Well, we made it (long boring scooter bollox)

Not sure anyones really interested, but what the hell,

we really did travel down to london to buy a 125, that honda fes pantheon
(found some german club sites, and they call them pantys)
Fucking hell the midland main line is bloody slow isnt it, i'm used to the
east coast line taking an hour to london from grantham (distance of about
100 miles) took 1 hour 45 minutes to do a very similar distance, but
nottingham to london, and that was one of the faster trains, glad i only
paid £12.50 for the tickets)

Tube out to hendon, why is it always so fucking hot down there, i went in
with my bike jacket on, and came out in me T-shirt sweating like a ****.

Found the scoot shop, euro scooters (go on, tell me the horror stories about
them
Scoot was what we were expecting, small tear in the seat where some keys
have caught it by the looks of it, few small scratches from filtering or
trying to park too close to a wall, everything worked, engine sounded sweet,
starts up the second the starter engages, just gotta remember to wait for
the fuel injection test light to go out or it wont fire, likewise if you
open the throttle whilst cranking she wont fire.

Full service history including the last one with rollers and belt changed,
one owner, 11 months mot, 3 month warrenty, even has the tool kit present,
ours for £1200 cash (and the **** in the shop wanted us to pay to tax it, a
piss take as sam had been told by the other bod who works there (but not on
mondays) he'd throw in the tax, and a tank of fuel if we paid cash)
we got the shop to pay to tax it eventually, then had fun with the insurance
bastards.

Basicaly on-line quoted £170, fully comp in sams name (3 years experiance on
a provisional and hence she's done 2 cbt's, **** all no claims due to
pissing about with a monthly policy a few times whilst changing bikes, me as
a named rider, krall lock and chain and datatagged)
On the phone to pay for it, their computer said it's £350, took a while to
figure out the **** ups they'd made transfering the on-line quote to a phone
quote to allow me to buy the insurance over the phone.

Then rode it in rush hour down to islington to see her brother, 10 miles
that took 45 minutes, most of the way was bus lanes with bikes allowed, but
the fucking busses dont half get in your way stopping every 2 seconds.

Left islington at about 7, up the A1, stopping a couple of times to let our
arses regain feeling, totally different seat to the transalp, our arses hang
over the sides of the transalps seat, the scootes seat is so wide it cups
your arse cheaks, we'll get used to it, either that or we'll get some gell
pads inserted in our arse cheeks.

Called in at me mums in Grantham for a couple of hours (arrived at 9:30),
then accross the A52, total mileage 165 miles, re-filled the tank once at
125 miles, and worked out we'd got 78mpg,

The scoot will happily cruise at 65, and will touch 70 if pushed, not bad
for 2 up on a 125, BUT i found out asda petrol is fucking shite,
i filled up with BP normal unleaded in london and rode to grantham at 65 all
the way (appart for those sections with a lower limit),
re-filled with normal unleaded in grantham, afterwards it didnt seem to want
to do more than 60, running low on puff after about 52mph, where before
she'd accelerate straight to 65 then run out of puff, and there was no head
or tail wind during the journey.. infact no wind at all this evening.

I guess it'll be ok for sam to get used to the new scoot, she's used to the
chinkie shit heap that did 45 down a 1 in 4 hill, and even then took fucking
ages to get there, so much for all 125's being the same.

yes i know, the speeds i'm mentioning are boring as **** to most of you, but
i've never been one for excessive speed (ok i will just touch 3 figures when
i want to de-stress very occasionaly) but for sam, being able to do the
legal limits is all she wants, and i'll be a lot happier knowing she can
keep up with traffic rather than have them overtaking her all the time.

 

<snip stuff>

Sounds like a blast



--
Dan L

Too much time to think, too little to do.


http://thebikeshed.spaces.live.com/

2002 Triumph Sprint RS 955i (It's big, and it's black)
1996 Kawasaki ZR1100 Zephyr (Gone, but not forgotten)

BOTAFOT #140 (KotL 2005/6/7/8)
X-FOT#000
DIAABTCOD #26
BOMB#18 (slow)
OMF#11

 

I really doubt that the fuel is to blame for this.

 

Ding.

--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 145 2.0 Cloverleaf 156 V6 2.5 S2
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Ignoring the possibility that the first long run the bike has done has
caused bore damage, it's a fact that fuel quality differences will show
up on underpowered heaps more than on bigger engines, where a slight
extra millimetrage of the throttle compensates easily.

 

knew someone was gonna say that,

what i didnt mention was that the scoot got upto 65 again just after being
filled up, then slowly backed off as the shite fuel got into the system,

we'll run off the fuel in it and re-fill with sommat decent and see what
happens,

i rekon it's just the small engine, end of throttle, so crap fuel will show
up big time in a loss of power,
it's an injected engine, so i imagine it'll have a knock sensor as well, and
will have backed the ignition timing off due to the shitty fuel, resulting
in the loss of power.

i know the shitty chinkie scoot we had ran like a dog on normal unleaded,
pinked like ****, it really sounded like someone had emptied a bag of
marbles into the engine,
run it on super and it there was no pinking at all.

 

That's not necessarily true: highly tuned engines will be more
susceptible, I think and nobody's calling a Honda scooter highly
tuned. The fact that it had the arse caned off it, two-up, for 125
miles and only after that decided to be reluctant is probably more
significant .

