The Future Of Transportation - Elio Re-Invented

 

I'm completely unsurprised to see this, a variation on the Elio 3-wheeler only electrified. Adding the electric package is a coming thing among the amateur car builders. In this case the manufacturer has taken the Elio concept of a fully enclosed 3-wheeler with 2-in-front configuration and tandem seating, and electrified it.

https://www.arcimoto.com/fuv

The big differences are that 1. this one is the very trendy electric, and 2. It's actually in production. Priced at $17K it's not nearly as cheap as the Elio promised, but is probably more realistically priced considering the not inconsequential inflation that has taken place since Elio rolled out its first prototype.

Leaving off the side doors probably keeps the price down and makes sense in a tropical environment like Eugine OR. I could see some gullwing doors in this vehicles future which would make it a real, all weather vehicle. The top on this one is plexiglass and a half side cover is available on the delivery version. 

They promise a top speed of 75 and a range of (up to) 120 miles in town. I wonder what a used one costs, and how hard would it be to convert to a gasoline engine, either small car or motorcycle? Top speed then would be 110 and range essentially unlimited.

UPDATE: A little digging reveals that enclosure is an option. It's a gullwing, and is seemingly available on one side only. Or I could be wrong, both sides could be opening, just not at the same time.

The Future Of Transportation - China

 With a few caveats, of course. Here's a couple of offerings from our friends, the Chinese. The first is a GM China product, the Wuling Zhengtu pickup. 

Looks like a real pickup although it's much smaller, and features a 1.5l gas engine and a top speed of 75 mph. Look closely and you'll see hinges along the bed. Yes, the sides fold down to make a flatbed. This is a GM design made by Wu Ling and lists for $9000 in China. Shipping for something like this runs about $2500, but drops quickly if you order more than one. I suppose it depends on how many can be stuffed into a shipping container. It's 16 ft long with a 6-1/2' bed so not too small. No word as to whether it meets any U.S. standards for import yet.

Next up is the GenX camper from China by Everbright:

The traditional pickup over-cab camper meets the lambretta 3-wheel ice cream truck. Having only 3 wheels makes it a motorcycle, which skirts most U.S. vehicle safety laws and probably makes it legal to import. The big drawback is that its top speed is limited to 25 mph. Of course that also means that it's a low speed vehicle which in some places exempts it from licensing requirements. $4800 plus shipping (see above). They claim a 240 mile range which would be 10 hours at 25mph which I personally tend to disbelieve. Might be a job opportunity here though selling ice cream in the neighborhoods.

Product Endorsement

OK it's early, but here's my initial reaction. The aftermarket automotive fuel pump previous owner had installed on my Yamaha failed in that it would run for only about 10-12 minutes before ceasing operations. A 10 minute wait would get me back on the road for another 10 minutes but this is obviously not going to cut it.

Fuel pumps of the type normally fitter to the bike are available on e-bay at prices ranging from $15 to slightly over $500. Go figure. The same pump seems to be pictured in all ads. With some skepticism. I got one labeled "high performance". Not sure what that means in a fuel pump but aftermarket parts on e-bay tend to be factory seconds from China so any additional endorsement helps. Price was a bit under $21 so not bad, and it ships from CA. Surprisingly it arrived 3 days sooner than I had expected.

Not mentioned in the ad was any useful specs like flow rate or pressure. Not mentioned on the pump is any indication of inlet or outlet. You have to figure this out yourself. Put a few drops of gas down each of the hose connections and put some power to it and flow direction will become immediately obvious. Hose size is 5/16" which of course I didn't have lying around. No big deal. Pressure turns out to be about 3 psi which is fine for a carbureted motorcycle. One more thing: This is possibly the noisiest fuel pump I've ever dealt with. The rattle from this thing rivals the exhaust noise. It's louder when there's no fuel in it so I suppose it will be easy to tell when I've run out of gas. Or maybe it's just quiet in the garage by myself.

I'll take it out on a test drive today. I expect it will get me there and back again with no problems.

