mpgmotors.com Blog

Here’s the windup and here’s the Pitch

Customers sometimes ask to hear my “pitch”. So I’m starting tonight with the Hyosung GV650 Avitar.

The GV650 Avitar - A truly unique bike in the marketplace! Hyosung used the 90 degree, liquid cooled, V-Twin motor with an 11,000 rpm redline that is often dyno-tested between about 65-68 hp at the back wheel - IN A 500 lb bike! The unique part is the result  - a ‘performance cruiser’. A performance cruiser is almost an oxymoron in the 650cc size. You combine a motor that makes terrific power in the cruiser class for it’s size in a relatively light frame and you get a bike that Motorcyclist magazine clocked in the quarter mile at 12.75s and 99.50mph. Top speed is reported to be 120mph+.

Motorcyclist tested the Victory Hammer S and the HD Night Rod the following month. The Avitar’s 1/4 mile time beat the Hammer’s and was within a 1/2 sec of the 12.26 put up by the NightRod. I drove one 700 miles last summer and averaged right around 50mpg. Oh, there is a lot of bang for the buck in this cruiser at $6,299. Since it’s a 650, insurance costs are low as well. Last, you get a lot of looks when sitting on the Avitar!

All Hyosung motorcycles and scooters have a two-year, bumper-to-bumper, transferable warranty. It doesn’t cover wearable components - you smoke the back tire off (and it can smoke it) - it’s on you.

I can fit the Avitar to almost anyone. Usually I ask people to pick up the bike off the side stand. It feels so light you usually hear, “Wow” or “expletive deleted”. You can stretch your legs with the adjustable footpegs in the forward position or fit a shorter inseam with the pegs about 2″ back in the rear position. It takes about 45 mins to move the pegs. You get everything you need, stock, to adjust them yourself.

It handles as well. The Avitar has Bridgestone Battlax sport bike tires, triple-disc brakes and a low maintenance belt drive. Within the limits of ground clearance it’s a fun, yes I said fun, bike to ride. It is also an easy bike to ride. The clutch is light and it’s geared relatively low making it an easy bike to move off the line. I do recommend the Avitar to new riders - the clutch, light feeling, good brakes and low seat height all add up to a great first bike.

The bike has a bit of an attitude compared with, say, a Honda Shadow. You can plug it along as well but twist it and it goes. The liquid cooling works great in traffic, I sat on Rt. 309 at a standstill for 45 mins and just let it idle. Then the temp guage went halfway between cold and hot, fan comes on then, temp guage goes down, repeat.

It doesn’t feel like it has a lot of flywheel playing through a 5 speed transmission. It’s got a digital dash, a CLOCK - very nice, two trip odometers and an adjustable front suspension for both rebound and compression. The rear shocks are adjustable for preload. The Avitar revs quickly and goes quickly.

You go out, throw your leg over this one, thumb the button and take off. I predict you will do this often, I do. If you want to make a fast bike you can put in a strong motor or make it light. With the Avitar, Hyosung did both and they got it right. Want to hear it from someone else? Look at Chrissa Pedersen’s post when she took her Avitar down the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Then let’s go for a ride!

Brotherly Love

Ok, so the point here is that efficiency goes beyond using less fuel. We put nine scooters and motorcycles in the same space as the MPG Motors F-150.

We only have so much space. Population densities continue to increase in SE Pennsylvania along with many other areas. Scooters and motorcycles take up a lot less space than my truck. Now, a lot of people drive a truck like my truck. I can put a lot of stuff in my truck and I can haul a trailer, a scooter and a bike on the back. It’s a great truck! But, it’s gotta be big so I can haul all that stuff. So we rolled out all these new Hyosung’s into the spot left after I moved my big truck. Nine, nine different vehicles fit in that spot for my truck.

Here’s what I’m after - and I need your help.

First, there are spots in the average parking garage and parking lot that aren’t big enough for your basic parking spot. They have a funny shape, aren’t the right size, you have to turn too sharp to get a car in. So, it’s wasted space and it isn’t getting used.

I want pictures people! I want some pictures of places where a scooter(s) or motorcycle(s) could be parked that isn’t being used. I need the address, owner (or municipality) and a nice digital image.

Next, I want some volunteers that are willing to see if we can’t convert some of this wasted space into better deals for bikers. If a bike doesn’t take the same space as a car, can said biker get a deal on the parking? It happens in other cities, it can happen here.

Bikes and pipes

The following makes no claims of legality of modifications or the affect on warranties. It is just a discussion of the effects on the engine after piping a bike.

Piping a sport bike or cruiser is the most common question we get about upgrades for our motorcycles. That question always makes me nervous particularly if the next question is, “How much does it cost?” Owners pipe their bikes but rarely do the other things they need to do it correctly. Bad things don’t automatically occur, but you can almost never just “change one thing”!

Carbureted or fuel-injected, it doesn’t matter. If you change the exhaust for more power, to change the sound, to make it look better - you probably changed the amount of back-pressure within the muffler and the gas flow through the motor. Whatever it was, whether you like it or not, you changed the flow through the motor.

