A few things happened; good and bad. Problems; good and bad, were mostly sorted out.

1. I realized that the injector and/or the throttle body were poorly made (mostly the part where the injector in seated) and the spray from the injector (if it is even spraying and not dribbling) is hitting the walls of the TB and running past the throttle vane and right out to the air filter. After seeing that for the first time, I took the whole intake/TB assy. off and felt the bottom of the intake - bone dry. If there is fuel getting into the engine (there must be to get a BANG out of it), it is dribbling off of the walls into the intake port in no controlled manner. To remedy this, I will need to buy a new throttle body without a injector seat glued to it as well as have a hole in the intake manifold precision drilled and honed for the injector to sit in, so it can spray fuel directly on to the back of the intake valve. Both of those will take a considerable amount of time and some money as well.

2. I under-estimated the NEED to go out and ride in warm weather. This is my first motorcycle, I bought it last year around July. This was my first winter project and this will be my first spring where I have something to look forward to when the weather gets nice, instead of doing yard work and getting bitten by mosquitoes.

3. This is my first attempt at an EFI conversion and attempt at non-oem EFI in general. I should have started with something that had FI to begin with, then I would hopefully be able to focus on tuning (which is what attracted me to EFI in the first place - tuning, not circuit diagnostics and parts compatibility) instead of troubleshooting.

4. You all have seen how many things I have had to order for this project. I am very near the limit of what I want to spend on this project, this year

5. I am working on something that I love to use. When I get frustrated with something in the EFI system, I want to be able to go out and have a good ride to clear my head; I can't do that if the EFI system is ON by only bike. Having the bike be unrideable for large portions of time while waiting for parts to arrive is no good.

6. (a bit emotional) This thread, while I have thoroughly enjoyed sharing my findings, discoveries, and insights, has caused me some anxiety; I feel like I have to do something so I have something to post about and I have to post about what I have been doing. I know I don't really have to, no one has a gun to my head, but I started this thread and if I stop posting to it, I'll feel like I let people who browse this forum down. I realize this is all in my head and isn't correct, but I am mentally unable to let go of those feelings.

It is for these reasons that I am suspending, NOT CANCELLING the EFI portion of this project. To get the EFI system into good working order as described in #1 above, I need to either buy all of the things that will allow me to drill a precise hole in the intake manifold for the injector AND buy another TB (or remove the injector seat and patch the massive hole that is left in its place) without a injector seat AND wait around 1-2 weeks for everything to arrive AND then spend time installing everything. That is no fun when there are roads out there waiting to be torn up and sunshine waiting to make me feel nice and warm while giving me skin cancer.

Luckily, I made the EFI wiring harness in such a way that I can and have removed it from the bike along with most of the supporting parts in an evening (~4 hours) and installed the carb and CDI back on. Since it only took about 4 hours to take off, it should only take 8 hours to re-install, now that I know where everything needs to go and all the connectors are already there in the correct location.

I will still probably keep an eye on this thread (for things specific to this bike) and on the forum in general (for everything else) and answer questions and post my usual lengthy review/walk-through/write-up on things that I am doing or have done to my bike. I still have a few more somewhat inexpensive things I want to do like re-pack the exhaust with a quality packing material, not the wafer-thin sheet of fiberglass that they have in them from the factory, the $15 grom shock mod, and replace the rear-shock-shaped-object with an oem honda grom one.

bogieboy; I am using wasted spark on this engine. There is only a single tooth on the flywheel/magneto that triggers once per 360 degrees, so the ECU and CDI can only fire the spark plug once per 360 degrees (at the end of the compression stroke and the end of the exhaust stroke), not once per 720 degrees, as would be needed for non-wasted spark. Also, I have had the engine spinning using the starter motor and have synced the timing that the ECU says it should be and what it is on the engine. 10 degrees BTDC on the engine matches the ECU's 10 degree base timing.

Those aftermarket CDI boxes for automotive engines probably have a tachometer output wire that can give a signal to the ECU and they probably don't mess with potentially shared signals like crank speed by grounding one of the leads. The 190's CDI could be used with the microsquirt if I could build a small circuit that could duplicate the crank VR sensor's signal into two separate, isolated outputs. But, I don't have the skills to do that; I already have difficulty with arduinos, making something that is used to assist in the control of an engine is way beyond me.

Also, those ignition boxes will probably accept a 5v square wave input from an ECU or sensor; our motorcycle CDIs need a signal that goes high, crosses 0 volts, and goes negative (again something that I could build, but my lack of skills are stopping me). The microsquirt only has logic-level outputs for sparks; you cannot directly drive a coil from it without hardware modifications.

Sorry to stop progress on this so abruptly, but I must ride, be it with injectors or carbs.

If anyone has any questions that they wanted answered with regards to anything I did or said I was going to do with my bike, please go ahead and ask.

EDIT: Just had the bike started up for the first time. Loud even with the silencer in. Vibrates like a harley at idle. Big-ass smile on my face. I'm gonna miss the counterbalancing the 125 had. I'm letting it cool down so I can do an oil change and then take the new engine for its first inaugural ride. I'm keeping the wideband controller installed on the bike; once I get/make a gauge that will display the AFR, I'll add the sensor back into the exhaust to aid my tuning. I'll try (no promises) to take a short video showing how the bike sounds.

hope all goes well with the bike Glavey, totally understand wanting to ride it.... on the coil driver side of things, i wonder... if you went to a junkyard and found an automotive coil, say an LS1 coil-near-plug setup, that would get its own 12v supply, and would only need a 5v trigger from the microsquirt, and just use the MS for everything, bypassing the CDI all together....

just bouncing ideas right now...LOL

Actually, that is very nearly the exact ignition system I used with the ECU; a GM "truck" coil with a built-in ignitor that used logic level signals for dwell and spark. The reason I even considered the CDI instead of having the microsquirt deal with the ignition was because the CDI has a known-good and safe spark advance curve for the 190 engine. I wanted to leave the spark timing to the CDI and just run the ECU in fuel only mode because I didn't trust my ignition timing guesswork.

hmm.... start conservative and creep up on it, when you hear any detonation, back it off a few degrees....LOL its not too terribly hard... not trying to be an ass or anything, its just really simple (at least to me, but i have been researching timing maps for car stuff since my first truck, back in 05)

It does make sense that it would be simple like that, but still I don't trust myself. I had contacted support @ tboltusa about the max advance in the 190 CDIs. They came back and said it was around 30 degrees at maximum, so I put a 27 degree max advance in the ignition table in the microsquirt and tapered it down from 27 at about 6krpm to 10 at 1krpm. That is what I was using when I got the BANGS from the attempted engine start.

I'm not out for maximum power on this engine; I don't want to tune the ignition table for max. timing before torque drop off, I just want a good amount of power without worrying about knocking, pinging, pre-ignition, or detonation.

Also, I was and still will be struggling with low-rpm erroneous spark firings. Anything below about 500rpm and I get lots of extra sparks not apparently correlating to any specific position on the engine. I'm guessing that is due in part to the crappy signal VR sensors can give when measuring low speeds, not to mention there was only one "point" of information per revolution on crank positioning.

I have been thinking about getting a toothed wheel cut to size and epoxying it to the flywheel/magneto where it won't be interfering with anything that is already there and using a hall effect sensor to detect crank speed. That would give up to 36 (35 really, the wheel has to have a missing tooth) points of timing information per 360 degrees of crank rotation. Even if that still resulted in fewer, bit still some erroneous sparks, I could then run the microsquirt in fuel only mode if I choose, as I would have a separate crank speed input for the ECU, independent from the one used by the CDI.

Don't worry you aren't sounding mean at all, just throwing ideas around.

i think the 36-1 tooth wheel would be a great idea, when you have free time, since thats what the majority of MS users run. even a lot of OEMs use a similar setup, with a 32-1 or a 36-1 wheel on the crank... if you could somehow couple a cam sensor in the mix as well, that would be even better, but a royal pain in the butt to get working....a dual signal=full sync, and can be traced to a VERY small percentage of the rotation of the engine, I.E. more accurate timing.....LOL

None of my business but i'd put a carb back on it and ride hell out of it this spring n summer and revisit this EFI deal when it turns too cool to ride again. You are NOT having fun at this point, versus riding it, which WOULD be fun. Stop looking at it and RIDE IT.

