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Post by rockynv on Apr 26, 2017 23:24:15 GMT -5
This is a bit sad since Aprilia had been making fuel injected 2 stokes since 2001 and through about 2014. Kudos to KTM and their decade long effort to adapt more off the shelf automotive style fuel injection components to a 2 stroke bike. I believe in California the only 2 stroke you can get is a used one if you can find a decent one or new aprilia 50cc Piaggio squashed the Direct Injected Aprilia 2 stroke. Outperformed by far their own 50cc bikes so they only allow them the make a 50cc 4 stroke Motard Scooter now for US distribution. Too bad since Aprilia was the leader fover a decade in small fuel injected 2 strokes even though their design was a cam style pump and not sequenced by an ECU. There may still be some new 2014 DiTech bikes hidden away in warehouses but mostly these little gems will be Craigslist finds. |
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Post by rockynv on Apr 26, 2017 13:13:04 GMT -5
To me its not the bike that wins this event but the rider and the luck of the draw concerning running over nails/glass causing flat tires and hitting traffic jambs. My Aprilia tops out just shy of 100 mph however on a run at the legal speed limit on 25 to 65 mph roads you would not expect to see an average speed in the  + mph range. Too much emphasis is being put on brand and country of origin here as the whole point of this run is to mostly test the riders. |
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Post by rockynv on Apr 25, 2017 12:01:09 GMT -5
Remember that the Cannonball is won on a points system that credits the rider too and not just who had the fastest/best scooter. Sometimes a good rider on a 150 can win if especially if they are good at picking their route.
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Post by rockynv on Apr 25, 2017 4:11:51 GMT -5
People are people and mess up regardless of what they ride under inflating tires, setting rear preload too soft with some then making it worse scooter or motorcycle by changing the seating position and weight distribution of the bike. On a scooter the rider offsets the rear engines weight by having a seating positon over and slightly forward of the engine however many want a cruiser style seating position yet still purchase a scooter with a forward seating position and then lower the seat and remove the bolster so the rider is now seated behind the engine throwing the balance off. Now that the padding is too thin so they lower the rear spring preload setting and tire pressure making the balance even worse however now with less weight on the front of the bike the front bounces more so they lower the front tire pressure so now when they brake the tread squirms even more causing greater shake inducing wear.
Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.
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Post by rockynv on Apr 25, 2017 3:59:41 GMT -5
Riding in bad situations like sandy/muddy roads so they can give you more options for traction control. The Hero was designed to take the place of the farm tractor and uses the front wheel for extra pulling power when using ground engaging attachments. The example I saw of that Hero had more knobby type street/trail tires on them than street tires.
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Post by rockynv on Apr 23, 2017 18:40:05 GMT -5
Front end wobble aside, the handling of a scooter will always suffer in comparison to a bike. A bike is better laid out with no compromise to final drive. A quick check over at Modern Vespa will reveal that front end wobble was a major problem for the large framed scooters from the GT 200 through the GTS 300. It has been quelled lately on new scooters but shows that even Piaggio with over 70 years of scooter building under their belt has issues with the weight bias problem regardless of tire type or inflation. And those puppies are not cheap either. If you dig deeper you will find that most are self inflicted by riders trying to get a softer ride, putting a smaller tire in the back, etc. Most motorcycles will be biased toward the back once you put a rider on them with many putting the pillion further behind the rear wheel than on many scooters. Scooters put the rider in front of the motor switching the bias back to the front while most motorcycles put the rider behind the motor switching the bias toward the back. It does not matter scooter or motorcycle they both need to be setup correctly for the way the current rider will be using it and on the motorcyle this may even involve moving the engine forward to offset the rear bias caused by the weight of the rider with a number of the high end sport bikes having multiple engine mounting positions to make it easier to adjust their bias by shifting the engine weight. Even my 10 ton F53 truck had to be weighed at the 4 corners after I had it set up the way I was going to use it so the load be could redistributed if need be and rechecked followed by the tire pressures set to match and a full allignment done to match my usage so it would not handle like a dog. Folks still don't realize that there is no real one size fits all setup and you have to have each vehicles suspension tuned (tires are part of the suspension) to how you load and use it car, truck, scooter or motorcycle. Most vehicles especially the lighter ones won't handle very well when you load them even just past maximum capacity especially if you don't follow the book and make the required adjustments. |
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Post by rockynv on Apr 23, 2017 18:14:49 GMT -5
Really needed to be stopped and on the center stand to fire in an emergency however not really designed to be able to hold up to that use for long. Intention was to mount the gun on its tripod for firing. Did prove the monochassis design as a sturdy reliable one.
Family in Italy tell me the Lambretta was better suited to the three wheel truck conversions with the largest having a bigger payload than most American Full Sized pickup trucks but the skeletal frame on them did not lend them as well to this type of modification.
Counsins outside of Naples in the Tiano area have a marble/stone yard and still deliver their marble into the smaller towns using the Lambretta three wheeled scooter trucks since they can get closer to the job sites (right to the door) than the larger vehicles which have to have the loads transfered near the destination and then loaded into the Lambretta or into a push cart in order to complete the delivery. Not much fun to hand load/unload a few tons of marble multiple times in that area in the dead of summer.
A lot of history from the two Italian scooter giants that is getting lost as the old timers pass. At least the internet is saving some of it and making it available to more generations.
