Fuel Injection for $50?

[Admin]

Found this very interesting so figured I would share. Disregard if it's been posted before.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3004342/p...-fraction-cost

[Gimpdog]

I'd be interested...

[carasdad]

Awesome!!! But it will be a 'No Go' just like the many other inventions before it..as the Oil Companies HAVE NOT allowed in the past...and WILL NOT in the future. The person is either bought out...or just comes up missing one day. Just as the many cars made that got 40-50mpg.. *POOF!*..no longer made.

[skuttadawg]

Sounds to good to be true . If you want EFI check out http://www.ecotrons.com/

[Guest_3]

It'll be a guessing game if it ever makes it to market.

[jct842]

They would sell a ton of them quick at $50. Since my 150 has been trashed I been thinking about riding the riva more. The only big trouble is the small gas tank along with the troublesome carbs on them. I am not the only owner that reports mileage in the 40mpg bracket. I am not so worried about the price of gas, its just that you have to keep visiting gas stations for a fill up. I might pull the carb off the 150 and install on the riva180.

[wheelbender6]

Sounds like an electric fuel pump is built in. There is no O2 sensor to provide feedback, so that slashes the cost and complexity. In my opinion, this is "mechanical" fuel injection that utilizes an electric injection pump. It still should provide a finer, more consistent air/fuel mist than a carb. I'm not convinced that it would reduce emissions drastically. Yes, I'd buy one.

[larrball]

Originally Posted by carasdad

Awesome!!! But it will be a 'No Go' just like the many other inventions before it..as the Oil Companies HAVE NOT allowed in the past...and WILL NOT in the future. The person is either bought out...or just comes up missing one day. Just as the many cars made that got 40-50mpg.. *POOF!*..no longer made.

I hate you Glenn, (kiddin) but only because I think you have a valed point.
$50 ? i wounder about the dependability of the electronics.

As far as the oil/gas/Ethanol suppliers... Na, too many people need a car/truck during the winter day's that cant muster a cool ride to work, let alone install a simple EFI.

Now back in the 70's i lived next to an retired army guy whom was an inventor as we called him.
He had a Popular mechanics magazine that he was reading and writing notes on it.
Out of his 3 son's and my 2 younger brothers i was the only one that took an interest.
He made ( laugh if you want, but it did work.. kinda) a Pie Plate sealed top to top (like a UFO) with a ribbed brass hose coming from a fuel canister to the pie plate that set on top of the carburetor.
He told me it vaporized the fuel to create a fume that will create ignition for the car.

Hell, i Dint have a clue at the time what he was doing and he did blow the thing up a few times, but it did work, although it never idled right (high idle).

That's all i really remember about it.

[qwertydude]

Originally Posted by carasdad

Awesome!!! But it will be a 'No Go' just like the many other inventions before it..as the Oil Companies HAVE NOT allowed in the past...and WILL NOT in the future. The person is either bought out...or just comes up missing one day. Just as the many cars made that got 40-50mpg.. *POOF!*..no longer made.

Unfortunately it's simply not that easy. We do have the technology to make 50-60 mpg cars these days. Problem is nobody would buy them. Even back in the day when you could get a 45 mpg Geo Metro 3 cylinder no one wanted them because they were vastly underpowered and most people considered them unsafe to boot because they were made so lightweight they compromised crash worthiness and to keep them lightweight they were extremely spartan, no options basically.

Right now we do have 40+ mpg cars that aren't hybrids. The Ford Fiesta is one of them but you don't see many of the people who long for the MPG's of back in those days even wanting to drive a Fiesta. I think it's purely nostalgia because even now the good MPG cars are equaling or bettering what we had back then but with actual safety, options and not as anemic performance.

As for the 100 mpg carburetor. Simply a myth. Simple physics will tell you that you can't get a "vapor" carburetor to work. Try jetting your scooter lean and see what happens. And that's all those vapor carbs were doing.

There was Smokey Yunicks adiabatic engine but that was experimental only. It was designed to run extremely hot in order to extract efficiency and even then it proved to unreliable to bring to market. There was experimentation in trying to build all ceramic piston and cylinders to combat the high temperature failures of Smokey's adiabatic design but simply put the oil would coke up and seize the engine because of the heat.

