the exhaust experiment

hello peeps

well if you haven't guessed by now. i am all about the low cost.
 thats why i chose a bike over a car. my thoughts are the less you have to spend the more you can spend on things you want.
I think its a good way of things and its served me well, i've traveled Europe for 5 years and traveled around the uk.
  all with out breaking the bank. any way enough personal fluffing.

so the exhaust experiment.

 as im sure you know freeflow exhausts can increase mph by decreasing back pressure.
 but by how much???????

These themselves cost kinda alot of the olde moneys so what about modifying your current stock exhaust?

i've seen a how to you youtube with a guy who makes cheap exhaust with loft insulation  and a biscuit tin which was informative and another who cut open his exhaust and removed baffles and cut it down but what i'm thinking is much simpler.

my exhause on my pulse phantom has an aluminum sleeve around the actual exhaust and if you look at it closely from the back the exhaust is tiny the exit from it is no more than 20mm.
 what if i drilled out the end rivits on the sleeve and took off the shiney chrome back plate and drilled the exhaust out?

that would certainly decrease the back pressure.

 if i openned it up to say 40mm thats twice as much exit.

 i wouldn't be removing any of the baffles or the padding. all i would need to do is put on the shiney chrome plate and re rivet it in place.

this is just food for thought at the minute i have to test the idea on a smaller scale.

 so for this test i need to know the stock speed.
that bit is easy 52 mph exactly with the carb fine tunned ( fortunatly thats done )

now i already have an exhaust port thats closed off from the egr. so if i take off the bodged blanking plate i made and left it open in theory
if the engine was being chocked by the exhaust it would go a little faster.
 say 1mph since the egr hole is only 10mm but still i think that would be a good way to see if its worth doing????

of course for a fair test use the speedo app on my phone since my speedo is more than a little out.

and i will take it from there.

 any thoughts much appreicated.
 cheers

egr to keep or not to keep

my little scooter came with an egr,
 thats an exhaust gas recirculation system. sounds really complex but basically its a pipe that comes out of the exhaust and puts some of the exhaust fumes back into the air intake.
 it to do with being greener and giving a cleaner exhaust gas.

 honestly i can see where they are coming from but its a 125cc scooter that does 120 ish miles to the tank and the tank is 6.5 litres.
 its not exactly a gas guzzling v12 that does 6 to the gallon.

as i had mentioned earlier the bike shop welded the pipe and it blew up and off so i was driving about with it off and i had noticed that the bike felt nippier.
   it didn't go any faster still 50mph but the throttle was more responsive and the bike would pick up speed quicker.

i put it back on to test and sure enough the bike felt sluggish and unresponsive.
 i would turn the throttle and it would slowly pick up speed. even the handling felt slow.

that bolt you see connected to the pipe that was bashed the crap out of :) instant blanking plate

so for me i personally felt it had to go.
 so i followed the the vacume line back to the manifold inlet and blocked that off by bending it over and sealing it with cable tie and cut the pipe,
 unbolted the egr from the back and took out the pipe connecting to the air box and put on a small air filter to stop dust and crud getting in to the carb and engine.
 finally i followed the metal out let pipe to the engine and unbolted that. since i didnt have a egr blocking plate i fashioned one from the blown pipe by liberally beating the crap out of the remaining pipe left with a hammer to seal the pipe. the bolted that back in place. ta da a blocking plate.

 once i has that sealed and cable tied i took it for a spin.
i hadnt noticed it so much before but at near top end the throttle was bogging.
 it wasn't till the other vacuum was sealed and i was out on it did i notice.

 still no faster but it has made my bike more responsive and able to pick up speed quickly and basically a joy to drive.

 

cheap led head lights for 12v scooters

hello peeps,

I've been looking into led lights for my scooter. and wow they are expensive!
 the cheapest i can find are about £50  and for the scrooge that i am thats way too much.

considering I haven't brought the new headlight housing as its £60!
 so ive been keeping my night driving down to well, none as i dont have to go out at night and legally i don't have to have headlights till its dark.
 ( during the day i have my main beams on as its day and doesn't dazzle anyone )

so i have been looking at different ways to make them.
 it's fairly simple so this is what i've come up with.

based on the fact the bulb housing is melted to buggery and i'm handy with a dremel.

 i'm going to source the parts off e-bay.
 the basic parts are:

a heat sink
  bigger leds do get warm and need cooling but no where near hot enough to melt any more of my headlights, it just to keep the led from damaging its self.
and make it last longer.

  so a 12v cpu cooler will be more than enough.


the L.E.D
  as i cant be arsed soldering loads of 1 watt leds im going for a 12v 10watt led
of course in white im going for cool white but thats my personal choice any white will do.






