50cc hill climb problem solved
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2020 5:42 pm
Well, not totally, of course. It is still just a 50cc scooter!
Sorry for the long post, but if it helps anyone ...
My new 2018 Roughhouse ran fine for 470 miles of mild flogging and hilly riding. Suddenly a few months ago on a long hill I normally climb at 25-30mph the engine bogged down, the exhaust note dropped an octave lower in pitch, and I gradually slowed to about 5mph with the throttle wide open. Going downhill afterwards it seemed to run fine, zipping up to 40mph on the speedo. Problem continued for next few weeks, but not ever quite as bad. Maybe dropped to 10-15mph climbing same hill.
Dealer said it was the carburetor being clogged from bad gas (it had indeed sat for long periods of time; though with religious use of Stabil and Techron!) and they disassembled and cleaned the carb at the dealer 500 mile service, for which they charged me extra.
But the problem continued!! And it got worse. Over the next couple of hundred miles not only would I gradually lose power going up hills, as before, but at the same time the rpms began surging up and down by several hundred rpms. Sometimes if I stopped and restarted it would accelerate fine for a while back up to speed, and then start loosing power all over again. But always on the flats and downhills I could easily get 40mph on the speedo.
Definitely sounds like a fuel problem. And I checked everything that could possibly be checked fuel-wise. But I had a hunch.
So at a mere 770 miles on the odometer I just replaced the stock variator roller weights with stock-weight 7.5 gram Malossi roller weights. And the problem instantly went away. The Scooter runs like new again. Here's a photo of the rollers I took out. They look pretty bad to me, but then again they are the first used set I've ever seen. No serious flat spots or anything like I expected. One of them is a bit knackered in a ring around one side of the roller (see arrow) and they all have strange black marks on them. (Not sure if at 200kb max. upload size you can see any of this.) But apparently the rollers were hanging up in there and/or wandering around aimlessly and dropping my rpms out of the power band.
Go figure!
--The J-Man
Sorry for the long post, but if it helps anyone ...
My new 2018 Roughhouse ran fine for 470 miles of mild flogging and hilly riding. Suddenly a few months ago on a long hill I normally climb at 25-30mph the engine bogged down, the exhaust note dropped an octave lower in pitch, and I gradually slowed to about 5mph with the throttle wide open. Going downhill afterwards it seemed to run fine, zipping up to 40mph on the speedo. Problem continued for next few weeks, but not ever quite as bad. Maybe dropped to 10-15mph climbing same hill.
Dealer said it was the carburetor being clogged from bad gas (it had indeed sat for long periods of time; though with religious use of Stabil and Techron!) and they disassembled and cleaned the carb at the dealer 500 mile service, for which they charged me extra.
But the problem continued!! And it got worse. Over the next couple of hundred miles not only would I gradually lose power going up hills, as before, but at the same time the rpms began surging up and down by several hundred rpms. Sometimes if I stopped and restarted it would accelerate fine for a while back up to speed, and then start loosing power all over again. But always on the flats and downhills I could easily get 40mph on the speedo.
Definitely sounds like a fuel problem. And I checked everything that could possibly be checked fuel-wise. But I had a hunch.
So at a mere 770 miles on the odometer I just replaced the stock variator roller weights with stock-weight 7.5 gram Malossi roller weights. And the problem instantly went away. The Scooter runs like new again. Here's a photo of the rollers I took out. They look pretty bad to me, but then again they are the first used set I've ever seen. No serious flat spots or anything like I expected. One of them is a bit knackered in a ring around one side of the roller (see arrow) and they all have strange black marks on them. (Not sure if at 200kb max. upload size you can see any of this.) But apparently the rollers were hanging up in there and/or wandering around aimlessly and dropping my rpms out of the power band.
Go figure!
--The J-Man