Triton # 1 (T1) : Liquid Cooled Conversion & Updates

[billwill]

That color is IT! First pic in that post with the gray primer and those wheels and I was thinking there it is, he’s got it. Would be cool if you can find a gloss in that same gray that would hold up. I don’t know much about paint but even if you could gloss over that primer, that paint looks so good with the hi-vis wheels.

I have always felt the same way about the tritons ergonomics. It is a scoot with a rather long wheelbase and looks like a “big” ride, but when you sit on the thing, you realize the floorboard is almost about 2-4” too high or at least that’s how it feels.

When I replaced my bars for aftermarket ones, it lowered the overall bar height too and it’s oddly cramped in there with the bars wanting to touch my knees in sharp low speed turns.

Enjoying this thread. Nice to see you revive the old bike. You’re putting in a ton of work.

[90GTVert]

I wanted an option for mounting a camera on the back of this bike that could also function as a handle if needed. I know from experience that having a mount with thick rubber is helpful and I have mounts that work on round bars. I made these aluminum pieces up to let me bolt a handle together. The bar section is actually the same $5 salvaged aluminum door handle that I made T2's frame brace out of many years ago. That finished the material off. Possibly the best $5 I ever spent. The others are 6061 bar and you mat notice that they are notched off center. That's purely accidental and trying to get it done somewhat quickly, but it works out because it lets me move the bar back slightly for more clearance when adding fuel. I can't actually mount it yet because I don't have bolts long enough, but thanks to Amazon Prime those should arrive today.






It's certainly not attractive, but then look at the original wing-style handle on there. Don't love that either and it's less functional.




I was prepping for the show, changing the plug, swapping the belt, cleaning the wheels and wiping down the exhaust with oil. I screwed up. The aluminum bushing that I made for the drive shaft to cover bearing fit is worn already. It was actually very tight when I took the cover off the first time. I had to pry it off. After that, it was loose and I think it wore quickly at that point. I made a new one and I apparently made it too tight. I like them snug, so I went to tap the cover on with a mallet and it cracked the cover between the vents that I cut into it.




I tried Muggy Weld like I used on the radiator leak, but it's really a soldering process. I can't get any penetration with that so the best I could do was basically solder sitting on top of the crack. I didn't trust it. Tapped it with a mallet lightly and it moved so it would have to be welded. I do have a welder 2 miles down the road, but rather than go in looking for a rush job I found 1 spare cover that should work. I put the new kickstart stuff from the other cover in and then very quickly scuffed it and primered it. It's a lousy job, but if it works for the weekend I'll be fine with that. I've got more covers, but most of these things are too small for the OR CVT. I'll probably try to have the other welded up at some point so I can always try to keep a spare.





Unfortunately, Ryan isn't going to make it for BikeFest. That sucks, but it does mean that I'll have room for both of these scoots in the truck. There's supposed to be some OC small bore ride Saturday that I found on a very small facebook group and I figure I'll probably wind up meeting up with the fellas I met at the fall car show last year and have been riding with off and on since after that. First thought was ride T1 in the small bore ride and then switch to T2 after, because the small bore group said something about not wanting to get crazy... sorry but you put me on T2 and there's only 1 option LOL. Then I got a better idea. I called up my friend with a sport bike and asked if he would be interested in riding a scoot in the group ride. He said he was up for it and got the green light from his wife for being free Saturday. He's supposed to stop by tomorrow after work for a quick ride to get used to it a little bit. I let him take the TMAX around a parking lot one day when we were out riding and he even thinks that's strange to ride because he's rode his CBR600RR since 2008 when he bought it new and that's all he ever rides so the straight up seating made him a bit uneasy. It should be entertaining to hear him in the helmet communicator when we hit the bumpy back roads on a lowered Chinese scooter. LOL Fingers crossed that it doesn't feel so crappy to him that he backs out, but he did ride midbikes with me 20 years ago, including the one I built with part of the frame cut out so a big engine could fit and the shifter in a position where you had to take your foot off of the peg and put it way out to shift while it tried to wheelie, so I think it'll come back to him.

[90GTVert]

My friend wound up canceling on me for riding at BikeFest. He decided to take his kids to look at bikes instead. No worries. I had plenty of people to ride with, but I'll post about that later. He did come over Friday afternoon to get a feel for the scoot though.

We rode about 25 miles on back roads and he was having fun. I find T1 a little small, but he said it's perfect for him. I let him try T2 as well, but he said that actually feels a bit too big for him and he likes T1 better.

