My Roketa Fiji 150 6,000 Mile Notes and Comments

[earlwb]

Yay! The valve adjustment was the final tuning done to fix the problem with the intermittent stumbling or stalling just off of idle at a stop light when it turns green.
I am always telling others to check the valve adjustments, I guess it was a senior moment to not do it to my own scooter engine.
Anyway, i rode the 26 miles into work no problem and rode the 26 miles back home no problem. No loss of power or anything.
Granted switching to a manual fuel shutoff valve was a wise thing to do, and putting in the larger main jet to correct a borderline too lean running engine was good too.
The scooter is a easy 5mph faster now than before.

[scooterollie]

Earl;
Glad to hear of your fix. How much off were the clearances? In the same boat as you - have not yet checked valve clearances on my Linhai 300. Got 1K miles on it as of yesterday and definitely will do the adjustment routine in the next couple of days. No operation problems, just time to do it.

[earlwb]

A 0.0015 feeler would not slide into the gap, if there was a gap.

I did have a bit of a panic this morning riding into work. I had just turned left at a intersection and accelerated up to speed, when the engine more or less started to die and then died on me. After pulling over to the side of the road, I got to troubleshooting and discovered some drops of gas dropping on the pavement. On closer inspection the carb float or fuel inlet valve must have gotten stuck somehow. After pouring out the excess gas and double checking the float and inlet valve, I put it all back together, and the engine started running just fine again.
Go figure.

[scooterollie]

Earl;
Yeah, had the "carb. bowl float valve stuck" thing happen to my Bali at 800 Kms. First smelled raw gas, then engine ran like it was flooding out with gas dripping from underneath. Carefully inspected the entire carb. but found nothing. Blew air through all passages, reassembled and it and never happened again. Now at 2300 Kms. Even had installed a good filter just after getting the scoot. Sometimes you just can't figure why things happen!

Interesting about the valve gap. Checked a service manual on the Yamaha YP 250 I have - similar to the Linhai 300 - and it said to remove the gas tank and several panels to do the valves!!!! A little more than I was expecting. I'm going to eyeball it real good. Must be a way to do the valves w/o going through all that. The head end of the engine is pretty well tucked up in there.

[earlwb]

Yeah it beats me why it stuck too. One of those head scratcher things.
There is a more or less U shaped black plastic panel on the front of my scooter, it is held in with three screws and a number of tabs. I popped it off and I then had lots of room to play with the valve cover and valves and stuff.
The biggest hassle was getting the stupid plastic tabs to pop loose without breaking any of the plastic slots. I wasn't 100% successful in that endeavor.

My Harley Sportster has hydraulic valve lifters, so you never have to adjust valves. Since I bought the bike way back in 1992 and not having to mess with the valve gaps since then, I kinda forgot all about it myself.

But it beats dealing with and adjusting valves on a DOHC multi cylinder engine. On those engines they use buckets and shims. On some bikes they only have buckets of varying thicknesses no shims. Thus it is very expensive to adjust the valves, so you are forced to having to take your bike in the bike shop and let the wrench deal with it as the shop is the only ones who can afford to have a big pile of buckets and shims of different thickneses on hand.
The last I remember the buckets were getting really expensive too.

[scooterollie]

Never had to deal with the buckets and shims. Cut my valve adjusting teeth on my '62 Beetle and from then on, on many foreign auto engines before hydraulic lifters became commonplace. Always the easy types with lock nuts and adjustment screws. Nothing like that on our rotary RX8!

[earlwb]

Wildbill noticed a extra slip joint like bushing on the end of the camshaft that isn't documented in anything I have looked at so far.


Unfortunately, when I was messing with the valves and taking pictures I didn't notice it or I would have taken a better picture of it. There is something there, but it is obscured by the breather hose on my scooter.


Ok I figured it out, in this manual here www.scootdawg.com/downloads/MatrixParts.pdf
on page 12 and 13, it is item number 14, a Cam stopper assembly of some kind.

WildBill was kind enough to provide some better pics of the cam stopper unit.

[earlwb]

Well my scooter did it, it made it past the 6,000 mile mark on the odometer. I still have a little while to go before it hits its 1 year aniversary of when it became street legal with title and licensing on January 19, 2007.
I have had it over a year now from when I first received it just before Christmas last year.