a resistor.
 since even tho your bike runs at 12v it is really running at 14v as thats at full battery.
 so a 3.3 ohm is needed again you strictly dont have to have one but it really makes sure the led lasts as long as possible and thats what i'm after.

 leds usually have the minimum life of 50.000 hours so around 6 years of constant use. while standard bulbs only have  around 150 ish hour.

conductive paste or thermal paste.
this will bond the led to the heatsink and draw the heat away from it.

so hooked up a 12v 10watt led i had, yes its blue but its just to see if it works

I have purposely chosen 12v as its what my lights run on, some are ac so you would need to get a rectifier thats for some one else to do as mines not :)
 since i have air vents on the sides of my front fairing i most likely won't need a fan operated heat sink but i dont want to take any chances of it overheating and the led breaking on me in the middle of nowhere as all lights seem to.
 
the only other thing i need is some shrink wrap to cover the resistor but i have some kicking about as well as the soldering iron and solder.


 the led i have ordered has an out put of 900 lumens which isnt the best but certainly better than the stock one which is about 300
  and i dont want to have a beacon of light blinding traffic as i pass by.

hope this is helpfull to someone :)

seeing is helpful in the dark, lights for your scooter

hello peeps,

I do alot of driving on my scooter even tho it only does 50.
 I have been all over the place on it,
  all over linconshire which i live or as i call it the flat lands.
To cornwall 4 times on it. the last time being in February when the flooding and storms battered the uk.
  so i've racked up more than a few miles on my bumblebee.

The headlights that come with it ( the stock ones) leave alot to be desired. the main beam is fine but the dipped lights are pointless. you might as well have a bday candle as a light.

So with this in mind i went e-bay shopping!

  If you don't already know, in the UK the maximum wattage thats legal for dipped lights (or running lights as they are sometimes called)
is 55 watts and main beam ( or fog lights) is 100watts

bearing in mind that one brand is different from another.
  You may see some cheap 55 watt lights and the slightly more expensive 40watt lights that are brighter.

 any how, back on point.

 i brought my self xenon lights at 55watts they put out the same amount of light as 110watt bulbs.
 crazy to think there isnt a lumin limit bit there isnt.

so i checked they fitted my light fittings and they did and it said you didnt need any special attachments to dissipate heat so i popped them in and wow.
 what a difference. i could see at night!

this is what is left, a black melted plastic holder. this is after it was cleaned up for a quick light fix but it didnt work for long. 

 things were going great till i was out off somewhere in the middle of the night and pop! the light stops working in the middle of nowhere.

 thinking i had touched the bulb when putting it in i switched on my high beams and headed home.

 the next day i took apart my lights and found it had melted the plastic housing and it was totaled!

considering that the stock bulb was 35 watt and i put in a high powered bulb at 55 watts i can see why it melted.

after a check online it turns out that all bulbs are based for metal and glass housings so beware!
  

my advice to save £60 from having to buy a new headlight housing is go L.E.D
  LOW HEAT, REALLY HIGH OUT PUT!!!!

pluse phantom 125cc the beginning!

Hello!

Ive started this blog as a kinda log of what i get up to on my little scooter.
 I have a gy6 125cc pulse phantom sports scooter.
   I have had this bike from nearly new (300 miles on the clock)

when i went in to the shop to buy this bike i had only one real thing i needed it to do.
 That was to go at 60mph.

Anyone who has had a bike or drives one knows that being able to travel at the speed limit is a must, there are a hell of a lot of ass holes driving on 4 wheels who will do the dumbest things to overtake someone whos going a little slow.
 this endangers you, the dumb ass driver of the car and any poor sod coming the other way!

 any way the bike shop, JB BIKES said it did and them being the official dealer of the bike, who am i to argue.

any way after a month of wondering why im doing 65 and drivers were overtaking round blind bends and all sorts i got one of the android speedo apps and it turns out i was only going 50 mph!

so as you can guess i was more than a little annoyed that i had been mislead in to buying a bike that basically was an unrestricted 50cc.

 what added extra annoyance is that i had taken my bike to be repaired as the carb diaphragm blew and instead of replacing that they put in a whole new carb as well as a dodgy weld on my egr pipe which blew the whole thing off 200 miles later while on my way too cornwall!
 to rub salt in to the wound the new carb blew once i had made it down.

after that final straw of 3 shitty things for 3
I decided that JB BIKES  were crap and i would do the work my self and never use them again.

 since then its been plain sailing. not a single fault on the bike. well other than things i've done to it.

so basically this is a how to blog and a learn from my dumb errors blog.