AMERICANS: Would you buy a 125cc motorcycle for the street?

[woodsrat]

How about a Passport or CT-90/110 with a Pitster Pro 190 motor? It has e-start, a manual clutch, five speeds in the gearbox and will bolt right into a Passport. In other step throughs it'll take either a bit of grinding for clearance (pushrod 50's and 90's) or an adapter kit from Dr. ATV for the OHC 90/110 bikes (under $20).

If you start with a nice unit I think you can do it for well under two grand, likely less.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by woodsrat

How about a Passport or CT-90/110 with a Pitster Pro 190 motor? It has e-start, a manual clutch, five speeds in the gearbox and will bolt right into a Passport. In other step throughs it'll take either a bit of grinding for clearance (pushrod 50's and 90's) or an adapter kit from Dr. ATV for the OHC 90/110 bikes (under $20).

If you start with a nice unit I think you can do it for well under two grand, likely less.

A nice Passport or Trail 90 runs $1200 to $1500 around here. Bikes that "ran when parked" go for about $800 - $1000. Add in a Pitster Pro 190 motor and I'm at $2000 to $2500 for a bike that the bones are older than me.

Typical Passport: https://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/...637859656.html

I also don't buy bikes with carbs anymore. It is 2018 and fuel injection is a wonderful thing.

[woodsrat]

I guess I'm spoiled. I gave .99 for my Passport (no kidding!!) on eBay around ten years ago and thought I spent a fortune in gas at $80 going to pick it up. (Gas was $4 a gallon at the time.)

Most of the step throughs I've built or helped my buddies build have been rolled together from junquers or even bare frames. Ain't much to the critters and with AC powered lighting and kick start no battery is required.

Fuel injection is indeed wonderful until it doesn't work anymore. Then you're at the mercy of a lab coated technician who doesn't know any more than you do but has the ability to install and remove parts from his parts department until it runs again. Sadly most repairs on these systems is guesswork or, as the shop manuals say, "install known good component and test." With the carbs on my Lifans if there's a problem I get my tool bag out and fix it.

I've really, really tried to get my head around F. I. I even bought a Grom with the idea that I'd use it as a learning tool and carried the shop manual around with me everywhere I went to study and try to understand how it worked. That failed miserably and it went on a truck to a little lady in Arizona. While it started and ran perfectly ultimately it performed no better than my wired together step throughs.

I'll stick to my "controlled leaks" and remain comfortably in the 20th century.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by woodsrat

I guess I'm spoiled. I gave .99 for my Passport (no kidding!!) on eBay around ten years ago and thought I spent a fortune in gas at $80 going to pick it up. (Gas was $4 a gallon at the time.)

I did something similar back in 2007. I was living in Birmingham, AL and bought a 1979 KZ400 on Ebay that was located near Kokomo, IN. I spend more on gas and a truck rental than I did on the bike. The guy at Enterprise was shocked when he checked the mileage and saw I put more than 1000 miles on the truck in less than 24 hours!

The problem here is that junkers don't come with titles and a bike without a title is just a pile of parts. The only way to get a new title is for the person on record as the owner to file for a replacement title.

Originally Posted by woodsrat

Fuel injection is indeed wonderful until it doesn't work anymore....

I haven't had that experience with EFI bikes. Even when I left my BMW with gas in the tank for more than a year while recovering from a bad crash it started right up.

With cars a scanner and tablet gets down the the problem pretty quickly. I can't wait for OBD to come to bikes.

[woodsrat]

My wife has a '94 Jeep Wrangler. It just turned 70,000 miles and has had to be towed to a repair facility at least three times during this time. I could usually determine whether or not it was a fuel or spark problem but that was about it.

The last time I went over to the dealership after the tow truck came to get it and found a mechanic out back with a pile of boxes of parts plugging them in and trying to start it. He had no idea what the problem was and it was pure guesswork. Like the other two times it turned out to be a sensor of some sort that fed information to the F. I. system.

Another mechanic told me that while you can put modern cars on a computer for diagnosis it's no guarantee that the problem the magic box says it is will be the problem--and then it's experience and/or guesswork.

I have a friend who has an '08 Yamaha WR-250R dually bike with F. I. that has over 125,000 miles on it!! The only problem he had that put him in the back of a truck (in Baja, of all places) was the fuel pump failing, a fairly common problem with these otherwise stone reliable bikes.

Back to Jeeps I read about an old duck who was up in the mountains of Colorado when his mechanical fuel pump quit. He rigged up a can on the windshield that gravity fed the carb and he'd add to it as he went along. It allowed him to get him back to civilization. Try that with a F. I. vehicle!!

No argument here that when it works F. I. is absolutely wonderful. It's just when it quits that it scares me.

(As an aside I've mentioned on this forum I believe modern gasoline is formulated for use in F. I. vehicles and works fine when it's sprayed in under pressure but doesn't work so well nowadays in carburetors, a. k. a. "controlled leaks". Score one for F. I. here.)

[JSH]

Originally Posted by woodsrat

My wife has a '94 Jeep Wrangler. It just turned 70,000 miles and has had to be towed to a repair facility at least three times during this time. I could usually determine whether or not it was a fuel or spark problem but that was about it.