[oldog1984]

thats great so far how much have you invested in scooter? if thats ok to ask. thanks

[earlwb]

Here is a HTML version of the Spreadsheet that I am using to track how much I spent on the scooter. I did not include taxes, title, license or insurance into the mix though.
home.roadrunner.com/~earlwbollinger/scooters/Scooter_gas_mileage.htm

So for the last year:
Average Gasoline Mileage per gallon: 79.7 mpg
Consumed gallons of gasoline: 72.72 gallons
Gasoline expenses: $211.86
Expenses other than gasoline: $353.36
Total Expenses: $565.22
Overall Cost per Mile: $000.11 (a little less than eleven cents per mile)

[scooterollie]

Earl;
Fantastic! This is what we all want to hear about our scoots. You have been doing some riding the past year. Good record keeping, too! I keep a binder with all papers and receipts related to the scoot as well as a maintenance log but not gas mileage, since I don't fill up at gas stations.

[oldog1984]

earl thats a great job keeping track .11 cents a mile i would say thats damm good thanks for the info .. when i was driving 50 miles a day round trip for work . plus on call runs i was useing a tank and a half of gas a week my truck has 24 gal tank so more or less in 2 weeks 70 plus gals of gas. it would have been a hole lot cheaper on a scooter..

[earlwb]

I just replaced the battery Saturday. It has been slowly getting weaker over time. So it was getting anemic on cranking power. The difference was night and day. A Whrr, clunk whrrrr, whrrrr, whrrr varroom to a Whrr Varroom effect.

The no name OEM battery made it over a year before it got noticably weaker and anemic.

Although I don't typically use the kickstarter, when the CVT belt shreded on my coming home from work and I did the "in the field" repair, I must have missed assembling something just right as the kick starter isn't working right.
When I pull the CVT cover off sometime in the future, I'll have to take a closer look see.

[motomech]

Earl,
I have followed your account with great interest and must commend you, nicely detailed and your method is very professional. Kudos:)
I owned and operated a Scooter shop back in the '80's(I posted a more detailed account in the "Introduction" section) and much of this looks very familiar to me.
It's easy to play armchair quarterback, and frankly, there's only a couple of things I might have approached differently.
Exh. mounting- I think I would have looked at a Riva 125 gasket as I suspect it would fit(I recognized the liquid-cooled engines easy enough, Honda all the way. But the layed-down air-cooled I don't. Is there somewhere on this site that talks about their origin?) Back to muffler mounting- On all the Honda 4-strokes, I got to the point where I wouldn't pull the old copper gasket, I would just stack a new up on top, The larger Honda studs(which I would install when Chinese head was off)and quality nuts allow one to reef on them pretty good. And, as you well know, but for anyone looking in(can't emphasize this enough) always tighten the header pipe mount before the muffler body fasteners.
And I tend to shy away from RTV for anyplace it can come in contact with oil. The semi-permanent HondaYamahaSuzukiKawasaki Bond sealer(they are all the same stuff) is the Best! I used to just pull out the valve cover O-ring and smear that.
I maybe just bite the bullet and buy a Honda CDI and coil, mount them and forget about them. I fully understand your effort sto obtain things in the hardwares, electical stores, etc. and avoid the stealerships, a noble cause! But it would seem to me that there are some key elements that would be a good time/$ trade-offs.
Well, that's about it, keep up the good work.
Motomech(Gary) in Costa Rica

[YellowScooter]

earlwb said:

Well my scooter did it, it made it past the 6,000 mile mark on the odometer. I still have a little while to go before it hits its 1 year aniversary of when it became street legal with title and licensing on January 19, 2007.
I have had it over a year now from when I first received it just before Christmas last year.

I forgot to look at when you posted this, but it looks as though we're pretty much tit for tat far as how much we use scoots in a years time. What is your milage as of today? Mines just a hair under 7900. My 1yr anniversary with my 150 was Jan28th.
My gas milage as I figured up was 61.1 MPG avg, but I wind mine out pretty hard as most speed limits in my city are 45mph. My weekly gas bill normally sits at $5 a week with everyday running.
In the summertime, did you ever have problems with your scooter occasionaly lagging while accelerating? Mine seemed to develop that problem in the warmer months. I've replaced the carb, the spark plug two or three times, switched out the fuel pump, replaced all the lines with EFI grade hose across the board, all were totally ineffective at even reducing the severity of the lag. It's like at the drop of a hat, it will go from running like a new 150 to dragging along like a 25,000 mile tired 50cc. Then 5min or so later, it'll pep back up and be fine. There's no set pattern other than the certainty that it will happen at some point in the ride.
However in the colder months, It's the exact opposite. The lagging seemed to just all but go away. From October to now, it's ran like a well oiled top.
I'm sorta dredding the warmer months now because that seems to be when this scoot is at it's worst.

