what did you do to your motorized bicycle today?

Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

Received new electrical parts, set to work on bike that I haven't touched in months

It runs, and it runs good! Phew. Although the rear tire seems to be leaking slowly. And the entire thing is rather slow.
 
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

I smacked my CDI down on the workbench, and now I have spark! (^)

I tried cranking it over with a socket on my electric drill. Without the plug in, I got a weak looking spark, so I sprayed a little starting fluid in the plug hole, put the plug in and tried to turn it over with the drill.
The cheap socket broke, so I'll get another one tomorrow.

I tried to pedal start it, and my front tube blew out when I let the clutch out. It tore right at the valve stem, so it's tube time too! LOL

At least I feel like I'm making some progress. I ordered all the components to make my own CDIs too. Then I won't have to depend on the cheap Chinese units!
 
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

I ordered a bunch of parts to make up for the flaws in my cut rate eBay 4 stroke kit - new engine mount, chain, and wide crank. Added a kickstand and pedals for good measure...
 
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

Needing a few odds and ends, and it being a nice day I took the beast out for a ride.. three quarters of the way there it died on me, seems to be getting no spark. Checked the wiring, with and without kill switch. Tried swapping white and black wires. No luck. (I had to switch to running on the white wire a few weeks ago, from the black. It just stopped working for me, but I didn't have a tester for the wire then.)

Anyway, once I got it back to the garage I started poking around. There is continuity on all three wires from the magneto to the CDI. I checked both bikes while I was at it. There is continuity from the ends of the wires to thier connections. On my bike when I check the black wire I get a light (circuit) on nearly every surface in the magneto housing. The white, only at it's connection, same for blue. On the working bike, the difference is that I get a light on nearly every surface with both white and black wires. Curious, that.

I swapped the CDI from my bike over to the other bike, and it fires up and runs, so the CDI is fine. I seem to be getting nothing useful from the magneto with the voltmeter but I admit I may not know enough about what I'm seeing either.

I tinkered with things until I ran out of daylight (and then some). It's supposed to pour rain tomorrow, but I might be able to pull the magneto and see if there's anything there I can do. If not, I may have to find one and put it in and see what that does for me.
 
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

Back in the day, Champion plugs were THE plug to use in our SBCs.
...the racer's edge... and all that stuff.

In later years, doing more with the dirtbikes, there was just no better plug for general use than the NGK in the 2 smoke motors of different sizes.

I don't know what it is abt them, but they just performed btr, and longer.

...if oreilly don't have the b6hs, go to the next store! lol


...I always thought the Autolite plugs were a nicer looking product than Champions... so when working on a Ford I always run them. It shouldn't matter.

Now, it seems the only plug that needs attention is the stoopid thing Ford did with their Triton series. jerks

.........
Will rejet my cns again today, another step leaner, and will pull the needle up all the way for starters.
I ran on a long downhill a few days back, when I thought I was in a hurry. Got the biggest r's the engine has ever seen, and it was singing! Sounded very good, and was very smooth with no evidence of vibration increasing.
...I should have kept a proper log of my process re-jetting...

If this new try doesn't make an improvement, I'm gonna switch out to the nt for a while...
rc
 
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

I took the plug wire off a 125 hp 2 smoke Boat motor "I like that nic name for 2 stroke btw " & replaced the one I had on the bike. While there "in the boat motor" I noticed 4 CDI's attached to 4 plug wires

There is no way this boat motor will run again My question is will one of these CDI's work on my Bike or do you think it will smoke my Mag.? 1 silly more question On our CDI's the blue wire is hot and the black is a ground correct?

There was 4 plug wires on the 4 CDI's but I scavenged them for various projects. Our CDI is on the far right & little bit smaller I like the blue one it matches my bike color ..almost!:) Do you guys think it will it work?

H1740001.JPG

H1740002.JPG

H1740003.JPG

Wow if you look a5t the time on the 3rd pic I took it @ 11:11 am on 11/11/11
 
Last edited:
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

It's been raining/drizzling this week, but I still rode my MB to work. Sometimes I started off wearing my rain jacket. Or when it started raining, I'd stop, don my jacket and resume my ride.

My co-workers think I'm crazy; they look out the office window and fear the warm rain. I just ride more cautiously, sometimes on the sidewalk.

My newly-fabbed chain tensioner works well. I'm using a slightly grooved ($5 used) polyurethane skateboard wheel, ($1) flat plate, ($2) 11lb spring and a ($1.59) small turnbuckle. My engine chain runs tight/loose/tight/loose. It MIGHT be due to a defective chainring sprocket or freewheel. However, this tensioner solves that issue. The cool thing about the skateboard wheel is that it has a high-performance ABEC-7 bearing, good for thousands of rpms. With the 1" OD engine sprocket, 2.5" OD skateboard wheel and 5:1 transmission, the high-quality bearing is spinning less than 600rpm at the engine's 7,000rpm redline. And instead of a 200lb rider pushing down on four skateboard wheels, there's only an 11lb spring applying pressure on the bearing and chain.

It's so cool, looking down and seeing the chain tensioner in action!

What's even cooler is watching the derailleur in action and listening to a high-performance engine, as the rider shifts gears seven times.dance1
 
Last edited:
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

Yesterday, "rush-home traffic" was very heavy and the roads were wet. That steep hill near home was gridlocked, and riding the hill were three kids on modified mopeds. I chose to ride the dirt path on the road's shoulder. With my new gearing, my bike charged up the hill like a dirtbike. Instead of keeping up w/traffic @ 30mph on the flats, I rode into the neighborhood streets at a slower speed. It's a much safer route when it rains.

On the steep ramp at work, my bike charges it like gangbusters. I can shift to second gear before I reach the top. On the other two ramps, I can run them in second gear. At the top of the last ramp, I turn off the engine and coast 200 feet to the bike rack.

The one feature I notice about my new Schwalbe Big Apple 26 x 2.50 tires is that it can roll much farther than the older Armadillo 26 x 1.95 tires.
 
Last edited:
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

I had the same problem tight /loose/ tight/ loose come to find out my rear sprocket wasn't centered perfectly it was pushed forward ever so slightly perhaps an eighth of an inch and that was all it took to do that. So as much as I didn't want to, I took the wheel off again loosened the bolts with a drill and ratchet w/ extension . This time I took a ruler went to the edge of the stud then made a mark on the ruler with a pen and just kept going around the circle with the ruler until the mark fell on the exact same spot... kinda like a protractor. Ended my tight /loose/ tight/ loose chain issue.. I want to see a photo of that tensioner as well perty please!!!!!!
 
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

Thanks for the tip, Jumpa!
It MIGHT have been fabbed off-center. Sadly, I don't think I can re-center it, because the sprocket centers(registers) on a freewheel.:-||

I can live with it.

Pics when son returns home tonight.
 
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

Listed one of my motorbikes on craigslist today. Need to get a bike or 2 together.
 
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

Yesterday I lost spark out on a run. When I got it back to the garage I went over it pretty thoroughly. The CDI tests out on the other bike, so it's okay as far as I know.

Today I changed the magneto out along with the plug. The kill switch is disconnected. I went blue/blue and black/black and got nothing. I went white/black instead and with the choke open and throttle half to wide open I had it running once, but as soon as the throttle closed it died. It doesn't want to repeat the start right now. I pulled the carb, dropped the float bowl. Float's good, lever is good, pin and stem both fine, the barrel lifts when the throttle's twisted, fuel flow is good (when I unscrew the drain with valves open it dribbles freely). I even washed out the crud in the 'air cleaner'/foam as it was looking a bit wet and gritty. Nothing has changed on the whole set-up, except the loss of spark... I'm running out of ideas and things to check. There must be something I've missed or overlooked.
 
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

CT- have you tried a different plug wire at all? Sometimes those just crap out...

Jumpa(and all)- For those of us not lucky enough to have the sprocket seat nicely on the hub(*shakes fist at the lucky ones* :p). When the sprocket's still loose, stuff short pieces of fuel line, or cigarette butts, or whatever fits evenly around the hub. That'll get the sprocket closer to "true" for final tightening. Plus it's easier to keep an eye on it with something there to gauge by than just the gap.


I've just been working around the house(*shakes fist at roofing tar*) and prepping the winter beater for when the salt starts flying. No way I'm taking the 29er out in that, with the J-shaft and all the chrome it'd look like crap inside a week.

.shft.
 
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

CTripps said:
Yesterday I lost spark out on a run. When I got it back to the garage I went over it pretty thoroughly. The CDI tests out on the other bike, so it's okay as far as I know.

Today I changed the magneto out along with the plug. The kill switch is disconnected. I went blue/blue and black/black and got nothing. I went white/black instead and with the choke open and throttle half to wide open I had it running once, but as soon as the throttle closed it died. It doesn't want to repeat the start right now. I pulled the carb, dropped the float bowl. Float's good, lever is good, pin and stem both fine, the barrel lifts when the throttle's twisted, fuel flow is good (when I unscrew the drain with valves open it dribbles freely). I even washed out the crud in the 'air cleaner'/foam as it was looking a bit wet and gritty. Nothing has changed on the whole set-up, except the loss of spark... I'm running out of ideas and things to check. There must be something I've missed or overlooked.
Click to expand...