I had a 175lb person on the bike so naturally I brought the dragy along. He did 2 solo runs and 2 with me on T2. It's a close matchup because of the weight difference. Aside from me being 125lb heavier, I think T2 is also heavier and I carry a substantial amount of tools. The results annoyed and impressed me. Here are the best times of mine, his and me on T2 compared.

	60ft	0-30	0-40	0-50	0-60	330ft	1/8 Mile
300lb Rider TPR	2.41	2.99	4.62	7.01	11.43	6.92 @ 48.91	10.99 @ 59.13
175lb Rider TPR	2.19	2.26	3.41	5.05	7.49	6.21 @ 54.49	9.84 @ 65.56
300lb On RC1	2.17	2.18	3.20	4.85	6.90	6.11 @ 56.30	9.66 @ 67.43

At least there's something for all of the folks that tell me my stuff is too slow. HUGE difference with a 175lb rider. Imagine some of the lightweight folks and lighter scoots. Really impressive what a cheaper setup like the TPR is capable of. I'd guess there's a little more in it if it were actually tuned for him and it's not like anything was fine tuned. Prob match my stuff on the RC1 anyway.

It's interesting to me that I always thought the TPR with me on it would be about the same 60ft as the RC1 because I have to do throttle management on the 94cc and the 86 is just hammer it and go. It just doesn't have the grunt to move out hard enough with me on it. That's all it's got. The RC1 on the other hand should go at least a couple of tenths quicker off the line if I could have the usual timing curves and hammer it and that should speed everything up a couple of tenths.

So now think of all of the people that say I'm slow. Ryan is 100lb lighter than me and has gone either 0.65 or 0.66 quicker in the 1/8 mile with an 8.1 exhaust on a lighter scoot that he can actually take off on without wheelies (though it does spin the tire). Look at the table above, think about his numbers, and tell me that my scoots are so slow. Maybe Ryan and I are both slow. I'm sure we are to the internet. At very least, I'd say I'm on par.

I wanted to get my friend to try the RC1 for dragy, but he said no way. It's scary and unpredictable. I told him to get into it from a 25-30MPH roll to see what the power wheelies are like and he kept easing in. Eventually I got him to roll in quicker and I saw it come up and then legs moving around and a little swerve. LOL That was the first and last power wheelie that he wanted to try. It's funny that he rides his 600 with me on the TMAX and we'll go through turns at 100 and then I've watched him take off doing 140-150 through curves but T2 is scary. He really wants me to ride his bike and see how much more stable it is and how predictable the power is in comparison. He's not wrong about mentioning the benefit of a steering damper for the times the wheel gets up and you didn't expect it. I've had more than one close call from turning the bars a little before it came down. Don't see many scoots with those because we don't usually have anything really close for mounting.

I'm just tagging hypervertical here because he was curious about the difference in the RC1 and 86cc and this gives good perspective.

[aeroxbud]

Even years ago in MotoGP you could see the difference a light rider made. You have a 50KG rider like Dani Pedrosa. And he would pull a big gap to the first corner. And most riders are light anyway. This is on something with about 240hp.

[90GTVert]

I had 155.6 miles on the belt, and I know this setup always blew a belt every 150-250 miles. Not wanting to do a roadside repair, it was time for a new belt and I also picked up a new rear pulley. I have suspected for a while now that my modifications to the Malossi LFR OR pulley are the cause for extreme belt wear. Even though rear pulleys are very expensive, so is a new Malossi belt every 150 miles.

I got part number 6114590, which I bought on the Zuma page at ScooterTuning. I totally wasn't thinking about the fact that the Zuma and many others are different from the Chinese clones. I went to install the new pulley and it needed shims behind the clutch bell that the other didn't. About 1.5mm worth. Sitting out and needing more shims for the bell, I didn't have a lot of threads. Tried it anyway and stripped the clutch nut.

OK, I've gotta do something about this. First, I finally realized that I had the wrong pulley. I should have used 6115991, which is listed for DRR ATVs if you're shopping at ScooterTuning. 6114590 and 6115991 both use the same torque driver but the fixed halves are different. The Zuma and many others use a 6114596 fixed half and the clones need a 6116267 fixed half. The main difference is that the outer bearing sits farther out for the clones to let the pulley go deeper onto the primary drive shaft. I measured roughly 14mm from the top of the threads to the bearing on the Zuma pulley and my old one was just over 11mm.




Being a habitual modifier; I decided that I could make this work. I could either pull the exhaust and gearbox and machine the drive shaft to let the pulley sit back more or machine the pulley to move the bearing. I decided on the latter, even though the shaft would be much easier to work with.