It's not some vast oil company conspiracy. Oil is selling at an all time high and oil companies know it's a limited resource. In fact some of the biggest investors in alternative energy are the oil companies themselves. Only an idiot in an oil company would think they don't need to invest in a diversified energy portfolio.

Right now one of the biggest revolutions in fuel efficiency technology are direct injection high compression engines. These new engines are running higher compression on regular octane fuel than you can even dream of. Compression ratios that would detonate normal engines. IF you take a look the modern small engines now are making the similar fuel efficiencies of what diesel engines used to do just 20 years ago and doing so more reliably and without nearly as much tail pipe emissions to boot.

[prodigit]

My 2ct, but for a while Royal Enfield motorcycles (who are now fabricated in India, after GB sold off all their assets, and moved to India for cheaper production), had similar cheap fuel injection too, but quickly went back to carburetor.

The original Royal Enfield bikes are created with a carb, easy fix when broken. Those fuel injections not. But in order to comply with European law, they had to upgrade their bikes.
The european versions contained a fully functional Fuel Injection system, but the Indian bikes had a cheap fuel injection system like that.

The FI system Indian RE bikes had, did not read the exhaust as it had no O2 sensor in the exhaust, thus it could not autocorrect the air/fuel ratio, and thus was operating just the same like a carburetor. It might work fine on a certain day, but on a rainy day, with different fuel, it would operate worse, or just like a badly set up carburetor.

Just sharing the story, it might, or might not be the same issue here.

[prodigit]

Originally Posted by qwertydude

Unfortunately it's simply not that easy. We do have the technology to make 50-60 mpg cars these days. Problem is nobody would buy them. Even back in the day when you could get a 45 mpg Geo Metro 3 cylinder no one wanted them because they were vastly underpowered and most people considered them unsafe to boot because they were made so lightweight they compromised crash worthiness and to keep them lightweight they were extremely spartan, no options basically.

Right now we do have 40+ mpg cars that aren't hybrids. The Ford Fiesta is one of them but you don't see many of the people who long for the MPG's of back in those days even wanting to drive a Fiesta. I think it's purely nostalgia because even now the good MPG cars are equaling or bettering what we had back then but with actual safety, options and not as anemic performance.

As for the 100 mpg carburetor. Simply a myth. Simple physics will tell you that you can't get a "vapor" carburetor to work. Try jetting your scooter lean and see what happens. And that's all those vapor carbs were doing.

There was Smokey Yunicks adiabatic engine but that was experimental only. It was designed to run extremely hot in order to extract efficiency and even then it proved to unreliable to bring to market. There was experimentation in trying to build all ceramic piston and cylinders to combat the high temperature failures of Smokey's adiabatic design but simply put the oil would coke up and seize the engine because of the heat.

It's not some vast oil company conspiracy. Oil is selling at an all time high and oil companies know it's a limited resource. In fact some of the biggest investors in alternative energy are the oil companies themselves. Only an idiot in an oil company would think they don't need to invest in a diversified energy portfolio.

Right now one of the biggest revolutions in fuel efficiency technology are direct injection high compression engines. These new engines are running higher compression on regular octane fuel than you can even dream of. Compression ratios that would detonate normal engines. IF you take a look the modern small engines now are making the similar fuel efficiencies of what diesel engines used to do just 20 years ago and doing so more reliably and without nearly as much tail pipe emissions to boot.

My Chevrolet Cruze is a well engineered piece of art! It gets an average between 35 and 38MPG, gets 50MPG on the highway when staying below 60MPH, and 70MPG when going 35-40MPH on continuous roads (where there are no stops or slow downs).

There is nothing like setting a carburetor too lean. When you set it too lean, it'll lose performance, and your MPG will go down as well, as you'll need to open the throttle more to achieve the same performance out of it.

There's an optimal setting where performance is maximized. It can be achieved with a slightly lean jetted carb, and a choke. You can use the choke to compensate for the lean setting, to achieve optimal performance, and often by cutting air, get a few HP extra (or a few MPH extra top end).

As far as 100MPG, my 127cc roketa achieves 118MPG, and someone else on another forum gets 120-125MPG out of his BMS BMI 110 (which is the same engine as mine, only mine has a 17cc bigger BBK on it or so.