That's what I've done; yesterday I hooked up the carb and the CDI and went out for an inaugural ride. Other than the clutch friction zone being right at the beginning of the lever travel, causing more then a few embarrassing stalls at intersections, everything went swimmingly. I even met someone on a modded ruckus. I really want to quiet down the exhaust with a combination of new packing material, baffles, and modifying the exhaust silencer.



I really needed that ride and after coming back from it I didn't regret my decision to pause the EFI and put the carb on one bit.

I think I've discovered the reason guys who name bikes, cars, trucks, etc use female names... I was going to name by bike something really unusual, like... Bob. Then I realized if I was ever asked what I was doing all weekend long, I'll have to answer, "Oh man, I was riding Bob all weekend. He's a real screamer. I couldn't walk right for a while after getting off of him."

On a less sarcastic note, I took Bob out for a brisk ride today. About 50F, but with clear skies and sunlight to warm you up. I adjusted the clutch so I can actually start from a stop and not stall 5 times. I had read that the gearbox in this engine is quite smooth, but damn it really is. This bike is an excellent candidate for a quick shifter. I'm not sure if this is the correct terminology, but the gears are close ratio, meaning... for example lets say you are at 5000rpm in third gear, you shift into fourth and the revs only go down to... maybe 3700-4000rpm. Not a lot of drive line shock will happen going between those revs.

I have been looking for a wideband gauge that has the numerical AFR readout as well as a row/bar/graph/ring of LEDs that at a quick glance can give you a rough idea of what your mixture is. I could only find gauges with integrated sensor controllers for >$125. Nope, I already bought a controller and I'm not buying another just for a gauge. So I set out to make my own.

2 or 3 years ago, I made a dashboard for my scooter (pictured). Everything on it worked as it should (needles moved, numbers were displayed), but I had a problem with getting a reliable, clean signal for the engine rpm and the speedometer. I stopped working on it because I had one of those moments where you work hard on something, and in the end it was all for naught, combined with me not really riding it enough to warrant caring about it.

I dissected dashboard and preformed an display-ectome. I took out the 16x2 character display (blue rectangular display) and the two 7-segment, 4 digit displays. Organ harvesting done, I started trying to imagine what the gauge could look like with what I had to work with. The 7 segment display fit in the center of a gauge face I had (in a previous life, the gauge was for oil temperature on my scooter) with enough room around it to line the gauge face with LEDs.

I like the wideband gauges that have, from left to right, yellow LEDs for rich, green for stoichiometric, and red for lean. I wanted to copy that in my gauge, so I gathered some LEDs out of my electronics project box and glued them in a ring to the inside of the gauge face along with one of the 7 segment displays (pictured). I wanted to have two 7 segment displays and the LEDs, but the chip I am using to drive them can only do 2x 7 segment 4 digit displays (maximum of 8 digits) OR one 7 segment 4 digit display and the LED ring that I just glued in. I went with a 7 segment 4 digit display with the LEDs. I did have another driver chip in the scooter dashboard, but when I tried to de-solder it, I killed it.

After much soldering, gluing, and back-ache from being hunched over a desk, I got all of the LEDs and the display connected to an arduino nano and used a example program to test out all of the individual sections of the display and LEDs.

I can't figure out how I embedded a youtube video before, so here's a link.

Success! Now, on to actually programming the arduino to make the display and the LEDs show meaningful data. After about 2 days, on and off (I'm not very good or fast at programming) I had working code that interpreted a 0-5 volt signal into 10.00 to 20.00 AFR on the display, and individual LEDs would light to indicate AFR within a given range (attached to this post, if you have the arduino IDE, you can just double click the afr.ino file to open it in the arduino IDE. If you don't have the arduino IDE installed, you can open the afr.txt file. Both filesa re exactly the same, just with different file extensions). Now that I had working gauge electronics, I had to cram and stuff them into the gauge housing. In the end I got everything in; the gauge face and everything glued to it, the arduino, all of the wiring, and a 5 volt step-down voltage converter. I plugged in the arduino using a USB cable and nothing happened and then I saw a small whiff of magic electronic smoke escape from the voltage converter. It appears that the converter was not able to have 5v applied to the output when there wasn't any voltage on the input side. I tried using a diode on the 5v output, but it was too late, the patient had died. Now I can either make a voltage regulator (it would get real hot inside a gauge case) or buy some different, better made voltage converters(like the one I used in the bluetooth case).

Thats about it for this post.

Dude, this is effing sweeeeeeeet! You have gathered so much info and shared it, and all the rad trial and error is just inspiring! I get discouraged too when trying to make something but fail. Please know you aren't alone there or with anxiety. Keep updating when you can please!

Thanks, dude. I really appreciate the kind words. It's posts like yours and others here who have encouraged me to keep building and posting.


<3

I salvaged the voltage converter from my DIY bluetooth module and wired it up to the AFR gauge. 90% success! The arduino did what it was supposed to and the voltage converter didn't go up in smoke, however for some power-related reason, the arduino couldn't communicate with my computer. It would work when the voltage converter was disconnected. Just a small thing I'll have to be mindful of when updating the arduino.

The different voltage converter was bigger than the last one I used; too big to fit in the gauge housing, so I needed to elongate the gauge to fit all of the electric modules. I decided to cut the gauge housing in half and glue/tape/epoxy something between the two halves to make more room. I cut apart the plastic cover for some old blank DVDs and made a rectangular-ish shaped piece that I could use as the "filler" piece. After I dremeled the gauge in half, I taped the gauge pieces and the filler piece in place with electrical tape. I tried to use super glue, but the filler plastic was too shiny and slippery.

The gauge, as it is now, is about 90mm/3 1/2 in. deep and about 55mm/2 3/16 in. diameter. It will update the display and the LEDs 10 times/second. I found that any faster than that, I can't make out the numbers in the display. I'll probably temporarily mount it somewhere along the top of the speedo cluster so I'll be able to quickly glance at it while riding. I haven't decided exactly how I am going to attach the gauge to the speedo, but preliminary thoughts are either more electrical tape or zip tie to speedo case.

Sorry there isn't much in this update but my brain is kinda foggy right now and not that much really happened. Lots of thinking and planning about how to do certain things, but not much doing things. If for some reason the AFR gauge doesn't work in the form factor that it is in now, I have plans to make it much smaller, simpler, and blend in much better with the styling of the bike.

Except for tomorrow, the next 5 or 7 days look like good riding weather. Stay tuned...

Apologies for the poor-quality post previously, I was really out of it but I felt like I needed to post something.

I think the few rides I have taken on the bike have given me enough information to give a bit of feedback/observations on the 190 engine.

Like most of the pit-bike-sized engines around, the 190 doesn't really idle smoothly... It doesn't idle roughly, just not smooth. By that I mean the engine is going putt-putt-puttputt-pu-pu-putt-putt-putt instead of a "normal" idle of putt-putt-putt-putt. I don't know for sure, but it think the combination of little-to-no intake piping, low speed, and no load make the engine kinda miss once every... 3-7 complete engine cycles.

The carb that came with the 190 is a Chinese copy of a keihin PE28 carb and (I am 90% sure of this, but check your jets to be sure) uses these slow jets and these main jets. I think, but am not positive that these keihin main jets will also thread in to the main jet tube and work MAYBE. My carb came with a #40 slow jet and a #115 main jet. I didn't record the needle# or the clip position.

I don't have any information on the AFR ratio for these jets; I still have yet to install the AFR gauge on the bike. I've either been too eager to ride it or busy with something else. I can say that the engine responds very well in all running situations I have put it under except one. There is a miss around 4-6k rpm regardless of throttle position. I don't know if this is an ignition or fuel problem, but I have read of other people having the same miss at around the same engine speeds. Other than that, there has never been a fueling issue.