The last time I went over to the dealership after the tow truck came to get it and found a mechanic out back with a pile of boxes of parts plugging them in and trying to start it. He had no idea what the problem was and it was pure guesswork. Like the other two times it turned out to be a sensor of some sort that fed information to the F. I. system.

1994 is before OBDII. Early FI systems like the one in your Wrangler don't really have self diagnostics. The factory service manual would tell the mechanic how to test those sensors but most just plug and play instead. It also wouldn't surprise me if a Jeep dealer no longer had a manual for a 24 year old Jeep.

Originally Posted by woodsrat

Another mechanic told me that while you can put modern cars on a computer for diagnosis it's no guarantee that the problem the magic box says it is will be the problem--and then it's experience and/or guesswork.

That is true. The scanner tells you where to start looking for the problem not the exact problem For example, my 2004 Chevy Astro Van was throwing a code for the evaporative emission system. The code narrowed the problem down to 2 valves, a sensor, and a bunch of hoses that could have leaks. The valves checked out OK, the hoses held vacuum and it turned out to be the fuel tank pressure sensor. Too bad it was on top of the tank so the tanks had to be dropped to replace it.

It's a great idea to have a motorcycle to move around. I have a 125 cbr and I love it

[Daschicken]

Originally Posted by woodsrat

Fuel injection is indeed wonderful until it doesn't work anymore. Then you're at the mercy of a lab coated technician who doesn't know any more than you do but has the ability to install and remove parts from his parts department until it runs again. Sadly most repairs on these systems is guesswork or, as the shop manuals say, "install known good component and test." With the carbs on my Lifans if there's a problem I get my tool bag out and fix it.

I've really, really tried to get my head around F. I. I even bought a Grom with the idea that I'd use it as a learning tool and carried the shop manual around with me everywhere I went to study and try to understand how it worked. That failed miserably and it went on a truck to a little lady in Arizona. While it started and ran perfectly ultimately it performed no better than my wired together step throughs.

I'll stick to my "controlled leaks" and remain comfortably in the 20th century.

You sound like my dad. He pretends he likes carbs more than fuel injection because "fuel injection is too scary to fix". I have worked on fuel injection before, and it is indeed a PITA, even more so than carbs, but it just doesn't break! Carbs go wrong all the time, and every time you want to make an adjustment the carbs need to come out, and then there might be air leaks when you go to put them back in, etc. I deal with 4 carbs each for both of my bikes, it is no fun. And then there is the running issues. My VFR 400 has a massive flat spot between 5000-8000 RPM, and gets right about the same fuel economy or a tiny bit better than my dad's VFR 400 when I am hypermiling it. He consistently gets 53 or so MPG, and I have to try hard to get that, otherwise I am down at 48 or lower.

My VFR 400R:
Taller gearing, stock muffler, 110/112 jets, snorkel missing from stock airbox, completely blocked oil cooler, brand spanking new bias ply tires.

His VFR 400R
stock gearing, race can(loud!), 120/122 jets, damaged radiator fins(less flow=more heat retention!), worn radial tires, hole in collector.

Both models have the SAME ENGINE other than his being a 360 degree crank and mine being a 180.

My dad is now in the process of putting a stock can back on with pipes that aren't rusted out. So he is switching back to the stock 115/118 jets, which may push him up to 57+ mpg without even trying! It isn't my riding style vs his, as I rode his bike for 1/3 of a tank and was able to get 57 mpg, and I'm sure I could push that over 60 if I did the whole tank.

Meanwhile, I tried to solve my 400's flatspot with no success. Swapped in a different set of carbs, added a washer under the needles, put in an airbox cover with the snorkel in place(but slightly different cover?) and the bike hit a fueling induced rev limiter at 7000 RPM. The snorkel had three air channels with a chunk of foam blocking the middle one, my dad's bike didn't have a blocker, so maybe I should remove the foam??? I might try some plug chops, but otherwise I am going to have to spend $80+ on a dyno with A/F readout to figure out what the hell is going on at those RPMs. Definitely going to check float level the next time the carbs are out. More work to do....yay..

[JSH]

Originally Posted by Daschicken

I have worked on fuel injection before, and it is indeed a PITA, even more so than carbs, but it just doesn't break! Carbs go wrong all the time, and every time you want to make an adjustment the carbs need to come out, and then there might be air leaks when you go to put them back in, etc.

My experience as well. All but one of the carbureted bikes I've owned have required me to fiddle with the carbs. That flawless bike was a 1996 Ninja 500 that I owned from 2002 to 2003.

[woodsrat]

Multi-cylinder carb setups are indeed a pain in the caboose. This is yet another reason I abandoned "big bikes" and went with the little bikes I ride today. I can have the carb off, cleaned of whatever might be fouling it and back on the bike in minutes. Same goes for jetting changes.

When I wrenched on bikes for a living I grew to hate multi-cylinder carb setups. Any repair you did you multiplied by however many carbs were feeding the engine. Add to this weaseling them back into place with rubber intake boots and manifolds that had grown hard with age and ozone exposure and it made you hate your job.

I did enough repairs on bikes like this that swore I'd never own another one of my own and started looking for alternatives. I first swapped my stripper Gold Wing for a new '86 Honda XL-600R dually bike and rode various other single cylinder duallies until around five years ago when they got parked permanently in favor of the true lightweights that now grace my stable.

Ain't for everybody but they sure work for me.