UPDATE: OK under normal running conditions I can barely hear it at idle so I was right about the garage being quiet. Forget what I said about the noise.

Fundamentals of Electricity In Motorcycles

I learned the basics of electricity by buying and driving British motorcycles. In the 60s this was probably the quickest way to learn all the ins and outs of the topic. Either that or take up long distance hiking. In those days, most if not all motorcycles came with only one fuse, right next to the battery. If anything at all went wrong, it blew and the whole bike went dark.

There was a quick way to diagnose any electrical problem at all back then, since most of them involved a wire somewhere that had rubbed against something until the insulation was gone, and shorted out, blowing the fuse. The riders job was to find the rubbed spot and move it away from the ground spot at least long enough to get you home.  You did this by sitting on the ground next to your bike, where you could see most of the harness, remove the blown (15-20A) fuse, and prepare the 50 amp slo-blo. This done by wrapping the blown unit in some foil from your cigarette pack. Yeah, everyone smoked.

Place the new fuse in the holder, and push it together with the key on, and watch the bike carefully to see which wire began smoking. Voila! you found the culprit. Move the afflicted wire away from whatever had damaged it, perform the smoke test one more time to be sure you got the problem, then start up and motor on down the road.

The Japanese changed all this by copying the wiring from computer assisted cars into their motorcycles. Now you have to figure out where they hid the fuse box, pull all the fuses out until you find the bad one, figure out which of several components on that circuit was misbehaving, and figure out how to get the bike to run at all long enough to get you home. Not easy without a set of tools and a multimeter.

When my Little Red Bike suddenly quit the other day, it wasn't hard to figure out that the fuel pump had quit, so the issue was either a blown fuse or a blown pump. Since the fuses were all behind a panel held in place with 2 5mm socket head screws and I had no 5mm Allen wrench, which it was didn't matter, I needed a trailer. I arraigned for that, got the bike home where when I turned the key, the pump hummed merrily and the motor fired right up. I hate intermittent problems. They know when they're close to a tool set, and disappear.

Previous owner had replaced the stock fuel pump with an aftermarket one from Auto Zone. Nothing wrong with that, but the wiring was not plug and play so he added about 6" of extra wire and a couple of quick disconnects. Here's your lesson for the day: QDs work OK under normal circumstances, but motorcycles are not normal. Under high vibration, they can become slow disconnects, the sort of thing Joseph Lucas probably invented. Mr Lucas is also known for having invented the intermittent windscreen wiper. Also the intermittent headlight and ignition system. The QDs are now gone, the wires are soldered, and the bike seems to run fine.

Tinkering And Puttering

Tinkering with the little red motorcycle, discovering that some sand-like stuff had gotten past the fuel filter somehow, and was opening the carbs for a cleanout. Remove one screw, a very special screw, peculiar to Mikuni downdraft carbs, and dropped it.

Search the garage floor and find it under the wifes car. There is also a washer that goes with this one, and not just any washer but a very special brass job made to very special specs. That one had disappeared. Checked fit and determined the size. Turns out it matches the back end of a 9mm bullet case. Drill out the primer hole to 5mm and cut it off at the groove, and Voila! the new washer is easily identified as the specialty Mikuni carb part by being prominently stamped "9mm Luger".

Works fine. And yes, after the wife went out for some errand and I got a chance to sweep the floor, I found the original washer, so now I have a spare. Making the new one took less time than finding the old one. Of course.

Motorcycles - Change Now Official

Two days ago I parted company with my old friend of several years:

 The 84 Honda Sabre 1100 was a real workhorse, blowing the commuting traffic away and generally being as reliable as a refrigerator. Push button = start, twist throttle = go like bat outta hell.

On the commuter trips you didn't notice the weight so much as most of that was on the freeway. For running local errands however, the weight really makes itself known and the horsepower isn't really needed. The Yamaha 535 is 225 lb lighter and several inches lower to the point that I can sit the bike with both feet flat on the ground and my knees bent. At this point I think my biggest complaint is the acoustic resonance from the intake system at certain engine speeds that whistles very annoyingly usually exactly at the posted speed limits or just before I want to shift gears.