The engine starts up with the choke on within 2 revolutions every time. With the choke on and the air temp ~67F the bike idles at about 4-5k rpm. after about a minute of running, the engine will start to sound a little boggy and rich. That's when I turn off the choke. I have the idle set around 1500-2000 rpm. A little high, I know, but the engine likes it there and responds very quickly to all but the most violent of throttle snap-openings. Since, as described above, the engine doesn't idle smoothly, using an AFR gauge to tune the idle would probably be futile. I've read about mechanics using a vacuum gauge to set the idle mixture, so I'll give that a try. Also something to note about the keihin PE28 carbs - the low speed mixture screw, NOT the idle screw, meters how much air goes into the engine at and around idle speeds. Adjusting an air-mixture screw, in my experience, is a bit more finicky than adjusting a fuel-mixture screw. When I was using a VM22 carb that also has an air-adjust screw, I was running about 1/4 to 3/4 turn from fully closed to get the idle just right.

At in-town speeds of <35 mph, up to 6k rpm the engine, as geared (I think 16/34?), feels much like my scooter felt after I put a big block kit on it; feeling the same amount of torque, just add 3-5 mph to whatever speed you felt you were doing with the smaller engine. I don't know if it is my lack of experience with bikes or perhaps a poor fuel mixture, but I have to rev the engine up to about 6k rpm when taking off and SLOWLY release the clutch or else it will stall. It could also be the new clutch is being broken in as well. I'll choose me and my lack of experience as the main cause of feeling lack of torque on take-off. In situations like this that have many possible causes of a certain symptom, If I am anywhere in the "might be the cause" list, I just automatically choose myself as the cause of the symptom. I'm usually right, as well.

In contrast, once the engine is above 6k rpm, the torque and the pull from the engine increases precipitously all the way to 10k rpm. Seriously, with how much the 190 pulls at wot, I am thinking that the 125 was very held back by the factory quiet/restrictive exhaust. It pulled as hard at 8k rpm as it did at 4k rpm. I might temporarily put the factory 125 exhaust on the 190 and see just how bad it is.

When the engine is up at those higher rpms, the entire bike and engine buzzes, vibrates, and shakes and I can't hear the intake or exhaust over the mechanical engine sounds. Now, I don't mean the engine is vibrating the mounting bolts loose, I mean the lack of a counter-balance shaft makes this engine, the bike, and everything touching or connected to either of those vibrate. Nothing on my bike has come loose except for a cell phone holder. Don't worry, I didn't have a phone in there at the time.

The transmission shifts quickly, smoothly, and effortlessly. Only twice have I accidentally shifted into neutral instead of 2nd. It is still difficult to get into neutral with the engine running and the bike stationary. I suspect that will improve with continued use.

I don't know if, again, this is either my fault with lack of experience or just the way things are, but it has been very difficult to keep the engine at a steady operating state in lower gears at lower speeds. What I mean by that is below 35mph in any gear but mostly in the lower ones, the engine wants to accelerate or decelerate (as well as jerk the bike when going from decel to accel), NOT run at a steady speed. I really don't know if that is inherent to this engine or just engines above a certain size. It has certainly given me cramps in my throttle hand, having to try and precisely control input.

The exhaust system I am using is too loud for my tastes. I have only run it with the silencer in the muffler, I don't dare take it out. I'm going to try and modify the silencer to reduce the volume a bit. The silencer that is in the muffler now only has a narrower diameter pipe for the exhaust to exit through (like this but without the holes drilled in the sides of the tube.) I want to drill holes, like in the linked piece, to force the exhaust gases to flow through smaller, but many more small holes. I also want to try cutting slots in the pipe instead of holes and see what happens with that. If none of that cures my sore ear's woes, then a muffler re-pack and possible baffles are the answer. At the extreme end, I could buy and install a different muffler. Now that I have an exhaust system that comes in pieces instead of all welded together, I can change out mufflers with the same pipe size, but that is only if everything else fails.

I have ordered some filament for my 3d printer so I can attempt to make a "backpack" for the speedo/dashboard. The big round taped-up AFR gauge, while perfectly working, is a bit too... it's just not what I like to see when looking at my bike. I am going to try and make something that will ziptie/glue/something to the front of the speedo (the part that all the bugs hit) and have the numeric AFR readout, some number of colored LEDs to indicate AFR at a glance, numeric battery voltage, and maybe either a numeric temperature display or just a temperature warning light.

Probably still idles better than a 110 with a race cam (6.6mm lift and long duration/overlap) and vm26 carb... that was a fun bike though...LOL

https://youtu.be/X0TU9qiSyII

Its honestly not too far off from that - it sounds almost exactly like the engine in this video:


video

The exhaust silencer and the filament came in!

The exhaust silencer, as compared to the one that came with the exhaust system, has a larger diameter outlet pipe, a cap on the inside end of the exhaust inlet, and holes drilled along the length of the pipe. The holes are, I'm guessing, about 1/4" diameter, at 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock. You can move the exhaust inlet cap closer or further away from the wide part of the silencer for less or more noise and power respectively. I went for a ride today with only the last four holes in the silencer letting exhaust gasses through. During warm-up with the choke on and at idle there was little to no difference in the perceived volume of the exhaust as compared to the silencer that came with the exhaust. However, at higher rpms the silencer was without question choking the engine. I knew the loss in power would happen, I wanted to see what the worst performance with this silencer would be and then hopefully get to a point where restriction-to-flow and decibel levels are good enough.

Oh and if you want to know the size of silencer to get for the exhaust system I have, the exhaust tip Internal Diameter is 48mm/ 1.8". The tip is angled so don't get a silencer that is much longer than about 71mm/3".

I recorded a very short clip of the engine idling and revving after I got back from a ride. The microphone in my phone does not do the low-end bassy portion of the audio justice, but you can hear how the engine and exhaust don't have the steady put-put-put other engines do. The video bogieboy posted sounds very much like how my bike idles. I suspect my phone was doing some compression/processing to the audio to make it sound like it did.

test test 123

When I took that video, I noticed that what I suspect are the valves are getting a wee bit loud. Before I go out on my next ride (in another week, cold weather) I need to at least check the valve clearances. I think I remember I put them both at .006". I posted the number I used, I'll go back and look. Whether or not they are still at or near .006", I think I will try them both at .005 and see how much that quiets the valve train. While I'm doing that, I can give the engine its 100 mile oil change. I expect slightly metallic oil from the break in period, hopefully not silver paint or chunks and bits of... anything.

Three more things I would like to get done on the bike are:

1. Deal with fuel tank vent hose leaking/dripping fuel. The stock fuel tank vent on my bike - the one on the top of the tank with the hose barb bent 90 degrees will, with or without a hose and/or filter attached to it, sputter/drip/spray fuel. I am starting to suspect a purposeful or accidental restriction in the hose barb on the fuel tank. The fuel would be able to splash/roll up there and if the tank happens to have a positive pressure inside it, it will push the fuel through the restriction into the hose barb and not let it back in the tank because more fuel/fuel vapors are being pushed out. I don't think there are any baffles inside the tank around the venting hose barb. There are however, MANY baffles around the fuel filler area. I am thinking I might either buy/make a gas cap that has an integrated vent tube thingy (the kind that are quite common with dirt bikes, like this one) OR just drilling a small, maybe 1/16" hole in the fuel cap that I have now - enough to equalize pressure, but not invite dirt, dust, debris, and bugs into the tank all while keeping all of the fuel inside the fuel tank.

2. See if the $15 grom shock mod can me done on my forks. I already bought the hardware and the fork oil. Even if the mod doesn't work, I'm still going to get rid of the factory "oil".

3. Connect and wire the dash wart to the speedometer. I finished designing and making a housing for the AFR gauge, wideband status LED, and a voltmeter. More on that down below.

I have noticed that the area on my exhaust that is directly beneath the starter motor has what looks like.. not rust, but something like a water stain. The Only what I could think of the exhaust starting to corrode in that specific area is if somehow... (wild guesses about sciencey stuff that I barely understand coming up, be warned) when the metal of the exhaust and the starter motor get to a hot enough temperature, they do something like... emit particles? atoms? ions? The exhaust could, I think, be at a different voltage potential than the engine block (I am including the starter in the engine block) because of all of the particles of air that are striking the exhaust while the bike is in motion. That difference in potential voltage might allow what ever the hot engine block is emitting to adhere to the metal of the exhaust and cause it to tarnish.

Or maybe it's magic pixies and unicorn farts. That was just an exercise in letting my brain go as far as it wanted to with a certain train of thought.

Whatever the cause of the tarnishing, unless it gets worse, I'm not worried about it.