It's not hard to achieve 120MPG with gears; it is hard to achieve with a CVT.
The question is, how much torque you are willing to trade for MPG.
Gear them higher, and most of the time you'll gain MPG, and top speed, but lose torque.

Then there's also the issue of what kind of engine will work best.
Well, usually between 35-45MPH you get the best gas mileage on almost ALL vehicles. Wind resistance is minimal there. Above 35MPH wind resistance increases a lot for every increase in speed.
With a 50cc, you're basically have to run the engine in the powerband to maintain speeds of 35-45 MPH, and there's a lot of engine wear at those high RPMs.

Increase engine size by 25-50cc, and you almost doubled the power output, while increasing the weight by only a few pounds, as it generally does not need bigger tires, brakes handlebars, suspension... All that mostly stays the same.
Since weight does not double but only increases by a few percent of the overall weight the engine has to pull, and wind resistance is pretty much the same on a 110cc scooter compared to the same size 50cc scooter at the same speeds,
With a 100cc, you can decrease RPMs from 6-7k RPM, to 2.5-3k RPM to maintain these speeds easily.
That means, despite doubling the cc's, your RPMs go down by mpre than half, and at the same time, the throttle can be moved from WOT to 1/4th to halfway open. In other words, not only does a 110cc engine have more overall power, better top speed, but by choosing the gearing right, it can also have higher MPG than a 50cc, all thanks to running the engine at lower RPM.

So, the sweet spot would be somewhere between a 75cc and a 100cc, it has the power to run at just above idle RPMs and maintain speeds of upto 45MPH easily (all day).

Increase CC's and you'll increase torque, and decrease MPG, unless you change gearing (put taller gears on). But when you'd swap a 50cc scooter with a 250cc scooter, not only will the 250cc scooter weigh almost 50% more because it must go faster, (better bigger brakes and shocks, better handlebars, bigger tires), but also because the engine is bigger and more powerful, if you want to maximize MPG, you'll have to put such a tall gearing on them, that at 2-3k RPM the scooter will be doing over 45MPH, where wind resistance becomes a big factor.

For that reason, a 75cc-100cc carbed bike can easily reach beyond 120MPG. I believe for a skinny small guy, under 150lbs, a small, manually geared scooter can be made that could be running a 75cc engine, running at over 125MPG (130MPG even when torque is virtually zero at final gear), with top speeds of upto 50-53 MPH.

Going lower than 75cc, and the scooter will struggle to maintain 45MPH at lower RPMs, plus, you still have the same weight on tires, brakes, a seat, handlebars, lights, and the rider is not going to lose weight, so the overall weight the engine needs to pull remains pretty much the same if you go below 75cc compared to a 50cc scooter (or lower, like some 33cc mopeds).

Going higher than 125cc, and the engine can be optimized to run higher than 45MPH at 2,5-3k RPM, but on the other hand, wind resistance increases at those speeds, and thus gearing can not be doubled when doubling the cc's, and MPG will be forced down.

For that reason I think they should categorize a 50cc scooter as a moped, and have a special, cheap license for 75-125 cc scooters, that's much cheaper than a motorcycle license, and easy to get.
the upper limit of 125cc would only be necessary if the rider is of big posture, or you're riding with 2 people on a bike, or you're living in a hilly terrain, and a 75cc will bring you into trouble (eg: ride below 35 or 45MPH) going uphill.


And then finally, something NONE of the scooters have yet, is like a bicycle, a cruising neutral gear!
Scooters and tiny motorcycles, could benefit from a neutral gear when approaching a red light in the distance. This allows the engine to go into idle mode, while the ODO still counts the miles as you're rolling to a stop.
Instead of having the engine brake (engine braking not only loses energy that gets converted to hot air, and makes use of the vacuum of the cylinder, but also makes you waste more gas than when the engine was idling).

Instead of looking into regenerative braking, engineers would do well in investing in a neutral on those machines (or have a scooter with automatic neutral, meaning whenever you roll off the throttle, the clutch will disconnect, and the engine will go into idle RPM, even if the scooter is still going at a high speed).
For the very simple reason that at idle, the engine uses just as much fuel per stroke as when the engine is used to brake the vehicle. Only in the latter, the engine is sucking 5000 RPM / 4 (for a 4stroke) times fuel, while at idle it's 1200 RPM / 4.