I'm going to miss all that horsepower though.

Little Red Motorbike

Thought I had this sorted out, but no. Took it out to a dinner last night and it decided to not start for the return trip. The battery that came with the bike was obviously far undersized and barely able to start the thing anyway so a new battery today.

Normally this is an easy job, but no. Previous owner had replaced the fuel pump with a non-stock unit that was placed in some of the volume required for a stock battery, so relocate the fuel pump, re-arrange the fuel lines, discover a broken wire (probably the reason it didn't want to start or charge the battery), and wonder how the wires were originally routed with no spare space. Took all day, but it starts and runs well now.

Earlier I cut 2-1/2 inches off a pair of kids bike handlebars and used that as a mold to make a couple of lead slugs. Turned them down a tad to make them a light press fit into the Yamaha bars, and thus did away with most of the handlebar vibration. They weigh .45 lb/each if anyone cares.

Little Red Motorbike

Mounted a set of leather bags. Nice bags. You'd think this would be an easy job. You'd be wrong. Turned into a 15 step process involving relocating the turn signals and fabricating some support structures. Came out nice though:

One other thing I've found is that carburetor cholesterol* can be treated with judicious application of Mineral spirits at a rate of about 80:1 in the gasoline. A 35mm film can of the stuff in 2.3 gallons of gas seems to work a treat.  Slowly but surely, the bike is running better and better with the last tank of gas getting me just over 50 mpg.

Next up will be dealing with handlebar vibration.

*Buildup of glop in the carb as old gas evaporates. The issue here is quite like the same problem in people with treating cholesterol with a drug to dissolve it and getting chunks of now free-floating stuff causing clots which then cause strokes. In the bike this freed up some amber-colored sludge in the aft carb which got under the float needle and caused uncontrolled peeing of gasoline down over a hot engine.

Little Red Motorcycle

Topped off the tank today to discover that I seemed to be getting about 32 mpg. This is about half of what I was expecting but I'm optimistic that this will improve as I start using the bike to actually go places rather than just going around the block in the lower gears to check how things are working.

Didn't come out half bad I think.

Will It Run - 10.1 Details

One of my friends mentioned that I had left out the steps between step 8 and step 10. Not so, step 9 was back in early July featuring me bitching about the stock carbs being really bunged up. Step 1 involved me throwing up the hands and fabricating an intake manifold to accept a single side draft carb of the same size as the originals.

Found a Mikuni knock-off that came with 2 spare jets and a rubber adapter to attach it to whatever engine you want. This thing also came with a page of instructions written in Chinese with translations that sometimes resembled English.

Click to enlarge. From what was readable, the jetting that came with the carb was the richest and was intended to work on a 125cc 2-stroke. Swapping to the smaller jets and dropping the needle one notch has the 535 running like a normal motor and the plugs show no soot deposits any more.

The carb has a raised lip that attaches firmly to the rubber adapter provided, which BTW has a spacer feature in the middle that reduces the port from 32mm to 28mm. The adapter was replaced with a piece of radiator hose with an Oring spacer that has no restrictions at all. The manifold has no engagement features so the hose needed to be as long as I could make it and some punch dimples added to the manifold spigot for traction. This works.

The engine is a 90 degree twin. There's a fellow selling a cast Aluminum manifold with gentle curves and a real Mikuni carb for about $600 which I'm sure works a treat. This one cost $28 for the carb plus some sweat. The perfect is the enemy of the good enough as they say.

The ChiCom carb was intended to work from a gravity feed fuel tank, so reducing the fuel pump pressure seemed prudent. The above Delrin block has a hole thru it on the bottom from fuel pump on the right to the carb on the left. The passage in the middle is drilled about halfway through and is connected back to the fuel tank. Down from the top is a small hole through to the lower passage with a check ball and spring. Excess fuel is passed up to the return line and the pressure is adjusted with the set screw at the top, barely visible. This reduces the delivered fuel pressure to 2 psi which the carb can handle. Crude, but effective.

