[jonathan150cc]

If the title sucked you in looking for a way to increase the FE of your automobile, you might be a little disappointed. However, this is a success story involving a 17 MPG increase on my 150cc Chinese scoot.

First, a little back story. I bought this scoot for $900 off of Craigslist. I got a great deal from a guy who had already dropped approximately $500 in performance upgrades and was giving me a spare motor and all of his good OEM parts for the price of a pool table that he wanted. I've had several other motorcycles in the past, all 250cc, and my lowest FE came from a 2003 Ninja 250. I consistently got MPG #s in the high 50s with that bike. I also had a 2006 Suzuki GZ250 that averaged in the high 60s. When my first couple of tanks on the scoot revealed an average of 55 MPg, I was a little disappointed.

Now, I knew that the performance upgrades were hurting me a little but I didn't know by how much. Not too impressed with the sound of the performance exhaust system that came with the bike. That was the first thing to go. I noticed no noticeable change in FE.

Next, after trying to decide how to route this little pod air filter for stability, I just pulled it and reinstalled the stock air box and air filter, although I did swiss-cheese the air box because I couldn't see how else any respectable amount of air could get it. At the same time, I removed the Dr. Pulley performance clutch and replaced it with the OEM clutch.

By now, as you can probably already correctly assume, the bike was running just a little rich. I first pulled the needle holder and lowered the needle one slot. These needles have grooved slots that allow for easy adjustment of the washer up or down. This mod was free. I then set my low speed idle around 1900 rpms and adjusted the idle mixture.

For $8 I picked up a 115 main jet from a local independent motorcycle shop and swapped it in place of the 120 (or 125) that was in there.

On 6-27-09, with no changes, I got 55.55MPG.
On 7-6-09, with half the tank seeing the new smaller main jet, 60.18MPG
On 7-20-09, I filled u ptoday and was very pleasantly surprised to see 75 miles on the odometer and 1.028 gallons to fill-up. That's 72.95MPG

BOOYA!!!!

THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!! Now when people ask what FE I get, I don't have to use qualifiers and hang my head in shame. 72 MPG is pretty respecatable.

I'm hoping to baby it this next tank and see if I can coax 75MPG out of her. My gail is a legimate 80MPG. We'll see how she goes. With proper inflation and some non-ethanol gasoline I might just get there.

EDIT: ONE MORE THING. I AM SEEING NO NOTICEABLE DECREASE IN PERFORMANCE. I'M STILL TOUCHING 60MPH ON THE FLATS AND SHE SPOOLS UP THROUGH THE POWERBAND JUST LIKE SHE ALWAYS DID. I MIGHT NEED TO START WRITING DISCLAIMERS ABOUT HOW MUCH OF A WASTE PERFORMANCE PARTS ARE...