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Hey Joel, welcome. I'm in San Jose. You may need to do a little research and take an extra day to find what you need.

Dan

You're right - I used bad verbage there. I was referring to raising the needle by *lowering* the clip. I should have called that out more clearly.

Jerry, you were right - raising the needle one notch gave me a tad more smooth power in the midrange (with the 115 main jet). Makes me wonder what it would be like changing the main somewhere between a 115 and 120 (do they make a 117.5?)

Anyhow, I'm pretty pleased and will order the next lighter sized rollers to test variator tweaks further now.

Hey there. It was idling fine, a little low, but not by much. It would just bog at 1/2 to full throttle. Ok up to that point.

But no, I didn't mess with the needle.

Ok, I've got the exhaust mods in place (made a baffle) and now on to carb tuning. This thread is just for my own reference, but I'd enjoy company if you want to play along, offer advice, etc.

This bike originally came with a 102 main jet.  Way too lean, so I put in a 115 and have been driving that for a hundred miles or so.  Definitely an improvement, but I feel like it's still not quite there, and the plug was still not giving me a decent tan.

The holy grail I'm looking for is that coffee colored insulator tip.

Today I swapped the 115 for a 125 and it ran like poo.  Boggy and wouldn't get up to speed over about 2 miles around the neighborhood.  I'm not surprised by this, but I wanted to find out how much was too much.  125 is too big.

The insulator tip of the plug has the black soot you can see in the pic, but only on one side, and not too heavy. It reminds me off fireplace soot. The other side of the core is white. The black soot is dry, not wet. I did adjust the air/fuel mix screw to where it ran best.

Here's the plug:


The shop I went to didn't have any 122's, but I have a 120. I'll drop that in there with a new plug and see how the plug reads. I'm betting it gets me closer to a healthy coffee color.

More to come...

Success!

Initial fire-up: a bit more muted than I thought it would be - about as loud as stock, but a smidge beefier. Took it for a ride for a few miles. The steel scouring pad start getting forced out of the 5/8 inch exit washer.

Changes: I removed the scouring pads altogether. Almost back to the original sound level, but not quite - loud enough to get someone's attention but not as obnoxious as it was before. I also need to tack weld the exit washer or remove it altogether. It's rattling around a bit in there.

I'm happy and learned something new. I'll put some miles on it and do an inspection. If I find failures, I'll rebuild with welds everywhere possible. Otherwise I'm happy. Effective and overall easy.

Now, on to carb tuning and maybe try one size lighter variator weights for a little more umph - it's taking a while to hit the power band. Got 12g's on there right now. I'll try 11's. 13g's were a bit boggy.

I received my scooter back this past week from the repair shop after I was hit from behind.  The original muffler was scratched and scraped, so I had a new muffler put it.  Sounds good and throaty, but it's just too loud.  It did not come with a baffle, so I got to thinking about how to make one.

The tip angles downward such that it would not be possible to install a baffle one from the exit point of the muffler.  So I had to find a way to mount one to the inside of the tip and bolt it in place with the tip removed from the muffler.

I scoured the web for various ideas on how to go about doing this without a lot of welding - as you'll see, below, I'm not much of a welder.  I went with the idea of using two 5/8 inch washers on each side of the baffle filled with stainless steel cleaning pads.  The idea is to provide a more restricted exit from the muffler via the 5/8 inch washers (there is no reducing mechanism within the muffler - it's about 1.5 inches in diameter on both the entry and exit, straight through).  And also to reduce some of the blapping loud noise when I open it up.

I cobbled a few items at home depot to create the baffle cannister - a six inch piece of fence top rail sleeve with one of the 5/8 inch washers welded on one end.  Then an electrical conduit coupling that fit well with the fence rail sleeve.  Drilled a few holes to pair the two up, and the electrical coupling bolted to the tube inside the muffler tip.

Here are the pics.  I'm curious if there is any danger of the bolts or washers joining the pieces rattling loose and making their way down to the engine and causing a problem.

Feel free to critique and express any concerns.  It's not mounted yet, so I can fix anything that stands out as a danger or other notable issue.

Conduit coupling:



5/8 inch washer fit perfectly at the end of the exit of the tip. The conduit coupling holds it in place perfectly:


The rest of the bits prior to assembly. Note a 5/8 washer tacked onto the end of the fence sleeve:


Assembled: