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Andrews Frankenscooter
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 Hi Doug: It is good to see that there are people out there that appreciate the exceptional 1980 s Honda Elite scooters. My situation is a little different. I have a 1976 Honda ct90 , which after blowing the 90 and subsequent 110 cc engines once too often (hard core 44 mile commutes), I am going off the deep end. At the local bike junk yard in kelownas westside, I sourced a 1985 CH150D Engine/powertrain with all the ignition and charging circuit goodies. The next step,I removed the ct90 engine,swingarm, and rear wheel. Then I fabricated new brackets to accomodate the elite engine pivot assembly (after rebushing the seized pivots with bronze inserts and grease fittings). I have installed the engine forward enough that the carburetor sits where the original 6v battery was. The wheelbase of the bike has increased by about 5 inches. The radiator (yamaha 250 dirtbike) is huge but fits perfectly just behind the skidplate downtubes.The 12v battery resides where the original engine was. You would be surprised at how many parts from 2 vastly different bikes can be mixed and matched together. The new 12v electrics are phenomenal compared to the 6v crap. I have named this "thing" the Frankencycle. I scoured the MyScoot website for info and built an exhaust header out of a 1969 vw beetle intake manifold, ported a new intake manifold , and installed a huge K&N air filter. This contraption runs superbly, and is almost ready for the road. I will send you pictures of it soon. I think you will get a real kick out of it. Maybe a candidate for an episode of "Monster Garage".  My Apologies for not getting these pictures to you
sooner, but as they say, better late than never. I have not quite
completed this monster yet, but like its horror story counterpart, its
creator was able to say "Its Alive", and make it functional before all
the details were finished. There
are a few little things still to do, like fabricating side covers for
the fuse/relay area, and the carburetor air filter tube. Curious about
the road test? The speedo goes to 60miles per hour- not kliks. This was
achieved with surprising haste, and there was still lots of room on the twist
grip. This thing is absolutely hilarious to ride. Its incredibly stable
but has very responsive handling and braking. I got some really
strange looks from both cars and other bikes , while happily buzzing
along in 55-60mph Hwy97 traffic. It easily accelerates with the traffic
with ease, and actually PASSES
other vehicles on the highway. Oh , the exhaust system....... civilized
at lower power settings but has a noticeable bark at high rpm . Its
great , because something is definitely needed to get the attention of
the average multitasking auto/truck/suv driver these days. It is still
not as loud as the typical Harley chopper (the local chopper shop
really gets a kick out of it). There is nothing out there that sounds
like it. I do have a compact muffler design based loosely on the
Flowmaster mufflers. Added April 25,2006- The exhaust system that I fabricated works really well, but as I alluded before, it is quite noisy, especially at high load/rpm operation. I decided as an experiment, to repair and install the stock exhaust muffler on the engine. Wow, when I started the engine, you could hardly tell it was running. Driving the thing around was eerie, as the helmet and wind noise is greater than the sound from the engine. Road test. The engine performed well up to about 40 mph. I noticed<>the engine working harder in the 40 to 50 mph range, and did not run up to 60 mph anywhere near as enthusiastically as before, and it seemed to require more twist on the throttle to achieve the same speeds and acceleration as before. I wanted to examine my homemade header to see if I could make it a little more civilized. I dismantled my hastily assembled glasspack muffler, and built a new core of finely perforated steel sheet. The holes are 5/64ths of an inch, and are closely spaced. The rolled perforated piece is 1 in. dia. and 10 in. long. I machined a ring for each end to support the baffle in the 1 1/2 in outer tube. I wound fibreglass roving around the inner piece (enough to require a light push to get it together, installed the outer retaining ring, and swapped exhaust systems again. Road test. Startup sounded real good, not a wimpy putter like the stock pipe, but a nice purr. Acceleration was indistingishable from the loud pipe, and the engine was again happy to explore its higher rpm powerband. The high power sound is much smoother, and the previos harshness is gone. The engine seems to ask, why the hell did stuff that sock in my exhaust? Overall, the refined glasspack is a little quieter, but more importantly, the sound has been pleasantly attenuated, and is much more pleasant to my ears. The harsh high rpm snarl is smoothed considerably with no noticeable loss of power. I also performed some temperature tests. The stock can after a hard run was 489 degrees F. Thats a lot of bottled up heat. The only place my header gets that hot is the part directly under the exhaust flange. The temp. goes down rapidly down the length of the pipe. This would indicate that the engine has a much easier time unloading the heat as the exhaust flow rate and scavenging are far greater than the stock exhaust can achieve. I do believe the cyl.head temp. <>is a little lower at the exhaust portion of head casting as well. With the high static compression that these engines have (10 to 1), a cooler combustion chamber reduces the possibility of power robbing detonation as well, and is better for the exhaust valve and seat. A near future test will involve the use of LEADED AVIATION GASOLINE (110 OCTANE) ,YeeHaaaa. Lets see what this baby can do with fuel that takes advantage of the high compression. The lead is good for he valves too. Ill keep you posted. It should get better fuel economy too. Andrew K.   |