I started making the housing for the gauges by making educated guesses on the contour of the top of the speedometer. I tried taking pictures straight-on and using them as references for modeling, but that didn't give me a good-enough result. I do have the capability to 3d-scan an object with an old xbox kinect and use the resulting model as a reference, but that would require me digging out the kinect camera as well as a lot of work post-model-capture to clean up the model to a usable level. I decided to go the old fashion route of guess, make, check, curse, repeat. In one of the pictures you can see some of the contour test prints as well as items I printed to get my printer calibrated to a new roll of filament, including a throttle-hand wrist rest.

I ended up with an off-to-one-side, bolt-to-the-speedo cluster. The face of the cluster is angled about 20 degrees higher than the speedometer so it is easier to see and maybe less likely to reflect the sun into my eyes. The AFR gauge face, arduino, power regulator, voltmeter, and status LED all get stuffed inside from the outside throuth the AFR gauge face hole. The power and signal wires come out the right side and the whole thing gets zip-tied/bolted/otherwise attached to the speedometer housing through 8 holes drilled in the cluster (and soon to be drilled in the speedometer case). I didn't intend for this case/cluster to be water or weather-proof. I will probably silicone or hot glue the AFR gauge face and the voltmeter housing in place and plug-up the wire exit hole, but I am going to leave the holes for the zip ties/bolts/whatever unplugged, as-is. I want the case to be able to breathe and vent air and moisture.

I attached a lower-quality .stl file of the cluster if anyone wants it. Also, here is a link that will let you look at the part in your web browser as well as download a high-quality copy in many different file formats.

With another ride under my belt, I have a little bit more to report.

Before the ride I just took, I checked and adjusted the valves. The intake valve had loosened up to about .007" and the exhaust valve was still .006". I decided that I would set the valves to .004" on the intake and .005" on the exhaust. At the end of the ride, when the engine was well into operating temperature, the valves were audible at idle, but not loud. The best way I can explain it is tick-tick-tick, not click-click-click.

I drilled a small hole, I think 1/16" into the fuel tank cap right behind the pivot for the "lift open" tab for the fuel tank vent. The hole opens up on the underside of the cap, in a recess that should prevent fuel from getting pushed out of the hole. That solution appears to work well, fuel hasn't leaked out of the cap and no fuel is leaking our of the capped vent nipple on the tank.

However...

After the ride, even with the tank vent port nipple capped off, the carb and some of the surrounding area was wet with gas. The picture I attached shows a vent hose coming down; I took that picture when I was using that hose as a vent, I no longer have that hose on the bike, but the wetness of the carb is still representative of what is happening. Only the side of the carb that faces forward is wet, the other sides and the top are dry. It almost appears that the most wet area is the choke lever. Perhaps something isn't completely... torqued? internally in the carb. Maybe there's a leak in/around the choke area. Maybe the carb is tilted forward a bit and I haven't noticed it because I always look at it while the bike is one the center stand. Maybe the float level is too high. Maybe the o-ring for the float bowl is pinched. Quite possibly a combination thereof. I'll have to find out at a later date.

I had intended to try the shock mod after I had done all of the above, but I had the realization that since I don't have a front-end motorcycle stand, I would have to do some shady, sketchy stuff to keep the bike off the ground while potentially the front wheel and both front shocks are off the bike. I managed to do something like that once before by using a floor jack right on the meaty piece of frame that is just inside the kick stand, lifting the rear of the bike off the ground and then weighting the back of the bike down with cinder blocks, stepping stones, and bricks. Like I said, sketchy. A different way I could get the front lifted is put the bike "inside" a folding ladder and suspend the front from the top step of the ladder with rope/straps/chain. The only folding ladder I have is an inherited, old wooden, creaky ladder; not very safe or sturdy. I do have two saw horses of roughly the same height... I don't know exactly how I'll do it, but I'll do it. Also, one more smallish thing that kept me from attempting the shock mod sooner was the bolts in the triple tree were already starting to strip, so I bought some new ones to replace them.

I finished designing and printing the gauge cluster. I had originally planned to hold the cluster to the speedometer with just zip ties, but they just wouldn't hold tight enough, so I ended up using small bolts and nuts with rubber grommets between the cluster and the speedometer to eliminate any vibrating and to "absorb" any differences in contour between the two pieces. I haven't wired the gauges in yet, for the time being they are just there, but not functioning.

For the past few days, I have been mentally planning out circuitry for a quick shifter. Not just the switch that gets triggered by the shifter, but all the electric components that go in to giving the ignition system a sub-second cut out. At the time of writing, I have just a overview of the specific ICs (integrated circuits, those little black chips you see inside anything technological) I might use and how to clean up the input signal to prevent false re-triggering and/or switch bouncing. I don't have anything tangible to show yet, it is still all brainstorming.

I had originally thought about using an arduino for the quick shifter, but arduinos CAN crash. If the arduino inside of a quick shifter crashed while you were riding the bike and using the quick shifter...

1. On the next attempted upshift, the bike would probably, depending on load, either shift very harshly, damaging the dogs in the transmission in the process, or it would go into a false neutral. So the gears as well as the arduino would crash and probably made a sad sound.

2. Upon hearing said sad sound, you would probably turn around, go home and investigate what happened. Once you realized what happened, you, as well as the gears in the transmission, would have made a sad sound.

I decided to use dedicated ICs for the quick shifter because, to the best of my knowledge, non-programmable ICs (the kind that you can't upload code to) cannot crash the same way an arduino can. There are still reasons the ICs might not work properly like a quick dip in supply voltage or a floating input/reset pin (floating in this context means not connected to the positive or negative voltage rail).

Things are getting to the point where I am running out of new things to talk about regarding the bike. Posts might get even more spaced out since I won't have much more than a few lines of information to share.

People type LOL a lot, but I genuinely had a good laugh at that. Your writing style consistently brightens my day. :D

I love the concept of having a real time AFR display; that speaks to my inner geek. I also love the little Theodore tugboat.

I'm glad I could make you laugh. ;)

The tugboat model came from here and the throttle wrist rest came from here.

Smallish update on the leaking carb - I believe the float level was too high. When I took off the air filter, the bottom of the rubber intake boot and the foam filter was wet with gas. I had originally adjusted the float so that the seam on the float was level with the bottom of the carb body when the fuel-inlet-valve-plunger-thingy bottoms out (not bottoming out the spring on the plunger, just where the rubber tip touches the mating surface on the carb). Apparently that was too high, so now the float is angled downward roughly 10ish degrees.

The engine started up and idled fine with the new float level. I don't know if it was because the ambient temp was high enough, or the carb was/is overflowing a wee bit, but I was able to start the bike and have it idle with < 1 second of choke. I hadn't tried to start the bike without the choke before, so I don't know if it would have worked before; just a tidbit of info. I forgot to tip the bike side-to-side while running to emulate turning sharp corners at low speeds. The idle smoothed out a little while adjusting the idle air screw.

Continuing on the carb story; while I was cleaning all the little metal carb bits I took of the choke plunger to see if it was possible that fuel could be leaking from there. Once I unscrewed it I noticed that there was no sealing o-ring between the plastic plunger housing and the carb body, just the clamping force between the plastic and the carb body. The choke still works fine and it doesn't appear to be leaking any fuel, so I'll leave well enough alone.

While reinstalling the choke, a thought came to my head, "It wouldn't be to hard to make a little adapter piece for the choke that can hold a barrel termination from a choke cable". I had to cannibalize the carb-end barrel termination on the choke cable that originally came with the bike so I could use the 90 degree adapter on the 190's throttle cable, but 99% of the cable and the sleeve are intact. I might need to buy or make another 90 degree adapter and I will need to make a bracket that will bolt to the carb body and hold one end of the choke cable's sleeve in place. After that it's just route the cable up to the controls and see if it works.

When I was putting the air filter back on the carb, I made a mistake and poked a large hole through the top of the air filter. The foam there was probably only about 5mm thick. The best repair option I had at the moment was super glue. I put a few drops on one part of the ripped foam and pressed it together... with my fingers. Yep. The foam from the air filter stuck more to me than to itself. After evacuating a rampant brain fart I grabbed a pair of pliers and used those to seal up the hole. That worked moderately better, foam still stuck to the pliers but the air filter was good enough to be put back into service.

