Hello from Atlanta  By  woodyga (Read 426 times)

Welcome aboard!

Chinese scooters can be a "learning experience"... LOL! However, even with all their little "habits" they are an enormous bargain for the money!

I'm an old biker from the sixties who has re-discovered two wheel fun again with scooters. My experience is very typical, having bought a new Xingyue 150 in 2007. The "bad stuff" that showed up (very quickly) was the CDI, fuel lines & vacuum petcock, coil, tire valve-stems and a MAJOR issue getting the carb tuned.

Most of the problems were very inexpensive, and literally "plug n' play" like the coil and CDI. After a full year of not being able to get the carb right, I figured out it simply would NOT run with the stock air-filter. This is NOT a common problem, but one that drove me nuts on my individual ride... After wasting months of time, I tuned it with the air-filter OFF. Then I tried various filters and finally got it to run right with a UNI "sock" filter.

THEN....... I had six marvelous years of nearly trouble-free transportation! I only moved up to a 250 last year, because the 150 simply would not keep up with traffic on newly redesigned local roads.

No matter WHAT you run into, there are riders here who can advise you what to try. Some tricks and mods will work on one scooter, but not on a similar one. It's trial and error, but you can usually get these Chinese scoots to run well and save a ton of transportation money.

If I just got a Chinese scooter, based on past experience, I would replace the fuel lines with American. If it uses a vacuum petcock, I'd replace that with a manual one for a lawn-care engine and block off the vacuum lines to the old petcock. I'd also replace the CDI with a budget "color" no-rev-limit one (red, blue, orange) and the coil, with an "orange" Bando coil. The coil, and particularly the stock CDI on mine went bad a little at a time, causing all sorts of erratic starting and running problems. An iridium plug also helped.

The carb will most likely need a richer main jet, and if you experience ANY problems with tuning the carb, I'd ditch the factory filter system and install the shortest-possible free-flow air-filter with no spacer between it and the carb-mouth. That will make getting the carb "right" much easier.

All these mods are easy, and don't cost much. As for performance, honestly, a Chinese 150 puts out around 9 or 10hp stock, and THAT is a LOT...  You're probably not going to get a major improvement without spending some serioua money, while hurting reliability.

I DID find later on, that going with a performance variator and experimenting with different roller weights helped overall driving noticeably. A full 1" exhaust header also helped, but, since you're looking for affordable, reliable transportation. I'd keep mods to just those that only replace the few things that Chinese factory parts are truly poor and trouble-prone... Tire valve-stems (originals CAN be DANGEROUS)... Richer carb-main jet, CDI, coil, plug, fuel-lines, petcock and spark-plug. And air-filter IF your scoot won't run right with the factory filter.

Any problems, just ask and you'll get plenty of advice!

Ride safe, and welcome!

Leo in Texas