Ethanol conversion

[knewshound]

Fired the engine tonight. I surprised myself by getting it to run on the first try. I seem to be missing a piece of the carb however. A squarish piece with 4 screws on the inboard side, top of the carb.

I'm bringing it in Tuesday and we will mock up some sort of dashboard to tidy up the wiring. I'm going to use it as an opportunity to teach them basic bike wiring.

I will take and post some pics next week.

Cheers,

Knewshound

[swimmingfree]

this may help you get your compression up to 12 or so ...
swimmingfree
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... o420yGBLkg

[maddog]

That engine is limited as there are no gear ratios, larger pulleys, performance exhaust so you are left with less friction/ less heat, use synthetic oil in trans/engine, header wrap on the exhaust, over inflate the tires by 10lbs, exend the fan shroud intake using a 2 leter plastic bottle and rivits, 8mm plug wire and a cool can to ice the fuel line as cold fuel burns better.

[knewshound]

Fabbed up a "dashboard" last night with the kids and fired the engine again.



As promised, I took pics of the body and frame.





We are using these wheels. We are buying some special low rolling resistance tires to help the mileage.



We are required to have 4 wheel brakes and will be plumbing them to use the hydraulic brakes that the donor motorcycle had.

We have ordered a jet kit and we will clay the head and piston to see how much room we may have to mill the head to raise compression. The motor starts well, on gasoline! We shall see how it goes with ethanol

I'm having a wideband O2 bung installed in the pipe. Once we get it to fire on ethanol we will start tuning. That tuning session will determine if we go to the EFI system or not.

Fingers are crossed.

Cheers,

knewshound

[LMH]

Looks like fun! Is the donor bike a kawasaki ninja 250? That rim looks just like my old 96 EX250 rims.
Hopefully the kids get a lot out of it, looks like something that would interest them. Keep it going!

[swimmingfree]

if you mill the head you will make slop in the timing chain....
swimmingfree

[ped]

thanks for posting the photos. i'm a follower.

[knewshound]

So we made some progress. We got a spare carb and took pieces off of it to make the one on the engine actually work. The motor runs and idles now.

We bought a jet kit with the thought of re-jetting the carb. After giving it much thought, I had them pull the trigger on an EFI system from Ecotron. It arrived yesterday and I now have 400 pages of manuals to read. I'm going to get the kids started removing the carb and starting the install of the EFI tonight. If all goes well, we should be able to load a basic tune and have it running on gasoline by Tuesday.

Should.

Hopefully.

We shall see however. Once I am comfortable with the software and EFI kit, we will start blending in alcohol until we hit 100%.

That's when the real fun will start I think.

Cheers,

Knewshound

[knewshound]

Looks like fun! Is the donor bike a kawasaki ninja 250? That rim looks just like my old 96 EX250 rims.
Hopefully the kids get a lot out of it, looks like something that would interest them. Keep it going!

Good eye. That's exactly what it is

[knewshound]

if you mill the head you will make slop in the timing chain....
swimmingfree

I have not looked at the head in great detail but it appears that there is an adjuster. I would like to hope that it can adjust out a bit. We shall see when and if we start milling the head.

[knewshound]

Got the EFI installed and it runs great. Better than with the carb.

We will start playing with the software now and see how easy it will be to tune then on to alcohol.

[swimmingfree]

just being noses but what did the efi cost???
swimmingfree

[knewshound]

just being noses but what did the efi cost???
swimmingfree

I think it was about 350 bucks. A very nice and complete kit too

[knewshound]

very cool! if you guys need stock scooter parts, wiring/electronics/gas tank/speedo, let me know, I'd love to donate to the project!

We really need to tighten up the clutch/trans. We are going from a vehicle that weighs with driver 300-350 lbs to one that weighs 600+. We need to put the few horses we have into motion.

[ped]

nice to hear the EFI is working. post a photo when you have time.