Gettin the bugs out.

[Kielohawk]

Hey guys, Just an update about my new King Power 80CC kit. At about 100 miles now, I was on my way to work this morning about 6:15 AM and was about to work when my exhaust got really loud, really quick. I looked down and everything looked ok. I remember the 2 cheesy screws holding the exhaust baffle in and then looked behind me on the road and about 75 feet back was my baffle in the middle of the street!! I stopped and went back, picked it up. Luckily it had no damage. One screw had vibrated out. The other one with which I had put a nut tighly on had just sheered through the metel on the outer pipe. I was about to work with my loud bike, when the bike started to vibrate really bad. I looked down to see one of my newly installed heat treated engine mount studs falling away down to the roadway with the locknut and washers!! I was able to get to work on time still.
Luckily, I work on aircraft and the base I am at is a mechanics dream. I had an aircraft rated welder do some tack welds on my muffler to permanently join the baffle with the outer muffler body. I was able to drill out the old sheered stud (while the engine was still installed on the bike) and the structural shop had a metric tap and die set!! Omg! Nothing on our aircraft is metric! haha. I retapped the hole and had an extra stud. I loc-tite the stud in put on a new locknut (not so tight this time) and had the bike ready for the ride home.
I left work and the bike was running Ok. I was only able to get it to 27 MPH max speed and the engine was surging. Normally I can cruise at 30 MPH with a few to spare. I drained the tank, found some debree in the valve filter, cleaned that. Tore the carb completely down. Put everything back together, and went for a test run. I was back up to 33 MPH max speed with good engine feel and sound. Hmmm. I concluded that I either had a minor air leak on the carb or some gunk in by the needle.
So far I am having a blast riding it to work!
I can't wait till I finish off the second gallon of fuel (25:1) and do a new mix of 36:1 or 40:1! Any suggestions? Will buying the premium unleaded make any difference? I am using synthetic mix also.

Dan

 

[gone_fishin]

here's a couple discussions about break-in, pre-mix, and octane...feel free to
jump in if you have anything to add, or more questions:
http://www.motoredbikes.com/viewtopic.php?t=491
http://www.motoredbikes.com/viewtopic.php?t=758

there's more, too, but i'll be durned if can dig it up right now :???:

 

[lotsa_mpg]

Hiya Dan. Sounds like you had a really interesting day with your King Power engine. Pretty handy having an aircraft repair facility to work on it at. Perhaps, you could have that same fellow tack weld a small jet engine in behind the seat. Anyhow, I'm glad to hear you have it running well again. My Dax 70 usually tops out about the same as yours, but the odd day it'll hit mid thirties. Regarding your question about premium fuel. Frankly, I think these little mills were probably designed to run on some of the lowest grade gasoline produced anywhere on the planet, so you're not likely to see any sort of a performance gain by switching to premium. That being said, I do run premium in mine all the time........but not for improved performance...I just feel I'm being kinder to the little critter by running higher octane fuel. Higher octane gas will generally resist detonation a fair bit better than regular. If this were a 4 stroke, I wouldn't bother. Or if I was running 50:1, I probably wouldn't either. But I've been sticking to 20:1 so far, and my theory is....since oil itself has zero octane as far as I am aware (someone correct me if I am wrong), mixing it into my gas in such high amounts is diluting the octane level of the overall mixture considerably. So if I was running regular 87 octane, it'd likely be down to something like low 80's with all the oil in it. Hence, I stick with premium 92, hoping that I'm left with somewhere around the mid to high eighties level with the oil thrown into the equation. I did not bother doing any mathematical calculations....these are just guesstimates. And for the little amount of fuel the thing burns, the added cost of premium is quite insignificant, especially if it extends the life of my piston by a few hundred miles. Keep on havin fun with your bike.

Pete