[earlwb]

When mine acted like it had a lag, it turned out it was running a hair too lean. Later I went to a larger jet and didn't have the problem afterwards. It could have also been adjusting the valve gap too.
I had a problem a couple of times where it acted like the fuel tank vent system was stopped up. If you overfill the fuel tank some fuel will get into the vent and down into the one way valve, and maybe the carbon canister, which can make it act like the fuel tank vent is stopped up.

I also went to a manual fuel cutoff valve of which I think helps a lot with the lag possibility as it doesn't need engine vacuum to operate.
Under a heavy load or WOT conditions, you lose a lot of engine vacuum which means the vacuum fuel cutoff may restrict the fuel on you. Also ensure you have a straight fuel line run from the tank to the carb as is possible. You don't want a hill in there were a vapor lock condition could occur.


I have been riding the MC54-250B a lot lately, hard to resist, so I haven't gone much over 6,500 miles or so on the 150 at present.

[jackthefuzz]

earlwb said:

Wildbill noticed a extra slip joint like bushing on the end of the camshaft that isn't documented in anything I have looked at so far.


Unfortunately, when I was messing with the valves and taking pictures I didn't notice it or I would have taken a better picture of it. There is something there, but it is obscured by the breather hose on my scooter.


Ok I figured it out, in this manual here www.scootdawg.com/downloads/MatrixParts.pdf
on page 12 and 13, it is item number 14, a Cam stopper assembly of some kind.

WildBill was kind enough to provide some better pics of the cam stopper unit.

Hey earl the extra thing on the camshaft is a sprague clutch designed to prevent the engine from turning backwards.

[earlwb]

hey thanks jackthefuzz, I couldn't remember what the proper name was for that thing, or it would have made sense a while back.

[gy6rocket]

Really good write up Earl, since I have essentially the same style bike as you I read your whole thread so I can have a heads up on what I may encounter when the snow here melts and I start riding her hard.

I was amazed how many kinks and bad hose routes were in mine from the factory. I fixed all the half-assed hoses before I even rode it.

I plan on doing a bit of tuning to mine and a couple of things that are on my list include removing the entire vacuum system, emission system, and replacing with a manual fuel shutoff.

So far I only have 50 miles (or km's?) on mine but I want to replace the known weak points BEFORE I have to do them on the side of the road

Thanks for the continued coverage, great pics, tips, tricks, and opinions you have presented.

+1

[earlwb]

I happened across a website that sells the 1156 and 1157 light socket guts in case you happen to wind up with a socket going bad like I did last year. So instead of making your own you can buy the guts to repair your light socket.
www.oemsurplus911.com/automotive/ligtsockets.htm

[ashdump]

Thanks, Earl! I am expecting to take delivery of the Roketa Fiji in a week or two. I need to condense a list of things I should have on hand and ready by the time it arrives. I will probably change the fuel and vac lines immediatly. Is there a handy dandy "essentials" list for when your scooter arrives somewhere here?

[earlwb]

I did this list in this message thread a while back. I think having a spare CDI, ignition coil, and voltage regulator on hand is better than just replacing them outright. The OEM ones may be better now than in the past.

