Trail Tech about it to ask if I could supply power to the headlight similar to the AC setup, where it only supplies what it can and doesn't drain the battery. I like that idea, and that's what I was hoping for with the above rect/cap setup but I'm not sure that it works that way. The reply I got said I would power everything with the battery and the power from the stator and rect/reg would keep the battery charged. Not exactly what I was looking for. I've been so used to my small scoots and AC lights, that I like the idea of the lights dimming if the stator isn't putting out enough ATM vs draining the battery to stay bright at idle. Seems that it helps to ensure I'll be able to use an e-start or whatever accessory. Not really a big deal for this kickstart only scoot, but if I find something that works well it may end up being done to other scoots too. Some say the DC conversion will allow the stator to put out more power too. I'm not an electrical whiz so some of it makes sense as I've heard it explained, but I don't know enough to jump into anything with great confidence at this point.

One other downside of floating the ground on a stator would be that I'd have to do that to every stator any time one fails. Not necessarily a deal-breaker.


So, I'm looking at 3 options and would really like to hear input from electron wizards and people experienced with their own DC lighting or total DC conversions. Quick summary of the 3 options once more :

1.) Leave it as-is and let the light flicker at low revs. Possibly not achieving 100% brightness, and some say AC is harder on the LEDs... but so far I've been doing it this way for years and it works well enough. I'm not saying I wouldn't mind an improvement if it's not terribly difficult though.

2.) Bridge rectifier and electrolytic capacitor as part of the headlight system if possible. My hope would be to convert just what now goes to the headlight (or probably all going to the headlight switch so it does the tail light too) to DC and leave the rest of the system alone.

3.) Convert the entire lighting/charging system to DC with the Trail Tech rectifier/regulator and float the ground on the stator.

I guess there's sort of a #4, which would be just wiring the headlight switch to DC from the battery and leaving everything else alone, but I've heard people that tried that say they end up with dead batteries. I assume the AC for the lights just gets wasted that way?


Thanks in advance for any input.

[oldgeek]

I am not an electronics wizz nor have I ever done a conversion but I have often thought about how it could be done. I think all of the solutions you outline are workable. IMO I would go with what trail tech says. Conversion of the whole system to DC just makes sense to me. Part of my reasoning is due to wanting a steady supply voltage to the LED's on the scoot. Historically DC items tend to like steady clean DC voltage. However that line of thinking may now be incorrect. Advances in the technology of LED's probably have loads of filtering and protection built in, especially on a LED headlight meant for motorcycles that are known to have dirty electrical systems. I would like to see a schematic of how the TT regulator would be wired up. I would think you would need the voltage from the charging coil and the lighting coil to have enough power to operate everything and charge the battery.

[90GTVert]

There's a wiring guide for the Trail Tech on their site, under instructions :
www.trailtech.net/7004-rr150

I think the pickup and exciter wiring from the stator can be left alone to still operate AC CDIs even if you float the ground, or I suppose you could just use the pickup and run a DC CDI if you wanted.

[ryan_ott]

My feeling here is all options are ok except running that lamp from AC. I’ve burnt out leds in short order running ac through them, even at proper voltage. I’m sure what you are planning to get is better then the eBay junk it happened on. It would suck if they couldn’t handle the ac. As far as the 2 ac leads on a rectifier one would be from stator and the other would go to ground.

[90GTVert]

Feb 7, 2018 16:09:48 GMT -5 ryan_ott said:

My feeling here is all options are ok except running that lamp from AC. I’ve burnt out leds in short order running ac through them, even at proper voltage. I’m sure what you are planning to get is better then the eBay junk it happened on. It would suck if they couldn’t handle the ac. As far as the 2 ac leads on a rectifier one would be from stator and the other would go to ground.

I've been running eBay/amazon junk spot lights for years on here. I am on number 3 though. 1 burned out really fast, the next lasted years, and now the third is still fine. I blew one out really fast on the TaoTao (like within just a few rides), but I had charging issues so I can't really say it's because of AC. I do know that some lights tolerate AC better or are better equipped for it, but part of my reason for thinking this is because this LED is ~$45 instead of ~$25 so blowing them out is slightly less fun.

As long as the rectifier uses existing leads, it should be pretty simple to convert just the lighting circuit. Thinking about it that way, the scoot would sorta be all DC at that point. The battery is already supplied with rectified DC for charging and of course anything connected to the batt is DC powered. All that's left is the lighting, and that would be DC. That sounds easier than dealing with the whole DC conversion and floating the ground, but it sounds like a more roundabout way and I'm guessing I'm missing something without doing it that way?

[190mech]

Ive grown to like DC CDI as it has a stable spark output at any RPM and more options for mods,they are the only choice for the roadrace motorcycles too...Downside is ya gotta have a good battery to run.

[AtariGuy]

Feb 7, 2018 12:31:52 GMT -5 90GTVert said:

I have seen people adding a bridge rectifier and an electrolytic capacitor to supply a smoothed DC current to the headlight.
(...)
One thing I don't quite get, and my apologies if this is a stupid question, but everything shows the bridge rectifier having 4 prongs. The outputs are easy enough, positive and negative DC out. The inputs are said to be AC with no polarity. I don't have 2 AC source wires from my stator going to the headlights, as most scoots don't. I have one wire coming from the regulator/rectifier and then a ground wire. It would make the setup more complicated if I had to run both the lighting and charging wires from the stator to the bridge rectifier. If going with the rect/cap method, I was hoping to keep the headlight circuit separate and not rewire the whole scoot. Unfortunately, the guys doing YouTube vids that I watched were playing around with AC power supplies and not actually showing the setup on their bikes. I could definitely use some clarification here if this could be a simple setup or if it would need to be a more complex rewiring job.

Look into a half-wave rectifier circuit. Similar to a full wave and/or bridge rectifier, it converts an ac input to a dc pulse wave using only half the AC signal - then use any usual dc smoothing filter.

This may sound a bit off, but check out amateur radio diy websites, theres lots of geeks talking/teaching basic electronics. Or look into the ARRL technician license manual or the ARRL radio handbook. Both have basic to intermediate electronics theory and application sections. I'll be more than happy to help with any questions. (US Navy aviation electronic tech and lifetime ham radio license holder since i was 9)

[90GTVert]

Feb 8, 2018 4:50:50 GMT -5 190mech said:

Ive grown to like DC CDI as it has a stable spark output at any RPM and more options for mods,they are the only choice for the roadrace motorcycles too...Downside is ya gotta have a good battery to run.

I'm pushed away from the DC stuff generally because I've had more batteries go bad than exciter coils. I like that it should work independent of most everything else and I like that the lights only get the power that's available rather than taking it from the battery because they'll never drain it.

This reminds me, I'll need to add a battery to my list if I do any full DC conversion. My old Motobatt still works for what little use it has on this scoot, but it's not tip top and I wouldn't trust it with any real use. All it really does now is supply the brake light and turn signals and give the charging system something to do.

[moofus02]

If you want to go full dc consider a 12 pole stator from a vino 2t. The flywheel is small taper but that is fixable. They have something like a 125 watt output instead of 75. Vino stator, regulator and a little wiring and you'd be in business. If you want to go that way let me know and I'll send you a stator and flywheel