Mike McLaughlin, his wife and a friend stopped by recently. Friend was riding a Honda CBR 600, Mike and his wife were riding scooters. Now, scooters and sport bikes riding together can and has been done but it’s not something I often see when riders come to visit.
It made much more sense after I spent some time looking over Mike and his wife’s scooters. Mike’s wife rides a Suzuki Burgman 400. Her Burgman has a Leo Vince custom exhaust and also had a big electronic air-fuel ratio gauge near eye-level. We don’t usually see that either! An air-fuel ratio meter??
Mike then showed me his ride, a Yamaha T-Max. The T-Max is relatively new to the US market and “blurs the boundaries between scooters and motorcycles”. In my words, it’s a performance scooter. The stock T-Max starts out with a 500cc twin-cylinder motor. That is almost twice as big as our biggest scooter motor. Our scooters offer a lot of the rest of the T-Max technology, dual front disc brakes, rear disc brakes, four valves per cylinder. We have scooters that can run over 80 mph. Mike’s scooter goes … faster.
Mike started with the T-Max and then he got to work touching it up.
To the stock T-Max, Mike added a Yoshomira R-77 full carbon fiber exhaust system, a J.Costa racing variator (high-performance transmission) and a BMC high flow air filter.
So far so good. The Genuine Stage II Kit we talked about last month (John and Tara’s “One Bad Buddy”) had most all of that.
Then Mike added a Dyno Tune Nitrous Oxide System (NOS) with a 25 shot bottle. Nitrous oxide (laughing gas) was used in World War II to increase the power of the fighter and reconnaissance aircraft – often at high altitude where the air is thinner. You can read what Wiki says about NOS here. Or, you can go watch the Fast and the Furious movie with Vin Diesel. In the F&F movie, they yell “NOS” about every five minutes – it’s a big part of the movie. But adding the NOS system is only half the story if you don’t want the engine to grenade…
Finally, Mike added what I feel is the most critical upgrade – a Two Brothers Juice Box fuel injection controller. All that Nitrous Oxide adds oxygen to the motor and you must add additional fuel if you want the motor to survive. The Juice Box does that for Mike.
Mike did a really professional job. It all looks factory which is often the true test of a modification suite. He knew the technology and did his research and the end result is just what he wanted.
Mike was kind enough to let me ride his ‘Max. I didn’t use the NOS but even without the bottle, it’s the fastest scooter I’ve ever ridden.
Thanks for the ride, Mike! Nice Job!