I finally figured out a way to hoist the front of my bike in the air so I could have at the front shocks. The garage in which I store my bike has a ceiling for the ground level and an attic. There are 4-7 holes in the ceiling and in the floor of the attic, all in a line, spread out across 12-18'. I have no idea what these holes were used for, if they were used for anything. The attic's floor braces ran between the holes, so I had 2-3 very stout pieces of lumber between each hole. I fished a thick, but crap quality "paracord"-type rope up through one hole, wrapped it a few times around a 4"x4"x4' to spread out the load and pushed the rope back down the next hole. I had about 24' of rope coming out of each hole in the ceiling, more than enough wrap around the handlebars. I didn't use any knots to tie the rope to the bars, I'm no boy scout, the only knot I know is the square knot and I know enough that using just that will end up with a bike on the floor. What I did was just lash the rope around handlebars with as many loops as I could put on to increase the friction and keep the rope in place.

I had the bike being held upright by the ropes, but not lifting the front end. I went back up to the attic and shimmed the cross-brace piece of wood I was using another... 3 1/2-ish inches off the ground. That raised the front off of the ground by about 1/2 inch. Perfect. The picture I attached shows the... very... Wile. E. Coyote setup I ended up with. It was sketchy as all hell, but never once did the bike move without me being the thing that moved it - the rope stayed in place the whole time.

On to the front shocks! Both front shocks came out without problem. On the shocks that came with my bike, there is a bolt on the bottom of the shock, behind the front axle so you have to remove the axle to get to it. I initially thought that this bolt somehow held something internal to the shock together. Nope, it just holds the bottom big metal bracket piece to the shock. You don't have to remove those bolts to get access to the internals of the shock. The top cap unscrews then you are met with... just a rod threaded into the top cap with a jam nut, nothing like what you see inside of a honda grom shock. Unless the bits I needed to modify were on the other end of the shock rod assy., then the grom shock mod will not work with these shocks.

I think the best value upgrade to the front suspension (as well as the back suspension) seems to be to buy used stock grom shocks. They'll probably be better than what I have now, and you can do the shock mod on them. After market grom shocks are easily $500+. I'm sure the ride would be sublime with them, but it's not worth more than 1/3 the cost of the bike.

I measured about 4oz of shock fluid in each shock. It seriously looked like a mixture of metallic gunmetal paint and Terminator splooge. And it stunk. I replaced it with some 10wt fork oil I bought at a local honda dealership (hehehe). Since my bike's owners manual doesn't say at what height the shock oil should be, so I just added back however much came out of the shock. That came out to be between 35 and 45mm from the top of the shock with the shock completely compressed. I also weighed both shocks before so I could use that to estimate the amount of fork oil I should add, but the margin of error was too great to be useful.

After a quick ride to try and feel any difference in the handling (there wasn't any, at least I couldn't feel it) I came back to the garage and took a look at the carb while the engine was still running. It was still wet with fuel. WTF? After about 10 seconds of confusion, I saw the thing that was causing all the leaks... can you guess what it was? Nope. It was the left oil cooler connector leaking (picture attached showing which bolt I mean). It wasn't even fuel, it was oil. I thought the wet "fuel" on the carb looked at bit thick, but I just assumed that some part of the fuel had evaporated and left behind a sticky substance. Nope, oil. Fixing that will have to wait until tomorrow because the oil cooler is aluminum and the banjo bolt is steel. And the aluminum is still HOT. That sounds like a prime recipe for stripped threads right out of an oil cooler. The very first time I started the 190, that fitting was leaking oil so I tightened it up and it stopped. However, I've only been able to look at the oil cooler fittings while the engine is on choke, warming up, or at idle, never at higher rpms or under load. I'm guessing the oil pressure is rather low at idle as compared to 7krpm under load, causing oil to leak only when riding.

I've noticed that the shorter shifter arm that I am using, the one that originally came with the 125, isn't long enough for me to get a real good feel when I shift into a gear. At the moment it is more like I just apply pressure to the shifter arm to shift, not actually move it up/down. I think one that is a bit longer, like the one that came with the 190 would be better. However, I still don't like the crappy shifter that came with my 190 enough to use it. I just know it will break off and leave me stuck in 4th gear 20 miles from home. If I can find one of a similar length at a local swap meet* or online but better welding quality, I'll go with that.

I still haven't powered up the AFR gauge yet. I am procrastinating on this because I really don't want to have to take the fuel tank off again just to be able to solder a few wires. Time will tell when that gets done.

The areas around the spots I had welded have begun to not just tarnish but rust. I suspect the welder did not use stainless steel filler to make these welds. Eventually I will have to do something about that.

There has been a small bit of progress on the quick shifter. I have the circuitry that can cut the ignition for... some amount of time every up-shift. I just need to work on the electrics/electronics for getting a signal every shift. I am waiting for a few IC's in the mail that should help me making said circuitry. For the physical switch, I am using what I think is a end-stop for something like a mill. The business end of the switch only moves about 0.01mm before the switch action happens, and then it can continue to move for another ~2.5mm after the switch action happened without harming any of the internals of the switch. So, I could (this is my current plan) fabricate a bracket to hold this switch just behind the shifter arm, bolted to the left foot peg bolts, so when I go to up-shift, the motion of me pulling the shift lever up will also push on the switch, triggering the ignition cut, the transmission hopefully shifts, Bob's yer uncle.



*With all of my anxiety, you might think something like a swap meet would be a death sentence to me, but for some odd reason, no. I've come up with a few reasons why I think this is so.

1. Usually swap meets are outdoors, in open fields. I don't normally have claustrophobia, but my need for my personal space bubble increased at the same rate my anxiety does. Being outdoors, completely open helps.

2. You aren't one-on-one with anyone unless you walk up to a booth/table and ask questions. Even then, the seller probably has 3 more people at is station. Being able to easily duck out and become one of the crowd is appealing.

3. If you are at a motorcycle swap meet, you are either there to sell motorcycle stuff, buy motorcycle stuff, look at motorcycle stuff, or tag along with someone who wants to buy motorcycle stuff (child/significant other). 99% of the people you see at a swap meet will be more or less into what the swap meet is about. Motorcycle swap meet? Talk about motorcycles. Gun show? Talk about guns. Strip club? Contemplate the choices in life that have brought you here. Car show? Talk about cars.

4. You might meet someone interesting. An old timer with stories galore. A motorcycle mechanic that has tricks o' the trade. A pretty lady. A hot dude. A suggestive fern.

I'm sure there are many more reasons I'm so screwed in the head. I can plan out and build a computer from parts, design and fabricate a laser engraving machine, go grocery shopping, and go to a doctor's visit, but I cannot talk to the opposite sex, make a phone call, go to an interview, open a ketchup packet without looking like a murderer, or attend family gatherings.

I am now going to practice opening ketchup packets.

Back in high school, I was known (rather fittingly) in my small group of friends as the socially inept computer geek. I was doing things with computers than I probably shouldn't have been. One day during lunch I bought a hotdog w/ ketchup and mustard. I was eating it with friends outside and I couldn't for the life of me get the damn ketchup packet open. Mutterings became curses and delicacy became HULK SMASH!

Friend 1: "Poor Glavey, he can hack into an NSA mainframe with a paper clip, but he hahahhhHAHAAHA... he can't open a freakin' ketchup packet"

Friend 2: "Didn't Einstein forget to wear pants sometimes?"

Me: "I'm not that dumb or that smart"

A hot day in the sun and a mild sunburn later, I finally have the AFR gauge installed and wired up! According to the too hot/too cold LED indicator from the wideband controller, the o2 sensor reaches operating temperature in about 20-30 seconds after power-on. Freshly started and still on choke, the engine will be around 13ish AFR going down to low 12 AFR at idle. Adjusting the idle toward ideal mixture (14.7) makes the idle smoother and less burbly. I think I'll need to go down one size on the pilot jet to a 38; with the air mixture screw on the carb out 3 1/2 turns, the engine was still running around high 12 AFR.