Meantime I had a pair of carbs from a newer 535 fall into my lap from an unlikely source. They seem to be all there and not bunged up. The only thing holding me back is that the aft carb has coagulated gas holding the float needle in to the seat with the tenacity of Super Glue. At some point the  needle will loosen up and I'll finish the cleaning and try them out. Who knows, they may work. 6 years, a model change and 3-6 revisions so they must be better, no?

Will It Run - 10 - Final?

Looks like it. Minor mods to the carb mount and some tweaking of the jets and the thing seems to be running well. Slightly sticky throttle leading to fast idle, but that's most likely a lack of lube on the cable. Drove it up to the bank just now and the rear spark plug looks like it's never been in an engine. Nice.

Spent today fitting a small faring to it. PITA to get on or off, and yes I should have painted it first, but I wasn't sure it would actually fit so I've got a blue faring on a burgandy bike. I'll fix that later. Looks like I put about 90 miles on it just getting it to run.

 Fuel pressure regulator and ChiCom carb. That line from the bottom leading up is an overflow. Any other place I point it would drool gas onto a hot engine.

It had 7382 when I started. Lotta trips around the block.

Will It Run 9 - Carbs

Mikuni carbs are fairly complex and the ones on the Virago are the worst I've seen. Someone took them apart at some point and had a couple of very small parts left over at the end. Idle mixture screws are normally a simple screw with a pointy end and a spring to hold it in place once you have (mis) adjusted it to your own personal preference.

I will note that my 84 Honda Sabre still has the anti-tamper covers from the factory installed on all 4 carbs and the engine runs fine. The Yamaha's screws are located deep down a hole where you might well not even notice them, then covered with a plug. They also include a washer and an O-ring along with the spring which must serve some fairly important purpose or they would not have been included. The O-ring and washer were the leftovers on both carbs.

The main jet needles have been through one model change and 2 revisions so I ordered 2 of the latest versions. Needles were ordered 6/23 from Omaha, and the o-rings 7/1 from Seattle. I can't wait to see which one gets here first.

Will It Run 8

Always something. Tried to take it over to a friends and only made it 2 miles before the engine died with a dead battery. Seems the voltage regulator was also kaput. Got a replacement which arrived NIB and 2 days earlier than predicted, put it in and the problems seemed to go away. NOTE: The VR has to dump about 6 Amps of current when the battery is fully charged and gets too hot to touch very quickly. Probably gets too hot to work shortly after. The original mount was a bracket on the rear of the engine case, right next to the exhaust collector can. Good thinking.

I built a new bracket with a big finned heat sink and mounted it on the opposite side from the exhaust system. This seems to be working. the regulator is running much cooler and the engine seems to like having a full shot of power to the ignition.

Side view

Rear view. Big fins. Lots of air.

Need to put 5 miles on it around the 'hood to prove it is now ready for prime time. The neighbors will be somewhat annoyed, but tough.

Will It Run? 7

It turns out that the gas tank filler necks across the various models of Virago are similar enough that the caps are interchangeable. Sort of. The standard flip-top cap will click into place in the under seat tank if the neck hasn't been bunged up too badly. If it has, one must obtain Yamaha special tool, # XV535-GT-RT-O1, or gas tank reshaping tool #1.

Yes, I know, this looks like a carefully bent screwdriver with a broken handle

but notice the careful shaping and polishing. There must be at least 5 minutes of careful thought and artisanal work in this. It reaches under the catch ring in the filler neck and pulls it back out so the fingers on the cap can engage it. Sort of an inverted pry bar.

And here it is:

Somewhat oval but with the edge pulled back out.

Voila! the wrong cap, but it snaps right in!

Whatever, it works. I also removed the remaining pint of gas from the tank and while the engine would run on it, it smelled a bit gamy. Fresh gas and I'm pretty much done. Got the plate and insurance so now it's off we go.

My variation on the song is that the motor sounded fine until it quit running with a flattened battery after 2 miles. The charging system is still not working.