Once the fixed half was chucked in the lathe, I couldn't see at all where I was at in there. I knew there was a ridge that I should be able to feel to know that I was at the stop for the bearing, but I had to feel that with the boring bar mounted. In hindsight, I should have took measurements and used that to locate my starting point... but I didn't think it would be difficult to catch the ridge. Well, there are multiple ridges. One stops the needle roller bearing, one is a clip groove and another is the actual stop for the bearing.

I hit what I thought was the bearing stop and setup an indicator so I could go about 2.7mm farther than that ridge to set the bearing in there farther. Made the cuts, pulled the pulley out and I cut around the clip groove instead of the stop, so I made part of the bearing seating area larger than it should be and left the clip groove unusable. Awesome. BTW, my initial plan for the clip that makes sure the bearing can't move was to make a spacer to go between the clip and the bearing rather than attempting a new clip groove where I couldn't see anything to verify what I was doing. Not gonna happen now.

So, I've ruined it... or have I? At this point, there's nothing to lose trying to save it. I cut the part that I wanted to deeper. Struggled with that because the flex of the mini-lathe and the bit left a small taper and a corner at the end. That made the bearing seize when installed. I decided to use a drum sander and work it a little at a time till I got that corner out and the taper allowed it to fit. 20 bearing removal and installs later, I wound up with most of the seating area too loose, with a top ring that was still tight, but the bearing could move with more resistance than it should have. I figured I had to leave it that way or nothing was holding the bearing in place. Installed the bearing with retaining compound.

I wasn't comfortable with that and no clip so I wound up making a spacer that would be pressed between the two bearings. The rear bearing goes in very tight anyway, but I used retaining compound as extra insurance since it now had to hold 2 bearings in place.

That seemed to work. The pulley sat farther back and still spun true. OK. The tight bearing fit bugs me, but otherwise at least I sorta got there. Well, till I went to assemble the TD and realized that my spacer inside of the shaft blocks the pins from going all the way into their holes. I drilled those out, miraculously not damaging the existing pin holes so everything was a snug fit. It does worry me a bit that if that spacer shifts, it would shift the pins. It's got force on it pressed between 2 bearings though, plus 3 pins through it, so I think it might be alright.

I ordered the correct (at least I sure hope) fixed half from Italy. Malossi was out of stock and I couldn't really find it many places, but an eBay listing in Italy had it. I'd prefer the totally correct part even if this one doesn't fail while I wait (probably weeks). The rear pulley has now cost me a small fortune, but my only hope is that I'm correct and it is the cause of premature belt busting so I save a lot in the long run on belts and don't constantly wonder if I'm gonna make it on rides.

Then I went to install the pulley and clutch and stripped a new clutch nut well before 35ft-lb. I don't have an M10x1.0 die or chaser so I just cleaned the threads on the drive shaft with a 1.0 thread pitch file. Went to torque another nut to 32ft-lb and stripped that. Uh oh. I cleaned it again and used an oxide coated nut instead of the zinc looking nuts that I was using... hoping I had some junk nuts. I have been torquing this to 35ft-lb and used to use a 38ft-lb impact torque bar, but I looked up a Zuma spec and they only go 29. I put this one on at 25ft-lb and used Vibratite liberally while crossing my fingers. I did measure the major diameter of the threads at 9.81mm and another shaft I had at 9.8 so it should be OK based on that. The correct spec is actually just under 10mm, but most of the time when I measure bolts I wind up closer to x.85. I may wind up needed a new primary shaft but I'm hoping this can get me through the car show next weekend without failure at least.

I was being gentle and hardly using any throttle, but it seemed easier to maintain speeds at lower throttle with less RPM. I'm hoping that's a good sign that the belt is slipping less. I try not to go more than half throttle on any belt break in, but I saw some kids standing at a marina on the last stretch before home. It looked like they were by mini-bikes, but I couldn't really tell. Just saw a couple pairs of big tires behind them. Revved it at them and carried on. A few minutes later I see something coming up behind me as I was slow cruising. I figured they must have decided to try to chase me down so I slowed way down. Turns out it was an ATV, not a couple of mini-bikes. The slowed down too but went by so I gunned it and went back around them. Only got up to 60 because it still doesn't pull hard at speed with me on it. I thought maybe that would improve if the belt is indeed grabbing more, but that's probably my delusion from being used to the RC1.