One thing I quickly noticed is that I underestimated how bright mid-day direct sun is - the numeric AFR display is visible if you focus on it for about a second and the AFR indicator LEDs are somewhat visible except for the yellow ones - those are nearly impossible to see. Oh well, it doesn't really matter to me all that much. As long as I have a working AFR gauge of some sort, I'll be fine. In fact, the difficulty is seeing the gauge was probably for the better; if I could have seen it clearly just be glancing down at it, I probably would have been looking at it too much and not keeping my mind on the road.

I took the bike out for a ride after the gauge wiring was done. Throughout the entire RPM range, the engine stayed in and around 13 AFR except when I did a acceleration run on a lonely country road. With the bike in 2nd gear at about 4k rpm, I twisted the throttle wide open. The AFR went down to 12.x and climbed back up to about 13.5 as the rpms rose up to 10k rpm.

I realized in that ride that I really need a good... 3 or 4 hours in a parking lot so I can practice my low speed and start-from-a-stop clutching. However, to do that I'll need better headlights. As it is now, at night the high beam's illumination range is 35ft... maybe. I don't know if these headlight housings can handle the temperatures of halogen lights; the scooter I have has a headlight holder that would melt if you used anything hotter than the stock headlight. I can do the usual replacement of the LED headlights, or I could do/make something that might work better! (or possibly much worse)

I've been tossing this idea around in my head for a few weeks now - ruckus-styled headlights on my grom clone! I don't remember exactly how the idea got into my head, but it's there and it's staying! If you don't know what ruckus headlights look like or can't imagine it on a grom clone, here are two links to drow sports and steady garage where they have pictures of ruckus headlights installed on a grom and a lil duc grom clone. Remind anyone of The Dirt Bike Kid?

I won't be using genuine ruckus headlights as those are >$200 for the whole headlight assembly, nor will I be CNC routing a piece of aluminum (oh how I wish I could, though). I'll most likely be using flat either steel or aluminum strips. I have a very rough mental idea of how I will bend the metal into the frame for the lights, I can't really put it into words yet. If I do make this headlight assembly, I'll have to do something to cover up all the ugly wires and connectors that are behind the headlight housing already on the bike. All of this will probably be my next project, I have one that I am just finishing up (and yet another on the side) -

Quieter exhaust! Hopefully! I bought two muffler re-pack kits from amazon; one with just a very thick ceramic packing sheet and another one, more of a includes-everything kit with a stainless steel screen, stainless steel wool, stainless steel wire, fiberglass packing material, rivets, and #00 and #3 steel wool for polishing/cleaning. You can see in one of the pictures everything that is included in the kit on the pink box lid, the thicker ceramic packing material is next to it in a zip lock bag. My intent was to use everything from the all-in-one kit except for the fiberglass packing material - I used the thicker ceramic packing material.

Getting the rivets out of the muffler wasn't too hard. I don't think they were stainless steel, though. They didn't spark at all when I ground them off. Nevertheless, the rivets were removed. Now, I had to somehow pull the end cap/baffle off of the muffler without going ham-fisted on either. I had to drive a screw driver between the baffle and the muffler to break the silicone seal. Then I ended up bending a small piece of steel that once was one of those cheap wrenches you get with flat-pack furniture into a flat bladed screwdriver-ish-looking-thingy and pounded that between the baffle and the muffler and when I pulled it out, the baffle came with it.

The packing material that was in the muffler looked kinda cheap and had already started to... I'm not sure if fiberglass burns, but maybe just degrade from constant exposure to extreme conditions, but I don't really have enough knowledge about packing material to say for sure. What I can say for sure is that the packing material wasn't completely filling the muffler, so there is at the very least a small gain to be had by repacking the muffler... after only 120 miles.

I started repacking by cleaning up the perforated muffler core with the steel wool that came in the kit. After that, the stainless steel screen was wrapped around the core (not easy; stainless steel doesn't bend like meant-for-keeping-bugs-out metal screen does, and you WILL impale yourself at least 3 times on the stray wires). The wire that I used to secure the stainless steel screen isn't stainless steel - you can see the rust on it. I had to use something to keep the screen from unraveling. The muffler core is steel and is already rusting. The core and the wire are the only two non-stainless pieces of metal in the muffler (excluding the silencer), and are relatively easy to replace. I can live with the inside of my muffler rusting out a wee bit quicker if it means a much easier time assembling it now.

Next on the wrap was the stainless steel wool. This was fine strips of SS about 1.5mm across and... .003" or .004" thick (very rough guesses) matted together in a roughly common direction. Kinda like chip board. I needed a sacrificial set of scissors to cut the wool to size, as well as cut the ceramic packing material. I still had enough to do close to another entire muffler once I cut off what I needed. I used one single wrap around the perforated core - no overlap, just the screen and the SS wool are as thick as the old packing material was. While wearing kitchen gloves (I was already impaled, I didn't want to be lacerated) I tightly wrapped the SS wool over the screen and secured it with the SS wire from the kit.

Next up was the fluffy packing material. This stuff is sold as 1" thick and it is, but it can be compressed easily and readily. I could only put one wrap of the ceramic material around the core. I used blue painter's tape to temporarily hold the fluff in place while I twisted, shoved, and squeezed the whole wrapped core in to the muffler. I took the painter's tape off as I pushed the core in, I didn't leave any tape in the muffler. And then I forgot to put some kind of sealant on the baffle before I pounded it home. I was feeling lazy after having put the whole muffler back together, so I did what lazy-me does in these cases. I squirted sealant around the seem on the end of the muffler and poked some of it in-between the baffle and the muffler, then wend back around the seam again with more sealant to fill in and holes there were from the poking. Getting that baffle off the muffler was not fun, so if I can seal the muffler without effectively gluing them together I'll do it. The sealant has to set for about a day, so no vroom vrooms yet.

Now on to the second part of making the exhaust quiet, modifying the silencer.

I look online at cross sections of OEM car and motorcycle mufflers and most of them use 90 and 190 degree bends to dampen sound with minimal back pressure increase, along with sections with perforations and narrow-pipe choke points. I used some of these designs in a modification to one of the exhaust silencers I bought previously. I wanted the exhaust to go around at least 2 90 degree bends, preferably 4, and at least one section with perforations. I had to ride my bicycle to the hardware store, but no biggie, I needed the exercise. I bought two each of two different stainless steel sink drains that fit inside the exhaust silencer. One fits neatly inside the larger end of the silencer, and the other fits almost perfectly on the end of the larger end of the silencer. It turned out that I didn't need/couldn't use the larger ones, but I had opened the packages and mangled them before I found that out. Oops.

I don't think I will be able to explain in words how I expect the exhaust to flow through the silencer, so we'll both have to suffer through my poor illustration. I chose blue to represent the engine's ass gas. I don't know why.

The very nearly final order of assembly (pictured; left to right, top to bottom) for the additions to the silencer are:

Threaded rod bolted through the blocking piece on the small end of the silencer
Threaded rod comes through to larger side of silencer with backing nut for
First perforation section (with two rows of holes along the sides, difficult to see) to be directly riveted to
First blocking plate, secured with nut. Then comes
Second perforation section, spaced apart from first blocking plate with nut. Finally,
Third perforation section/second blocking section/keep-it-all-inside end bit, secured with two nuts

I tried to design this so each piece could be taken out and repaired/replaced easily; nothing is welded or adhered in place (although time and heat may effectively weld the threaded rod and nuts together), and the rivets can be drilled out or ground off. I have already cleaned and primed the two pieces in the silencer that are clearly not stainless steel with exhaust header primer and will be painting the larger of the two black with high heat enamel spray paint. I'll have to sure the painted piece in an oven at a few different temps. I'm not going to use the household one for obvious reasons. I do have a small toaster oven in the garage with lots of metal sheets that fit in it. I think (I REALLY don't know, but I think) if I shield the exhaust silencer piece from heat directly radiated from the heating elements and only let convection heat the silencer piece, the paint should cure as it is supposed to. Plus, even if the black paint doesn't work for some reason, all of the parts in the silencer are directly exposed to the soot from the exhaust gasses. A few rides in, and everything will be black whether you want it to or not.

That brings us to now. I am going to be painting and curing the pieces soon. I haven't yet started the engine with the new packing yet.

No progress has been made on the quick shifter project; I prioritized not worsening my tinnitus over a possibly working way to increase 0-60 times.