Will It Run? 6

Removed and reseated the carbs, this time using YamaGoop (r) sealant, and noting that while the intake spuds are almost identical, the operative word here is almost. The last fellow got the back one on the front and vice versa and got the clamps on wrong as well. All this seems to have eliminated an air leak in the intake so the motor runs much smoother now.

I installed the new stator and a replacement turn signal relay, and while the system voltage is now consistently in the 12.5 range, the turn signals are completely inoperative. Oh well. The final assembly leaks no oil and runs smooth.

Speaking of oil, since I needed to replace it anyway, I got oil and a filter and had at it. The filter is removed by first removing 3 screws on the right side and getting behind the cover. All 3 screws are different lengths, and all 3 were in there to the point that a cheater bar was required on the allen wrench. The first 2 came off with a scary pop as the threads broke loose, and the 3rd one gave me a wallered out screw head. No sweat, I'll drill the head out. Which I did after ruining 2 otherwise nice drill bits. A Cobalt bit from Ace Hardware finally did the job. The recalcitrant screw turns out to be an M6 x 95mm Socket head.

Ace Hardware doesn't have anything this long. Neither does the bigger, fancier Ace. Nor does Fasteners Inc who normally have everything. As it happens, neither does the Yamaha shop although they say they can order the screw from New York. The friendly local motorcycle salvage yard didn't have one either but they did have one about 5mm shorter which turns out to get me about 3 turns into the threads. By 3 PM Friday it looked like my last hope was a metric specialty shop conveniently located on the opposite side of town. Maybe Monday.

Last things to address are the gas tank which had the egg-shaped filler neck, and the front tire which refuses to seat on the rim. If I can beat the tank back to some semblance of round, I believe the flip-top cap the previous owner bought will snap in and out and do the job. This will be tricky. I may farm the tire job out and attribute this to laziness.

Will It Run? 5

I may have spoken too soon. Driving around the block seems to flatten the battery, and a voltage check shows battery voltage lower with the engine running at high speed (12.4V) than when the motor is shut off (13.6). The book says I should be seeing 14-15V with the engine spinning in the upper rpm ranges.

Repeating the input voltage check with the original voltage regulator in the circuit gives the exact same results so it looks like I don't actually need the replacement unit and I can put the original one back into service which will get rid of the kluged up installation job

A resistance check on the stator wires gives readings way off what they are supposed to be and the recommended solution is to replace the stator. These things range from $30 brand new to $120 used on e-Bay so I'm thinking $30-$50 including gasket or pull mine over the weekend and see if the local salvage yard can help me. The part looks to be common across several models, but that wouldn't be the first time someone had told me that in error.

The backup thing to do is to visit the local Yamaha dealership and confirm that the part is in fact common. They also have a way of confirming my suspicions that XV535 bikes are made mostly from unobtanium by NASA contractors using space-certified parts.

Will It Run? 4

Well yes. It runs and I drove it around the block (3 x 3 block) today to prove it. Now it needs some minor stuff like a new turn signal relay and to figure out why the headlight doesn't work. The lamp that came with the bike seems to be undersized for the retainer ring, and the other one I picked up is way over sized.

The last bugaboo seemed to be a pair of hopelessly fouled spark plugs although cleaning out the float chambers and jet passages can't hurt. The insides of the carbs looked quite clean.

Runs nice, sounds nice, and even idles thanks mostly to having the right switches on the handlebars. Makes me wonder if the original voltage regulator is in fact good after all.

At this point I could get insurance and a plate for it. Only problem is that the DMV is closed for the weekend.  Oh well, Monday. Meantime I can work on the petty details.

UPDATE: Seems the headlight lens for this thing lists for $127 and the turn signal flasher/relay assy is $163. Seems awfully steep for relatively ordinary parts. They also seem to route a lot of the rest of the harness through the flasher relay widget so simply switching to more common parts is a bigger deal than it should be.