As long as that clutch nut stays on, I think the rest of the pulley will be fine. Doesn't worry me as far as danger, just sucks if it does come off and has to be dealt with roadside or put in a truck. My friend is supposed to bring his 16 year old son and we'll all ride my 3 scooters. He wants his son to see what a scoot is like because he thinks a scoot would be good for him to get around the town they live in and at least short commutes. If he winds up with one, I think his close friend will probably get one as well. He may hate it. We'll see... but we can absolutely ride around some back roads and see what he thinks with the hope of getting a couple more people on scoots. His son will ride T1 because he's not getting on T2 and the TMAX is heavy and requires a motorcycle license so not a chance. I've already warned my friend that even if he does like it, you have to understand that this is a racing build. A stock scooter will be much different performance-wise. If this works, maybe he'll get more friends to get them and then next thing you know I'll ride by the high school one day and see the parking lot full of scooters. LOL I can dream.


EDIT : My scooter recruiting dreams were abruptly crushed. Friend's wife says he has to do housework today. He says "happy wife = happy life". I wouldn't know if she was happy or not 'cause I'd be out riding.

[oldgeek]

Oct 6, 2024 8:39:43 GMT -5 90GTVert said:

.............. My friend is supposed to bring his 16 year old son and we'll all ride my 3 scooters. He wants his son to see what a scoot is like because he thinks a scoot would be good for him to get around the town they live in and at least short commutes. If he winds up with one, I think his close friend will probably get one as well. He may hate it. We'll see... but we can absolutely ride around some back roads and see what he thinks with the hope of getting a couple more people on scoots. His son will ride T1 because he's not getting on T2 and the TMAX is heavy and requires a motorcycle license so not a chance. I've already warned my friend that even if he does like it, you have to understand that this is a racing build. A stock scooter will be much different performance-wise. If this works, maybe he'll get more friends to get them and then next thing you know I'll ride by the high school one day and see the parking lot full of scooters. LOL I can dream.


EDIT : My scooter recruiting dreams were abruptly crushed. Friend's wife says he has to do housework today. He says "happy wife = happy life". I wouldn't know if she was happy or not 'cause I'd be out riding.

I would never let anyone ride a "fast" scooter unless they had loads of seat time in a standard sooter. I have seen several times now people get a rental scoot and immediately wreck it seconds after getting on it, and it was a 4 poke. There seems to be an attitude that "It's just a scooter it's not even a real motorcycle" Years ago I let the girlfriend of a guy who ran a scooter shop ride my Vino. Well she goosed it and pulled the front wheel straight up and almost dumped it, the expression on her face was priceless!. She got off of it and said nope. More recently I was at a sporting goods shop and the owners daughter wanted to ride an expensive Ebike on display in the shop. He said ok, put it in restricted mode. She said dad I used to ride motorcross and this is just a bicycle! I didn't see it happen but supposedly 3 seconds into the ride she put it in the ditch and ended up laying on the railroad tracks.

[aeroxbud]

Some days you just can't get a break. Scooter life. 🤔

[90GTVert]

Oct 6, 2024 12:35:58 GMT -5 oldgeek said:

I would never let anyone ride a "fast" scooter unless they had loads of seat time in a standard sooter. I have seen several times now people get a rental scoot and immediately wreck it seconds after getting on it, and it was a 4 poke. There seems to be an attitude that "It's just a scooter it's not even a real motorcycle" Years ago I let the girlfriend of a guy who ran a scooter shop ride my Vino. Well she goosed it and pulled the front wheel straight up and almost dumped it, the expression on her face was priceless!. She got off of it and said nope. More recently I was at a sporting goods shop and the owners daughter wanted to ride an expensive Ebike on display in the shop. He said ok, put it in restricted mode. She said dad I used to ride motorcross and this is just a bicycle! I didn't see it happen but supposedly 3 seconds into the ride she put it in the ditch and ended up laying on the railroad tracks.

I get what you're saying. I told my friend remember this is a fast scooter compared to most. It doesn't wheelie and stuff, but it will go and he doesn't have the experience that you do on bikes. This is the same friend that rode it and then I found out how slow it is with me on it. He says his son rides a friend's minibike and does wheelies and he's rode an e-bike that goes 50MPH so he thinks he'll be fine. The idea was also for both of us to tell him this isn't a stock scooter where you WOT at all times. Pretend it's a big bike at first and treat the throttle accordingly. He's a good kid that knows to listen to his Dad and knows that sport bike Dad and crazy scooter guy wouldn't tell him this stuff just because we wanna be buzzkills. That said, who knows. At least maybe a good reminder to me not to just let anyone on it. For me and my friend, it doesn't wheelie even WOT from a stop so it's easy to ride but then how much time do I spend doing dragy runs on scoots and how slow is it compared to my friend's sport bike.