Oh and one more VERY small bundle of joy pictured.

Interesting use of a drain plug; it's a good solution, particularly because it's SS.
I haven't seen the movie; I'll look it up.
What is kitty's name?

The frisky feline's name is Jack! I would have preferred digit or pinky or polly - Jack is a polydactyl cat. However, my mother's previous cat was named digit and she only had it for about a month before it ran away.

Polydactyl on just one paw or more?

Both front paws.

He'll be able to take a round out of a dog if necessary.

Apologies for waiting almost a month between updates, but I've hit a mental project exhaustion tipping point. Details at the bottom of the post (kinda whiny/needed-to-vent/oh-man-I-need-a-therapist)

Post 1/2

Ever since my bike was delivered the throttle tube was quite loose on the handlebars. Something like 1-2mm of play between the ID of the tube and the OD of the bars. By comparison the throttle tube on my scooter is quite snug. I decided removing the slop from the tube is worth while since it will give me finer throttle control.

I removed all the bolts holding the right handlebar control cluster together and disconnected the throttle tube from the throttle cable. I measured the OD of the handlebars and the ID of the throttle tube to see which is the culprit... The throttle tube! It was about 2.4mm diameter too big. I decided to wrap the handlebars with a very thin, slippery fabric to fill the void. The best thing I could find was a synthetic almost tyvek-like fabric. I wrapped the handlebars and trimmed off bit by bit until the throttle tube fit on snugly while still being able to snap back to closed if I let go of the throttle tube.

As the bike is now, the clutch handle has a very uneven feel. The friction zone of the clutch is RIGHT where you start to feel "real" tension on the handle, not just the spring tension holding the cable taught. So from the point where the clutch is not being held in, up to right before you are in the friction zone is just spring tension, but as soon as you enter the friction zone all the way to the clutch handle being completely pulled in, there is tension from the clutch pressure plate springs as well as the clutch return spring.

It has been difficult to develop muscle memory for the clutch friction zone with the tension changing based on the distance moved. I want to install an additional return spring for the clutch to give the handle a more consistent feel. The extra spring I have from the exhaust is too small and I don't want to go out to the hardware store and pay $5 for a single spring. I'll need to fabricate something at a later date.

My whole body misses having a balance shaft.

The last couple times I was out on a ride, I heard some metal rattling while riding. It wasn't like a too-lean engine knock, it wasn't the valves (though they did seem a little louder than normal), and it didn't change with engine speed, but with road speed and condition. Something made of metal is loose or something loose it hitting something metal. Quite possibly one of the unused wiring harness connectors flapping around in the breeze and jamming out to the good vibrations from the engine and the wheels. I still have yet to properly secure the wiring harness as much as I would like it to be. For another time.

I checked the valve clearances again since the valves seemed just a wee bit too loud. The intake had gotten tighter than .003" and the exhaust was at .005". I adjusted both to a .004" go/.005" no go clearance. That seemed to work, though there was little difference is noise of the valve train.

The baffle I made in the previous post did work at quieting down the exhaust slightly. Subjectively, it went from an 8 (0-10; quiet to loud) to a 7 or 7.5. Audible, noticeable, measurable difference, but not quite enough for me. Also, I could tell it was one of the more restrictive ways of quieting exhaust; 3/4 to WOT was in the 10 AFR range without jet changes.

Yep I did it again. Another thing to try and quiet down the exhaust. I'm obsessed at this point. It is either this or (gulp) back to the restrictive as hell OEM exhaust and goodbye wideband.

I first laid eyes on the muffler while searching, oddly enough, how mufflers are manufactured and difference quieting techniques. I found a link to a muffler that just looked like any ol' pit bike muffler. However this one was marketed as "quiet". I had never seen an after market muffler marketed as quiet. Most try and push that they are loud and brash. Tbolt's website doesn't provide a picture of the inside of the muffler or of the silencer after it has been removed. I needed to see how the silencer was built to determine, from pictures only, if the muffler would be quieter than the one I have with the baffle installed.

I searched ebay, amazon, and aliexpress for "pit bike muffler" and scrolled through all the listings my brain could handle and clicked on the ones that had a similar looking exhaust. Finally I found a listing that showed the silencer after it was taken out of the muffler. Perforated tube with end rounded off and closed, roughly 30% open area, 1/2 covered by a fiberglass muffler packing sheet. In my mind, that silencer would make that muffler quieter than what I have now.

OK, I've decided to buy the muffler as a last-ditch attempt to quiet the exhaust down to a reasonable level and keep my neighbors friendly, or at least tolerant and non-hostile. I can be pretty sure that any listing for this specific type and look of muffler will have the silencer made as shown in the pics from the above link, so I searched the three sites again and found that I would have to wait for at least a few weeks to get one; no US sellers had them in stock. So it would have to come from overseas; the place where all of our electronics are made, the place where they drink a lot of tea, or the place where everything is trying to kill you (affectionately, China, UK, and Australia). I chose the slow boat from china; no rush, save money.

Also, a plus for this particular muffler (for me at least) is that the ID of the exhaust inlet is 38mm. Most chinese after market mufflers are 51mm and come with a conical 38-51mm weld-on adapter. The OD of the exhaust pipe I have is 36mm. I thought I would need (and bought) slip rings that go on exhaust pipes to effectively increase their OD, but I didn't need them. Just some sealant around the pipe before final assembly worked fine.

14 business days later...

It's smaller than I thought it would be. :hehe: The silencer looks just like it did in the listings I found. Cool, I got the muffler I wanted.

Removing the old exhaust was quite easy thanks mostly to the outside of the exhaust being coating in a chrome like plating. That made twisting off the old muffler and scraping the old sealant off quite easy. Luckily the mounting hardware I made for the old exhaust would 90% work with the new muffler. I had to mount the hanger supplied with the muffler backwards so the part that is supposed to be facing outward and have either a nut or a bolt in it, would be facing inward, pressed against the muffler bracket I made. Not the prettiest solution, but it works. I need to put 2 or 3 washers between the space in the clamp halves so I can torque down the mounting bracket's bolt without worrying about snapping the clamp.The new muffler fit perfectly and stays in place even without springs thanks to the muffler clamp.

With a cold engine and full choke, I started the bike with the new muffler. Yes! this is the sound level I wanted! Loud with a brap under load but calm and civil while cruising. A bit louder than oem with more pop and no buzz or raspy sound. Yeah, trying to explain changes in sound with words is difficult.

After the inaugural run with the new muffler I noticed a few wisps of exhaust packing being pushed out of the muffler. It seems as through this muffler wasn't made with any or enough sealant between the end cap and the main muffler part (the part that is that weird brown/slightly purple/burned bronze color). I have more than enough packing material to repack this muffler if need be. For the time being, I am not worried about tiny bits of the packing material making an escape, unless somehow the whole of the material came out in one giant moto-snot-rocket. Then I would just laugh.

Post 2/2

I was actually planning on having to use the OEM exhaust, so I also bought the cheapest integrated brake light at the same time as the muffler. I think it was only $10. The reason behind needing the integrated brake light is, as the bike was with the fender-elimination I did, the turn signals were RIGHT in the way of the muffler. The only way to use the OEM exhaust with turn signals was either to put the stock license plate/turn signal holder back on or make/buy a integrated tail light.

I chose the integrated taillight that I bought for a few reasons;

1. CHEAP!
2. Easily modifiable. Many of the reviews stated that the lens cover fell off after just mocking up the light to their bike. Perfect! I won't have to worry about breaking the entire light housing by taking it apart with screwdrivers and the hammer of encouragement. All of the LEDs are through-hole; easily removed and replaced/upgraded.
3. Subjectively, it seemed the least... immature? Some taillights had sections shaped as eyes or wings. Not my taste.

The quality of construction is what you would expect by buying from the lowest bidder in china. Very dry solder joints, Poor wire-to-PCB soldering, drilling holes right through the PCB for mounting in the housing. But it works.

Some of the common complaints of this product were LEDs snapping off at the legs, supposedly because of harsh vibrations. I could party cure the reinforcing of the LEDs and at the same time reduce or eliminate the chance of the PCB corroding from trapped moisture/water. I just needed a lot of clear nail polish. You read that correctly.