The cylinder(s) in your stock engine originally got a certain amount of fuel and air mixed together and then burned to create, among other things, exhaust gases, noise and power. The engineer was looking to achieve a ratio of air and fuel somewhere around 14 to 1.

Let’s look at what’s changed by modifying or replacing a pipe… You put in a pipe that is almost always louder and usually makes a claim of reduced back pressure. Fine, it probably does. But what did we really do by installing a pipe with less back pressure? We allowed more gases to flow easily out of the motor. That will pull in more air and a small amount of fuel too. More air than fuel, however. Also, back pressure from the muffler can hold intake gases in the cylinder effectively richening the mixture at lower rpms. Either effect, reducing back pressure and better flow, will lean the fuel-air mixture. Leaning the motor (assuming it was adjusted properly to begin with) increases the combustion temperature and can actually cost you power or take you into a bad area during acceleration like stumbles or hesitation or backfiring on decceleration. You can actually increase or decrease certain pollutants. In extreme cases you can hurt the motor by raising the temperature in the cylinder particularly around the hot parts - like the exhaust valves.

Let’s talk about where we live. In the Philadelphia area (and many areas now) gasoline is a blend of traditional gasoline and ethanol. Ethanol also tends to lean out combustion. It has an oxygen atom that adds air to the mixture. We rarely see rich fuel/air ratios on newer bikes from any manufacturer. They are generally acceptable but on the lean side of acceptable. The ethanol/gasoline in the Philadelphia area just isn’t helping. Take a bike that was running lean with the stock pipe, add ethanol blended fuel and is then piped - you just got yourself a real hot motor.

Please take a look here:

 http://www.dansmc.com/Spark_Plugs/Spark_Plugs_catalog.html

Most of your new bike spark plugs are going to look like #23 in this picture - before you put the pipe on!

I never see electrodes like 13 and 14 (some of the “best” spark plug pictures) on a bike unless the bike was made a while ago or has been rejetted already. What we would like to see is a plug like #18 in the picture.

To pipe your bike the right way, you need to consider the effect of the pipe and adjust the fuel supply to compensate for the increased gas flow through the motor. Your spark plugs give you the best indication of what is happening in the cylinder but you need to check them correctly and, to be really picky about it, at a number of different conditions.

Here is a good discussion of what this entails:

http://hmfengineering.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32

Your traditional carburetor adjustment for an aftermarket pipe is a jet kit. On a fuel-injection motor, you need a device to remap (reprogram) the unit. Both modifications will be working towards adding fuel to cover the additional air allowed into the cylinder by the pipe. The jet kits can include new jets and a different needle. It’s a job to figure out the right jet and needle when you have your new pipe on your own bike and it’s no better than an educated guess by the jet kit developer when the pipe can be one of many pipes out there - each with a slightly different character. This is why you have to do so many plug checks to get it right. “Right” can be affected heavily by the altitude where you ride, the temperature, the humidity, phase of the moon (just kidding about that one)….

There are a lot of different variables. You got to do this right or your pipe will cost you power, pollute more and maybe even hurt the motor.

Second car? First bike!

Great customers (and we have a lot of them!) teach us as much as we pass on to them. One family stopped by recently and told us they needed another vehicle. They had a shared car but their work situation had changed and now they work in two different places - not close! They decided they needed another vehicle. What they did that was generally new, neat and different was that instead of looking for a second car, they went looking for a first motorcycle. Why did this make sense for them? It was more than just one reason…

First our customer had been a motorcyclist in the past and wanted to get back to riding. The ability, knowledge and desire to ride was already there.

Second, the bike will get much better gas mileage and was less expensive than a small used car. Insurance was very affordable and they suited up with the savings getting a DOT/Snell approved helmet to go along with the bike.

Finally, the couple had a fallback option, they planned ahead - when the weather prevents riding, they’re going to accept an increased commute time and take the car or the bus and get dropped off at work before heading off to the other work destination. This makes a long commute that day, but not an impossible situation.

The Hyosung GV250 motorcycle, the Hyosung MS3-250 scooter and the Genuine Scooter Company Buddy scooters are great deals that fit this role perfectly. The MS3-250 Scooter is the most expensive of the three. It lists for $4,300. The GV250 has a list price of $3,499 and the Buddy 125cc scooter sells for as little as $2,599. All of these vehicles return at least about 60mpg, have low insurance costs and can go pretty much anywhere in the Philadelphia area. I don’t recommend taking the Buddy out on the turnpikes and large highways. It’s top speed is just about the average speed out there ~65mph. But the two Hyosung’s can easily exceed that with reported top speeds of about 90mph - plenty of speed for your commute.

So, for just about what you would pay for an older used car, you can get a new bike/scooter, save money and have fun!

Speaking of fun, VespaUSA ran a contest and gave away prizes for the best customer-created video. I love the winning video and saw Rex Hermogino (http://www.rexnfx.com) perform it at the CycleWorld show in Manhattan at the end of December! See if this doesn’t dovetail with what our customers did themselves! Then see if Rex’s song doesn’t get stuck in your head!