Bike of The Week #4 – Zero Electric Moto Review / 2 Stroke Scooter Tuning

BOTW #4 Review – Zero Electric Motorcycle

Let’s get one thing out of the way. I’m anti electricity and pro gasoline. I’ve accidentally huffed more premix than I care to tell you about. I love the smell of dead dinosaurs on fire almost as much as I love drugs and alcohol, but I’m not allowed to have drugs and alcohol anymore, which leaves me with the dead dinosaurs.

Know why the dinosaurs died? It wasn’t because of a big ass asteroid or whatever the scientists have to say about it. It wasn’t because they failed to adapt. They gave their lives because the Gods of Internal Combustion descended from Hot Rod Heaven and explained to them in dinosaur language that in the future they would be poured into Ferrari V12s and Big Block Chevys and MotoGP bikes.

The Gods showed the dinosaurs pictures of all of this from the future and the dinosaurs said you know what? They said that’s bitchin’ in dinosaur language and they started climbing into the tar pits and oceans and standing in front of tsunamis and dying in deserts en masse. That’s how it all happened. That’s why the dinosaurs died. I DID MY OWN RESEARCH!! Who gives a wet fart about the how?

Blessed be the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are rad. Thank you dinosaurs, for without you I would be without my favorite things.

Screw electricity sideways with a rusty hammer. It comes from coal, which comes from dead prehistoric algae, bacteria, and plants. It’s like vegan crude oil. When you burn coal and turn it into electricity, it smells like sugar plums and Jolly Ranchers, which is nothing like the smell of Castor 927 mixed with 112 octane gasoline burned inside an old 2-stroke 500cc roadracing motorcycle. That smells like the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse riding into some poor medieval town and torching it into the ground just because they feel like it, which is to say totally badass. Note: I’m not a paleontologist or a paleobiologist, but I do like to make things up…

So there. Now what of electric motorbikes? I had never ridden one. I believe them to have about as much soul as a Tesla (no soul detected), but the time I drove a Tesla Model X it was easily the fastest car I’d ever driven, which means they have some redeeming qualities. Well I got the chance to ride an electric motorbike, and it was pretty cool.

The one I rode, pictured above, kind of resembled a dirt bike. It was a little wider than a normal dirt bike where the seat met the “fuel tank” section but within reason. Build quality was on par or better than most gas powered motorcycles. It’s belt driven, which means no real maintenance for a chain and no need to ever change the fluid on a shaft drive. One of these days these things and things like it are going to take over the motoring world. But that day isn’t today.

It’s powered by batteries! These batteries aren’t exactly weightless either. The bike carries a lot of weight a lot higher than I’m used to, so it felt quite top heavy while I was riding it. Now for the fun part.

This is the motor on this thing, attached to the countershaft pulley or sprocket. As far as power delivery goes, it’s amazing. The power goes to the rear wheel instantaneously, making a normal bike feel kind of like it suffers from turbo lag. Internal combustion engines build power as they rev. With an electric car or motorcycle, the power hits instantaneously and there’s a whole lot of it on tap.

I assume it works like an RC car. There has to be some kind of “speed controller” that dumps battery power into the motor at a rate determined by the throttle position. I just put a new tube in the rear wheel, but while I was doing that I had thoughts like “this guy never has to buy gas, he’ll never need a new fuel pump, his drivetrain is virtually maintenance free, he can ride home in the middle of the night without waking up the neighbors, he’ll never have to figure out how to clean his own carburetors or pay someone else to do it,” and these thoughts were super weird for me coming from the world of gas-powered machines.

There are advantages for sure, but what the bike has in practical advantages it lacked in character. The electric motorcycle makes plenty of sense, but the thing about motorcycles, especially here in the United States, is they’re not supposed to make sense. Motorcycles are toys in this country. The roads aren’t built or maintained with pedestrians or motorcycles in mind. They’re built for cars. Nearly everyone outside of densely packed cities has a car or truck, or they desperately want a car or truck, because you have to own a car or truck to go anywhere in this spread out country we call home. And if they’re toys, then they should be fun! TOYS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FUN. What kinds of toys do little kids like? Toys that light up and move and make cool noises! Motorcycles are the level 99 version of all of that, toys for grown up little kids.

I  imagine these electric bikes will keep getting better and better, but for now they’re more of a novelty than anything I’d take seriously and actually want to ride, but that’s just my stupid opinion. That and they’re ridiculously expensive. Check out Zero’s website to see how expensive! https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/

I Blew Up My Yamaha Zuma

If you run a Stage6 MK2 Sport kit with a Yasuni C16 exhaust and a 21mm Polini CP carburetor, your stock Yamaha Zuma crank is likely to last about 200 miles before something gives up the ghost. I now know this from experience. Every other time I’ve done a build like this I upgraded the crankshaft at the same time. This time I wanted to see what the Yamaha crank could take.

Stock these bikes (’02-’11 Yamaha Zuma) make like 3-4 horsepower and rev to 7000rpms. The way I set it up it’s revving 10.5k+ and making 10hp+.

The mixture looks like it was burning efficiently based on the above photo. I thought I’d make a mistake and tuned it to lean, causing the piston to seize against the cylinder. That’s not what happened at all.

No scoring, no nothing on the cylinder walls. The cylinder pulled free from the piston as thought it were brand new. My tune was spot on! It was the crank that died. To be specific, the big end of the crank seized up under all of the insane scooting power I decided to throw at it. I built this scoot when it had just a few miles shy of 800 miles. This is how far it made it before the crank blew up:

Anytime you’re building a scooter that’s going to rev past what the crank was designed for, it’s a good idea to replace the crank at the same time unless you like to run stupid experiments like I do. I’ll have this back on the road soon enough, just as soon as I find the time to install a new, bigger, better, badder crankshaft in the cases.

That’s all for now, hope you enjoyed reading, thanks so much. If you have a broken scooter or bike you know what to do!