I've used clear nail polish as a protective coating on electronics before and it worked great. It's cheap compared to the "professional" products and it doesn't require dangerous chemicals to remove if repairs are needed. I poured about 1/2 of a bottle of nail polish on each side of the PCB and spread it out over the whole board, making sure to coat all exposed copper traces. On the other side I made sure all of the LEDs had nail polish brushed up against them as mechanical reinforcement against vibration. The pictures show the end product of the coated taillight.

The fitment of the light wasn't as good as the OEM brake light. The old brake light aimed along the lines of the fairing; it pointed and shone at an upward angle, where the eyes of a driver behind you would be. The new light points at the horizon/no upward angle. All of the lights are still very visible from the "flat" angle, but it is obvious that this light was originally made for another platform and someone at some time discovered that it fit the grom well enough to sell it as a grom taillight. In the pictures of the new muffler on the bike, the top right picture shows how the new taillight is angled horizontally

I had to super glue the bolts that anchored into the back of the light housing - just approaching "snug" would make the bolts turn in the housing. I also had to use some washers around the bolts and the rubber mounting pieces on the bike. Sorry, I didn't get any pictures showing exactly what I mean here.

I also included pictures of the stock/OEM brake light PCB in case anyone wants/needs to repair/upgrade/modify theirs. Quality is about the same as the integrated taillight.

As I was working on installing the taillights, I noticed that one of the rubber feet for the seat had broken free and was just resting next to the battery. The LITTLE conical tip that is supposed to hold the rubber foot in place in the seat had sheared off. Not surprising really, this "rubber" can be ground away with one of your fingers.

The rubber feet on the seat are ALL that keeps the seat from just sitting and rubbing on the battery and the frame, I needed to fix this before I could ride the bike again. I didn't take too many pictures of this process, I wasn't in a good mood when I discovered that I now had a compulsory repair on my bike. I needed to use a bolt to hold the rubber foot in place, but the hole in the seat is only open on one end - there's cushioning and covering blocking the other side. You can kinda see in the right-most picture of the seat repair, I had to grind and drill a smallish slit into the side of the rubber foot mounting point. I got a washer and a bolt in through the side-slit (that sounds dirty) and managed to get screwdriver to hold the bolt in place while I tightened a nut down from the outside. After a test ride, the foot stayed where it was supposed to.

I wasn't planning on replacing the shifter arm so soon, but a fortuitous deal happened to cross my path. I got this even though it doesn't explicitly say it will not work with grom-sized engines. One of the reviewers stated that it did fit his grom. Oh, and just so you know if you are looking for a similar shifter arm; all of the stock images for the IMS folding shift lever (at least on amazon) are the same, you will have to look at reviewer pictures to see what the shifter arm really looks like.

The shifter arm is between the two arms I have now in length. The shortest one is the one I have been using. It is difficult to get into neutral as well as really "feel" shifts with this one. The largest one has very poor quality welding. I can just see that arm snapping off after 100 shifts.

The new shifter arm does fit the splines on the shift shaft! But, without modification it cannot move at all once installed on the shaft. Both top edges touch the left side engine cover. With some chamfers ground it to the top edges, the shifter works perfectly. I also included a top-down shot showing how the shifter arm lines up with the foot peg, in case someone was thinking about getting this same shifter arm.

I have made some progress on the short shifter circuitry. I got 99% of the design into software so it will be easier to plan out how every chip is laid out relevant to every other chip. I've attached a copy of a schematic for most of the circuitry. This is my first time using this particular piece of software, so I'm not sure I'm doing anything correctly. The files I have attached should be treated as a rough draft and a guide, not as a finalized design. I take no responsibility for the out come of your actions with or without the use of the files I am providing (It might go boom and it's not my fault).



Whiny/needed-to-vent/oh-man-I-need-a-therapist stuff starts... ... Now!

I'll save you from having to become my therapist for this post; I'll keep things short...ish (I tend to write a lot in my posts).

I know I've mentioned my anxiety in previous posts, but I don't know if I said that I damn near have an anxiety-induced panic attack EVERY time before I ride my bike. At first I thought it was the more-or-less straight open exhaust and muffler screaming LOOK AT ME!! (not to mention making your chest pound from the sound pulses, which feels exactly like a panicking heart beat). As you can read in my previous posts, I tried to quiet down the exhaust by repacking it and making an additional baffle/silencer. The repack did nothing, the baffle helped marginally, anxiety temporarily reduced, but the exhaust was still to loud for my tastes/mental state (honestly I'm not sure if there is a difference between my personal tastes and whatever reduces anxiety the most).

I bought a new designed-to-be-quieter muffler, it further reduced the exhaust note to something I can tolerate if not learn to love. The first ride after installing the new muffler was great. The second ride wasn't as good.

I'm still making stupid beginner mistakes during every ride. I need more seat time to get used to and learn... everything. But every time I even think about going out for a ride my insides tighten and I get increasingly panicky. I has become a chore to push myself to go ride. A passion absolutely should not be like that.

Another facet of my mental state is the realization that owning/riding/working on a bike has been one of the things my brain decided it just needed to experience. Let me elaborate;

All throughout my life I have never had (except for one, kinda) a real lasting hobby/interest/passion. I ravenously attack any new interest I happen to find with more planning, research, question asking, and mental focus than I am capable of. Notice I said, "more... than I am capable of." I will forget to go to the bathroom, eat, and notice that I am tired. One of the many symptoms of ADD. Oh yeah, I'm 95% sure I have undiagnosed ADD. Where was I? Right, Any new interest will usually last no more than a month. The attempted EFI conversion I did in this thread was the longest a single project has held my interest. Well the spark has stopped um... sparking (my mental interest spark, that is). I can never predict when my interest in a particular thing will stop or what will cause it to stop, but like death, taxes, and stupidity; it is unavoidable.

This post is going to likely mark my (long) pause in this project. Depending on how long from now it is when I decide to start messing with the bike, I may either continue this thread or start a new one. I'll still try and check on the thread and answer questions. In the event that I do decide to sell some or all of the bike, I'll try my best to give the forum here first dibs on items. All of you have been so kind to me. Thank you.

TLDR - I cannot enjoy something that I have to push past horrible feelings to get to. I got bored. I'm looking for a new hobby to sink my mental teeth into. I'm making excuses. I love you all.

Later Dudes.

I can appreciate what you're saying about projects, but my affliction is dissimilar. My problem is too many concurrent projects and not enough focus/time/prioritization. I'm working hard on that aspect of my social style right now, although I admit that I just started another project. :D

Im sure this post is dead, but where did you get your efi kit from? Or did you buy it piece by piece?

You can find these kits on Aliexpress. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3278...ddresstype=600

Can u send me a link for that kit please or if anyone knows anything about arduino???

Please help me out I purchased the rojo system with ecu on throttle body but that's here nor there I just wanna know what u did about stator/generator???? For charging and lights and runny Ng efi fuel pump all time ???? Only stator I know of is the one from ooracing but in the states we can't get it so I'm wondering what u uses?????

Please shoot me email at danielppoleet@gmail.com

If it turns out that the software truly doesn't support wideband, I'll just skip right over using the Chinese ECU and software and use the genuine microsquirt and tunerstudio.

I am sure I could eventually get a decent tune on an engine with just a narrowband sensor for ECU feedback.

I have seen a few videos of people with this same kit or one very like it get an engine running and rideable but this is my very first foray into EFI conversion and tuning.

So I want the experience to be as good easy as I can make it so I won't have a sour taste left in my mouth from a bad first experience with tuning.

I already have 90% of the bike taken apart and will probably drop the engine sometime between tomorrow and Wednesday.

Trying to drop an engine, even one this small, without an platform jack is... painful. I'll probably end up using a combination of trolley jacks, jack stands, and rope to drop the 125 and lift the 190.

Unless something unexpected happens, I probably won't document the engine swap part too heavily as it's quite straight-forward; take stuff off of your bike until you can remove the engine.

Disconnect anything that is connected between the engine and the frame or wiring harness, remove front sprocket, remove the right rear set to get access to a bolt, remove engine mount bolts that's where I am right now.

Drop hopefully not literally the engine, new engine install is reverse of removal.I think there is one or two wires that I have to move/swap, if you were going to stay carbureted, you'd be 95% done.