Will It Run? 3

I got the left hand switch set today and hooked it up. It sort of looks like it won't work completely until I've cleaned  it out as the switches feel like they've been lubricated in tar. Nevertheless, I get spark, fuel pump working, and starter function so I'd say I'm pretty close to hearing it run. If only the tiny battery was a bit bigger.

Top to bottom: H-L beam, Turn, Horn. Horn does not work yet.

Top to bottom: Run-Stop, Fuel tank on/reserve, Starter

Bloody damn cold in the garage too. The passing polar vortex left 3" of snow (officially) and got the temps down right next to freezing. Currently in the mid 40's and projected to stay there until Friday when we'll see 70's. Springtime in the Rockies.

The right turn signal switch gets me flashing on the right front and left rear. The left hand switch gets me a plaintive buzzing noise from the general area of the signal relay. I'm not seeing this as a big problem. The headlight still doesn't work under any circumstance. I need to soak both switches in some sort of solvent, then lube them with conductive silicone oil.

The fuel pump comes on with the key and there is now an odor of gasoline in the garage so it's going somewhere. A squirt of ether got me a couple of pops but no sustained running so there may be petrified fuel in the carbs although I was assured that the bike ran last year.

Will It Run? 2

Found the right hand switch set and that's on the way. The gas tank cap I got with the bike fits almost every Yamaha ever made, the exception being the one I got. Finally found the part number for the right one: Price = $182. It can be had for as little as $112 if you search but gee, that seems a bit steep for a gas cap. It also seems that when someone got the bike and found he had no key, he used the screwdriver on everything, leaving the filler neck slightly egg shaped. If he would only come around and bring that screwdriver, I could show him one more place where it could be used.

Will It Run?

In the spirit of numerous You Tube videos, here's my Will It Run project.

I had about decided that my 84 Honda V65 Sabre was getting to be larger and heavier than I wanted to horse around any more. Driving to work on the freeway was a treat, but I don't do that now, just run back and forth to the hardware store. So here's this 87 Yamaha Virago 535 at the bargain basement price of $400. Looks to be nearly all there, and allegedly ran last year but currently having some electrical problems. Complete with a clean title. Just what I wanted, having been a motorcycle mechanic in the distant past, this should be a relatively easy fix.

Not bad for a 32 year old bike, no? The "clean" title turned out to be in the name of the original owner when the bike had but 2 miles on it and the finance company had released its lien, so it was clean. The owner had even gone so far as to sign off as the seller and whomever got the thing had never bothered to transfer the title. Fortunately they had also not bothered to sign anywhere either so I'm the second owner. The title formats have been changed several times since this one was issued, and the wife was convinced I'd be lucky to get out of the DMV without handcuffs, but it went through although it did take more than average amount of consultations with higher ups.

Spiffy aftermarket seat and handlebar grips and a headlamp dangling from the wires. Should be no big deal to get up and running, right? Closer inspection, after I got it home, revealed that the fuel pump was a NAPA aftermarket unit attached to the stock wiring harness but not turning on. Also the original ignition switch had been turned with a screwdriver, the key having long since gone missing, and cut out of the harness leaving 3 short wires peeking out at me. It also had 2 cables hanging out with large connectors on them and no obvious connection points.

So far I've found out that the handlebar switches are from a larger/later model Virago and while the cables plug neatly into the rest of the harness, the pin assignments do NOT match anything which is why the ignition module begins humming when you signal a left turn. Also the wiring on this is unique to 87 and 88 only in this displacement so finding a workable set of switches could be difficult.

The gas tank, which looks stylishly small, turns out to be only a cosmetic shell. Notice no gas cap. The actual tank is under the seat. The cap is missing, and the neck looks like it was resized a bit with a hammer.

Shorting a wire to the starter spins the engine over smartly so that's good although there's no spark or fuel pump running. Wires for that are routed through the handlebar switches which pretty much don't work yet.

Found a left hand switch set at Sunshine Motorcycle Parts and it's on the way. Still need the right hand set. Spares that came with the machine included an ignition switch with key and the wrong connector, the handlebar switches from the wrong model Virago, and grips that fit way too loosely.

More as it develops.