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Post by rockynv on Apr 23, 2017 16:51:52 GMT -5
If one has Not Experienced Bar Slap on a Scooter I'de would venture to guess one has Never Taken there Hands off the Bars and Sat up or Better Lean Back. its the weight bias. I have Michelins on my Scoot and love them. I did that yestersday just to be sure and there was zip, zero, nada wobble. Its mostly tire pressure and tread pattern after eliminating rear preload being set too low. If leaning back causes it to get worse on your bike you have tire pressure and or preload issues at the least and possibly a front tire with a tread pattern prone to wobble. This tire and any remotely similar to it will wobble insanely if not inflated a few psi over the nameplate spec on the bike without going over the max limit stamped on the sidewall:  This tire won't be as prone to wobble:  The problem with most bikes and scooters that have a large seat making them appear to be good for riding double is that most do not have enough weight capacity to maintain front steering head geometry when you load up the back. 330 lbs max load capacity is not going to cut it for two unless both of you weigh under 150 lbs and yet that only leaves 30 lbs for both rider and passengers riding gear and parcels. Even a bike with a 465 lb capacity with a poor choice in front tire or really bad preload settings is going to wobble. You do have to vet them out and set them up correctly. |
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Post by rockynv on Apr 21, 2017 12:12:27 GMT -5
I have absolutely zero bar slap since changing to a tire that is not prone to causing it and I only got it once the front tire had started to wear unevenly when I was running the Sava Diamond 28s. When I asked the factory mechanics at Aprilia they said after showing me the wear pattern that was causing it along with race video showing how it impacts all two wheeled motobikes that it would be resolved by upping the tire pressure by 2 to 3 psi and they were exactly right. From whats being discussed here it sounds more like folks running rear spring preloads to light or trying to ride double on a scooter with only a 330 lb weight capacity along with under inflating tires for a more cushey ride. I have 30,000 mostly Interstate miles on my Aprilia which was designed by a Sport Bike company as an Interstate bike with a 465 lb capacity.
What real good though is a street bike that does over the maximum legal speed limit in first gear? There is only one road in the USA where it is legal to go over 80 mph and its a relatively short rural streatch of highway out in the middle of nowhere.
BTW: The scooter design came about because an aircraft engineer was tasked with coming up with a design that people could ride without getting oil splashed all over their clothes and could provide affordable daily transportation to folks recovering from the economic hardships that followed WWII through Europe. What they did not like was how dirty a motorcycle rider typically got.
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Post by rockynv on Apr 20, 2017 12:02:28 GMT -5
Upping the front tire pressure by 2 to 3 psi will usually mitigate the head shake as will going with a tire that does not have a alternating chevron tread pattern such as the Michelin Pilot Power Pure. Motorcycles using the same tread alternating chevron tread patterns will also have head shake as many race track videos will prove out.
Heavy fisted front braking will cause the chevron tire treads to squirm more and wear on the leading edge of the tread blocks further magnifying the head shake.
Of course that is assuming that the bike is not overloaded and the preload on the rear shocks is set to match the weight being loaded on the scooter.
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Post by rockynv on Apr 20, 2017 11:51:28 GMT -5
By the time a friend of mine got his back after a theft it had been similarly damaged and the theif had painted it (very poorly) shocking pink. He got a lot of ribbing showing up on base in uniform riding a pink scooter.
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Post by rockynv on Apr 20, 2017 4:18:22 GMT -5
Leo - The RNT was born after Honda Pulled out from Hero in India. If memory serves its aimed at folks living in the rurals who need three things - transportation, electricity and a farm tractor but can only afford one so they built a Scooter, Electric Generator and Tractor All in One device. Even has Sari Guards built in for taking the family into town. The headlight assembly detaches and has an extension cord so it can be used as flood lighting for working late out in the fields or in the barn/shed.
I still have my two wheeled (side by side not inline) FMC/Bolens Walking Tractor however the Calcium Chloride filled Chevron Cleated tire would make for a choppy, hard and real heavy ride. It can put in almost half a days work on a gallon of gasoline with its 3 hp motor. A number of the small farms where I grew up in New England still use them instead of Cubs since the fuel useage is so low. A friend tried a really nice Husqvarna with the Hydrostatic Drive and found that it did just as nice a job as his old machine but did not do it any faster and took 5 times more fuel to do the same amount of work. He got tired of it very quickly and got rid of it then putting the money he sold it for into refurbishing his old one ending up very happy with having the old one working along with having the leftover change in his pocket.
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Post by rockynv on Apr 18, 2017 4:16:39 GMT -5
There was a reason that Tank went under several years ago. Maybe the TR (Tall Rider) model might be able to hit 65 but then again my Lance once I put the Hoca drive line in it would hit 65 for a short streatch before the fuel pump would fail to keep up and then it would stall out from fuel starvation.
Kat you will find that Piaggio errs on the side of caution. Your 200 will probably be capable of a bit more than 70 unless your riding up hill against the wind. On a flat level road you may likely see 5 to 10 mph more than whats printed in the book. The Aprilia 150 made by Rotax did not have a rev limiter so it was known for hitting 70+ mph however it really was not designed to sustain that speed and you would experience accelerated engine wear if you pushed it to the limit regularly. The Piaggio 200 is quite a bit more bullet proof than the old design Rotax.
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Post by rockynv on Apr 18, 2017 4:05:19 GMT -5
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Post by rockynv on Apr 18, 2017 3:57:06 GMT -5
Report it stolen, cancel the registration and then since there is no registration there is no need for insurance. The police though may ask for your insurance information and report it to them anyways however this is still usually your best bet to prevent any liabilities if the bike is involved in a crime, hit and run, racks up parking tickets, toll violations, etc.
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+ mph range.