Yes ...I agree...you must have over looked something.
 
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

57, jumpa is correct, both in diagnosis and the fix.

Nice as your spiffy tensioner must be, it should not be dancing!
Your sprocket is out of concentric with the wheel... It's running in an oval.
Basically, it's robbing power.
NOT gud!

So I did re-jet my cns today, but no test run because of rain.
It was at .0305 and I took it down to .029... That's just abt in the ballpark for #68 to #69.
I dropped the circlip on the slide needle down to groovy #5 making it all the way fat and will make adjustments leaning it out as I see how it performs.

lol
My kid was working on an adjacent project and could not see the importance of changing a jet so little, when he saw the fine wire bits I was using... He said it was nothing like what he did on his dirtbikes. I explained to him his bikes were much larger and putting out 40+ hp which gave him at least some leeway in jetting. My tiny little engine is only 48cc and 1 1/2, maybe 2hp on the very best of days! I need every little bit of power I can get to haul my carcass up he would NOT consider to be a hill! lol

Gosh I hope this makes the improvement I need.
If it doesn't, I'll need to set the cns on the shelf and run with the nt for a while.

Fenders... I'm gonna need fenders for the rainy winter WX.
As I was abt to toss some abs inner fender buckets left over from the other kids mustang, it dawned on me that I might be able to cut strips out of them to make fenders for my mab... so I cut them down to only portions I can use, and need to get started on that project quickly... and tires... I got some pretty slick tires on it now. Better mount some with a more aggressive tread so I don't go sliding the wheels out in puddles while turning.
rc
 
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

Lol, rusty, I'm cheap. I'm not gonna spend time and $$ nitpicking for a 1/20 of a hp loss. My bike is very fast with beaucoup power, just like I need it. I could spend $90 for a custom sprocket from King's. However, the guy never returns my pm's or emails, so no loss. If I DID buy the sprocket, install it and the problem STILL exists, I'm out $90. I COULD buy another $20 Chinese sprocket, but that one could be out of round too. It COULD be a slightly bent bottom cartridge, or it COULD be a defective $10 freewheel. I have a $70 freewheel for my next build. If the 'wheel fails, I MIGHT install the expensive freewheel.

Nah, I'll just screw on another cheap, used freewheel and keep riding it to work daily, like I've been doing for the past 6 months. :dance1

Hey! If the failed 'wheel IS the culprit, then I will have fixed the problem and regained the hp loss...for free!
 
Last edited:
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

First of all A huge thanks to everyone on this forum who've answered my questions, posted how-to's and have given insight.

This has been a few weeks in the making. Not a whole lot of tweaking or mods, just some basics and some cosmetic enhancements. I replaced the spark plug, wire and cover as recommended (All NGK) and it DOES make a difference. Put on an oversized fuel filter, put zip ties on fuel line connections (not too tight, just snug) and siliconed the intake. My tensioner mod is holding up. Here are some ,model numbers of the parts:
  • Spark plug - NGKB5HS
  • Spark plug cover - NGKTB05EM-R
  • Fuel filter - WIX 33001

...and some pics.
 

Attachments

  • 100_0528.JPG
    100_0528.JPG
    251.2 KB · Views: 237
  • 100_0526.JPG
    100_0526.JPG
    343.1 KB · Views: 254
  • 100_0527.JPG
    100_0527.JPG
    326.7 KB · Views: 247
  • 100_0529.JPG
    100_0529.JPG
    177.8 KB · Views: 244
  • 100_0530.JPG
    100_0530.JPG
    253.7 KB · Views: 259
Re: what did you do to your motor bike today?

East82 said:
First of all A huge thanks to everyone on this forum who've answered my questions, posted how-to's and have given insight.

This has been a few weeks in the making. Not a whole lot of tweaking or mods, just some basics and some cosmetic enhancements. I replaced the spark plug, wire and cover as recommended (All NGK) and it DOES make a difference. Put on an oversized fuel filter, put zip ties on fuel line connections (not too tight, just snug) and siliconed the intake. My tensioner mod is holding up. Here are some ,model numbers of the parts:
  • Spark plug - NGKB5HS
  • Spark plug cover - NGKTB05EM-R
  • Fuel filter - WIX 33001

...and some pics.
Click to expand...

Oh, forgot to mention that the spark plug cover is made for jet skis and waterproof. Last pic.
 

Attachments

  • 100_0525.JPG
    100_0525.JPG
    215.6 KB · Views: 224
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top