1.) Replace the fuel lines with good rubber fuel lines. there is a fuel line coming off the bottom of the carb to serve as a way to drain the carb float bowl. Replace it or watch it very closely. You will need a handfull of small hose clamps too.
2.) Maybe replace the vaccuum lines or get a few feet of good vaccuum line and check often for cracking and kinking so you are prepared to replace when one breaks.
3.) Go ahead and drain and replace the oil in the engine and the rear transmission drive unit.
4.) Replace the OEM spark plug with a better spark plug usually a NGK one will do.
5.) Replace the ignition coil unit. They start to deteriorate fairly fast.
6.) Replace the OEM CDI unit as they vary wildly in how they function from unit to unit.
7.) get a extra one or two of the rubber coated OEM intake manifolds or replace with a metal racing manifold if you can get it to fit OK.
8.) replace the OEM tire valves on the tubeless wheels/tires with better quality ones. having a valve deteriorate and come off while you are riding at speed is going to hurt a lot.
9.) Buy one or two brass 1/4" splicer fittings to serve as a temporary bypass for the vaccuum operated petock, should it go bad on you. Most work OK, but a few people have had problems with them.
10.) get a couple of spare light bulbs like for the headlights especially. When you install a headlight bulb, you need to clean the glass with acetone or denatured alcohol and carefully do not touch the glass with your fingers when putting them back in. I suggest cleaning the headlight bulbs before you ever start your scooter for the first time. As I found fingerprints on mine where some factory worker touched them with their fingers. The light bulbs will burn out fast if they have residual oils on them when they are fired up.
11.) Go ahead and get a extra voltage regulator. just in case.
12.) get some spare fuses for your scooter, mine used a 10 amp fuse and the OEM ones are pretty cheap, the end caps come off easily. Too easily.
13.) get a spare CVT drive belt, the OEM one will wear out fairly fast on you. I suggest a Kevlar one.
14.) Check all the nuts and bolts and if possible put a drop of Blue Locktite on them all. To check a nut or bolt, you loosen it and then tighten it back up. Everyday for a few weeks, go over your scooter and look for loose or missing nuts bolts or screws, You would be amazed at what goes poof when you don't expect it. ACE hardware has all the metric things in stock. They are pretty cheap, I'd get a few of each that looks like it fits your scooter. get a couple of the 6mm or 8mm standoff nuts (they look like a nut that is three times thicker than normal) for the front exhaust pipe flange where they use acorn nuts. Carry the spare nuts and bolts and screws along with you on your rides.

Use care when tightening things up, one can easily break off or strip the threads on things. So one has to be both gentle and firm.

[ashdump]

Thanks again, Earl! I really don't know if the one I ordered is a 2007 or a 2008. It did'nt specify, it just is listed as 'new". Here are the specs for it. allnewsports.com/mfiji150.htm It's probably identical to yours.

[ashdump]

Earl, I am going to buy some stuff this weekend. As I do not have the scooter yet, what kind of fuse am I going to need? A blade type? I will also be getting some fuel grade line and vac line. Thanks

[earlwb]

You need to wait and see what they put in your scooter first as to which fuse to get. it could go either way.

[ashdump]

Hi Earl, I went ahead and bought an in-line, ATC type fuse holder and will probably swap out the OEM scooter fuse. It's probably a little more heavy duty than the OEM anyway. Also picked up some gasoline rated 1/4" tubing and some small clamps. Now all I got to do is gets me my scooter!

[aray176]

hi earl,im about 250 lbs how well do you think my scoot will carry me, i just ordered your same scoot?

[earlwb]

I weigh 220 and I put in a fairly complete set of tools in a bag to cover most anything causing a problem, that probably is 20 pounds. I only ride as fast as I feel safe so I haven't had the scooter much over 50mph. Being a 150 it'll still bog down on hills though. So don't be surprised if you slow down some going up a hill. Stiff headwinds can also affect your speeds.
Other than that it gets me around pretty well. My commuting routes vary some, but normally the speed limits are 35, 40, 45 mph speed limits on the roads. Another route has a road section with a 50mph speed limit but I don't use it too much, unless it is before or after rush hour.

[ashdump]

Hey Earl, If I install a regular petcock and get rid of that vacuum thingy, how hard is the petcock to get to? I still don't have the scooter yet, but based on what everyone is saying, I'll probably have trouble at some point with the vacuum shut-off. I just don't know how convieniant the petcock is. I'm not concerned about installing it, just how accesable it really is once you start using it. Thanks!

[earlwb]

I mounted my petock in line and below where the vacuum petock is. It is mounted in a hole through the left plastic side panel. it ie easy for me to reach. I posted a picture of it back a ways in these messages here. One could I suppose mount it a little lower and have in on the inside, sort of hidden on the inside too. So it depends on what you want to do there.

One could also use one of the 12v solenoid operated fuel valves. Mount it inside and hook up 12vdc to it and you are in business. Just turn the ignition switch on and you are in business.
They look like this here:
www.dan-marc.com/79-afc11112.html