1 Month Review
So, it's been a month and I've ridden my bike at least twice a week since then to keep the gas flowing.
It turns out the solution to my problem was the choke. See, I'm used to the old lawnmower chokes where it's all the way up to start then thrown all the way down to run. After trying my bike out a couple of times though I've figured out the easiest way to get it started is choke up then push it down a quarter of the way every few seconds into riding until I feel the full power of the engine and get the choke down all the way.
Now whenever I first start riding its with my right hand on the throttle and my left fiddling with the choke until the engine's power kicks in - oddly just a few millimeters of movement and I can feel the difference.
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Thanks for the welcome everyone! I'm from the east part of Tucson (Pantano/Golf Links area if you know it), though fairly soon I'm going to be riding across town to Pima West Campus when I'm out of a car (straight through that downtown cop zone I've been avoiding ... there are six drivers and four cars at my house and I usually have the last say in a car, it's why I bought my MoBike in the first place). Anyone from Tucson have suggestions on which road to take? I'm thinking Broadway since it has a full bus lane that bikes can use (plenty of space to avoid cars), but then 5th and Pima are more residential zones with reduced speed limits, but 5th is known to have a lot of motorcycle cops and Pima is a little north of where I need to be. Check out the bike maps and MoBike rules for Tucson
here, if you interested.
Anyway, I know I've broken the engine in well enough, I kept the riding under 25 for the first 200 miles (my little digital odometer says something like 325mi now ... I've probably totalled over 700 in all) and now my 48cc tops out at 35mph with decent acceleration.
Now I've switched over to this blue-colored 2-stroke motoroil (from the red colored full-synthetic I was using) in the past week or so. Is there a big difference in the oil you use? The people that sold me the bike told me to use only full-synthetic, but the mechanic and 3 or 4 Autozone guys I've talked to about the engine have said to use normal motoroil now and only synthetic after the engines been worn out. Does real motoroil hurt the smaller 2-stroke engines? I've never heard a definitive answer on what's the best oil and mix for a 48cc Skyhawk engine.