 

It's the same potato. Only difference is, on a highly tuned engine of
any decent size you'd be made to run at open throttle all the time -
road and licence conditions wouldn't allow it.

I am. (Generalisation) Most bike and scooter engines are highly tuned in
relation to car lumps, for which petrol is generally made, and the vast
majority of which have a large amount of throttle left in hand (or
foot). Of most significance is the throttle to the stop nature of the
trip - the fucker just didn't have anything in reserve and burning
quality of the fuel makes itself known.

"Ignoring the possibility... blah."

 

"mad". Fuckit.

 

you really want us to have fucked this engine dont you

i must admit i do agree with grimly, not all 125's are 'tuned' the same,
most 4 stroke 125 scoots nowadays seem to produce about 5 or 6 hp, this one
puts out about 13 according to the book, so i'd class that tuned a fair bit
more than 'standard' scoot engines,

syphoned the asda fuel out of the scoot, and put it in the transalp, then
took the scoot to a shell garage and filled it up with their standard 95 ron
unleaded,

scoot will touch 70 again, and cruise at 65 with ease, this is still 2 up,
only change is the tyre pressures, adjusted them in london at a petrol
station, one of those electronic air jobbies where you enter the pressure on
the display, then hold the air chuck onto the valve and it fucks about
pumping a bit in, letting a bit out untill it finaly gets the pressure you
wanted,

set it to put 25 psi front, 36 in the rear, it showed 16psi in both, on the
ride home the scoot was a little sensative to white lines and other painted
shit on the road,
this morning i went to lower the rear tyres pressure as sam will be riding
it solo, and found there was almost 60psi in the rear, and 40 in the front,
FFS, i knew the old garage air pumps werent to be trusted as people would
throw them on the floor and dammage them, but i didnt expect the new type to
be so fucking far out.

Anyway, i put the petrol from the scooters tank into the transalp (who's
fuel gauge was in the red), and went for a bimble, could only just squeeze
90 out of it, and it was running really shite, can usually do just over a
ton with ease,
so i guess we got some bad fuel, can't be arsed to moan about it to asda for
7 quids worth, but i'll be watching the papers for 'Grantham asda fuel
fucked my engine' stories,

 

Utter nonsense.

Still nonsense.

OK, does sound like it.

 

I thought so too. They all kick out around 12, right?

Indeed, even 30+ years ago bog-standard 4-stroke 125s like the 1975
SL125 I had back then were kicking out 12.5bhp or more. The strokers
like the RD and GT twins made around 17bhp, IIRC.

A modern 'highly-tuned' 125 would be one making 30bhp or more.

 

well i aint gonna put em on a dyno,

but the spec sheets for the scoots sam was looking at before deciding on the
pantheon showed an average of 6 bhp, all the shitty chinkie scoots put out
about 4 it seems but they dont count as they arent fit to be called
motorised transport.

the pug scoots seemed to be about 6hosses appart from one aimed at boy
racers which was almost 10,
the new style vespa she looked at was 7hp,

but anyway, sam loves the new scoot, and whilst it's not a real motorbike,
she is part of the 2 wheeled crowd again, she was thinking of doing her cage
test at one point, i'd give her my micra and that'd be it, but she decided
that she'd much prefer 2 wheels, so scrimped and saved, sold my car for me
and so on so she could get back on 2 wheels, so that must count for
something.

She can do what she always wanted now, go out for rides with me or her mates
and keep up, went to matlock yesterday, then up some of the steep roads
around there to crich, and she kept up doing the legal limits all the way,
and overtook quite a few learner bikes and scoots in the process which made
her happy.

 

I can't help thinking that you were either looking at 50cc specs or
can't read.

http://www.bikez.com/motorcycles/honda_fes_125_pantheon_2003.php

Shows the Pantheon at 15bhp.

The Vespa 125 scooter (The S) is about 11.

Yamaha's X-Max 125 is about 15.

Or perhaps you were reading the horsepower rating in Kw (they quote that
nowadays, for some), in which case you'd get a figure of about
two-thirds that for HP.

 

meh, 50cc's are 3 hosses arent they to be classed as a ped.

was deffo reading the specs for the 4 stroke 125's.. but from different
sites.

aye, but that's the 2 stroke version, and that site claims the 2006 model
has a 4 speed gearbox and a carb, and the 2007 model has chain drive!!
honda's data said it was about 13 hosses.

**** knows, why the twats cant just pick one figure and use it uneversally,
some sites quote Kw, PS and BHP, but converting them gives different figures
to what they rekon.

anyway, it's all bollox at the end of the day, this scoot will do 70mph 2up
now the shite fuel is out of it's system, and sam loves it, so that's all
that matters really.
riding it more sedately solo got her 95mpg today, so she's double pleased,
tripple pleased as she dosent come back bitching about all the cages who
overtook her and shouted abuse as she wa stuck doing 45 up a slight hill as
happend on the chinkie scoot, instead the boasts about how many learner
bikes she overtook.

 

Oh, I give up. You're too thick to own any form of powered transport.

 

well i dont really care much for power figures, this all started because
most people say all 125's are the same, but my experiance is are they ****
as like,

dont help when trying to make sense of it, half the sites give contradicting
info, i.e. one site will say a certian engine produces 13.5 bhp, the next
will say 15, the next will list in in KW, the next in ps what ever the ****
that is,

 

Thankyou Mr Murray.