[Timmer]

Your friend is aware of the expression; “you wreck it, you pay it”, right?
No offense, but i’ve had that issue with a guy who wrecked my mk2 gti, i’m still waiting for him to pay up, and it’s been almost 20 years. I can still hear him say; “relax, you know me”… yeah, why did you think i said it in the first place…

[Lucass2T]

I'd never let someone ride or drive anything I've built.
People taking offence of that are not worth spending time with.

[90GTVert]

I tried it out with the new rear pulley. RPM was low, but it felt OK. Times were pretty much on par. I swapped to 0.5g lighter sliders and it's better, but it's not right. I'm not sure what it's doing. If I'm launching or just grabbing it WOT from a slow roll, it revs to the mid-high 13k range and sounds like a miss or almost like a rev limiter (but usually just one or two mild RPM changes) and it doesn't feel like it's grabbing to me. If I'm easy on the throttle, it will surge forward. Hard throttle feels like it doesn't go right away.

So that seems like it would be slip, but I'm not convinced that it isn't a carb tuning issue. If only slip, and staying in the RPM range where it normally is anyway, the engine should still sound pretty clean. Part of me thinks I need a stronger contra spring (which I'm kind of afraid to touch due to the stripping issues with the clutch nut last time). Part of me thinks it needs a different main jet. I did try to move the needle up one to richen it, but it still does it. I'll probably see if a main jet changes it because I shouldn't strip anything trying to swap jets.

The belt was at 17.1mm or so after just under 34 miles. Supposed to be 17.5mm new. That's not really promising. The CVT area of the case didn't have much residue on it though. Cover is nasty, but I don't think I cleaned it last time because I didn't want to take the spray primer off of it.

I don't really have to have it for me, but I would kind of like to ride it at the car show this weekend too and my friend says he may ride with me. Would be fun, but I'm not holding my breath. If it didn't feel like bad slip or lag, I'd leave it as-is but I would like to get rid of that if possible. Overall, it always feels like it doesn't hit hard though. Maybe the RC-One has spoiled me, but I have to go back to the fact that it does lunge ahead with lighter throttle.

[oldgeek]

Oct 8, 2024 19:02:19 GMT -5 90GTVert said:

........ I did try to move the needle up one to richen it, but it still does it.

Try leaning it out instead?

[90GTVert]

Oct 9, 2024 5:26:14 GMT -5 oldgeek said:

Oct 8, 2024 19:02:19 GMT -5 90GTVert said:

........ I did try to move the needle up one to richen it, but it still does it.

Try leaning it out instead?

It was all the way lean on the needle. I leaned the needle first when it was acting up when I first tried to get it going. Wound up needing a smaller main jet. I'm thinking now it may be on the lean side. It's got more of a lean/clean sound, but also the weather is cooling and I have a cheap pod filter on it. I should figure an airbox out, but the pod filter is so easy to mount. LOL

[90GTVert]

The major slip turned out to be easy enough. I convinced myself that I needed a stiffer contra spring and I was gonna do that. Took the clutch off and there was grease from the contra spring in there. Seal failed in the torque driver. Cleaned it out and sanded and it was much better.






I did not however get rid of the warble on quick throttle. It's ticking me off right now. LOL I've tried the needle it was using (D26) from all the way rich to all the way lean. All the way rich was not good for cruising and part throttle, but not really a lot different than all the way lean for launch.

I thought maybe if I adjusted the mix screw, because I can't quick WOT from idle or it bogs. Put more fuel in there and it would quick WOT in the garage. No dice on the road.


Switched to a 100MJ after reading the plug that's been in there a while with a 98. No real change.




Put a D29 needle in and that got me nowhere either.

If I go and it cleans up and then I go again, it is usually OK. Othwerwise, can't stop it. It's hard to go then let off and go again if you wanna race another scooter though. I'd like it to work on the first try. Don't know that I'm getting there. Vid below shows it. If you have ideas, please share. I'm tired of changing stuff and changing nothing. I need to be done with it tomorrow so it's ready in case it goes to the car show Friday.


youtu.be/y0Y_b3mP4nE?si=EZNjxRXAm80cPJG2

[oldgeek]

Try to cut the airflow somehow. Maybe an appropriate sized plastic soda bottle cut down and slipped over the uni.