Those moments will add at least 5-10% to MPG numbers, especially if you're in the city; but also on the suburbs where you can speed up to 45MPH on a 40MPH road, then roll to 35MPH in neutral, and accelerate again.
This type of cruising is called hypermiling, and could be applied to scooters as well.

[epyon96r]

I would love a neutral on the scooter. That's a good idea prodigit.

[qwertydude]

Disengaging engine braking on a scooter is dangerous. The brakes tend to be somewhat small in size and scooters, especially the larger kinds, tend to be heavier than motorcycles. So you have high weight and small brakes. Combine those two features with a permanent coasting ability and you'll smoke your brakes on a long downhill. Once the brakes fade you're basically dead meat since scooters also can't lean round corners as greatly as motorcycles.

That extra 5% you gain from coasting certainly isn't worth the risk. There's a reason why it's not implemented in cars or motorcycles with automatic transmissions even though it's a feature that can easily be incorporated. Engine braking is a safety feature.

And as for fuel injection efficiency, there's no carbed bike that can beat a fuel injected engine system that's purpose built for efficiency, problem is most motorcycles aren't built for all out fuel efficiency. The best fuel efficiency examples being Honda. They're famous for knowing how to extract fuel efficiency AND performance out of an engine. The old Honda Metropolitan with a carburetor got about 100 mpg and was rated for about as much. I know this because I used to own one and it got on the money 100 mpg and with a taller CVT could be pushed to 110 mpg. The new one with fuel injection is rated for 117 mpg. To also put it into perspective the Honda Elite 110 with injection gets 107 mpg. That's better than the Metropolitan and it's got 110 cc's of power good for 55 mph, no way you'd get a Metropolitan up to those speeds without serious reliability killing and MPG killing mods.

I actually recently bought a Honda NC700x. And let me tell you there is no carbed 50 hp motorcycle on the planet that can touch it's fuel efficiency. I regularly get 70 mpg just normal driving and commuting. And have even seen as high as 85 mpg if I'm careful and not going fast on the freeways.

I used to have a GS500F it was carbed and got pretty close in MPG at 65 mpg regularly but that had a +3 front sprocket which totally killed acceleration and it also only had 47 hp down 4 hp compared to my NC700x.

Also when measuring MPG the biggest mistake with Chinese scooters is overly optimistic odometers. Every Chinese scooter I've ever ridden had odometers pretty much as optimistic as the speedometers. I'd find the correction factor by plotting in at least a 10 mile course on level ground on Google Earth and following it without deviation and noting how much further the odometer read vs what Google Earth calculated.

With that my BMS V9 Evo got a miserable 70 mpg stock when I thought it was getting 82 mpg before correcting for the odometer error. My Buddy 125 when corrected only got 85 mpg, not the 90 most people reported. So far my MPG king had to be my Honda Metropolitan at 100 mpg and my absolute favorite my Sym Wolf 150. It gets 95 mpg even riding on the freeway top speed 75 mph GPS confirmed. City riding it gets a whopping 105 mpg.

[jct842]

I don't know why some are obsessed with eeking out an extra mile or two per gal when you are already getting 70 or 80.

If you lived in a hilly area like I do you would not be wanting to let your scooter free wheel in neutral. Going down a hill and having your clutch kick out because of low rpms or an engine die is a scarey thing. All of a sudden your scooter is picking up speed just like the throttle stuck wide open! The beauty of a cvt is you have almost total control of speeds with the throttle with out having to touch the brakes.

At the current price of gas the difference between 70 and 80 mpg is 6/10 of one cent per mile, I would rather have my scooter run right than go for extra miles per gallon.

[prodigit]

@qwerty: No one says you need to be coasting and braking downhill, you could be engine braking while coasting. Second, most brakes are well upto the task to make the bike come to a complete stop. Most scoots I have, usually have one bad brake, and one good one (usually the front brake is good, while the back brake is bad; strangely on my ATM50 it's reverse, the back brake locks up the wheel when using it hard, and the front brake I never got to the point of locking). The bad brake is more than enough to slow down the bike even on a downhill, coasting. The good brake makes it stop fast.
Engine braking only takes a few percent off the brakes, and I've yet to see a scooter that needed brake pad changes. All mine I sell before that, and my ATM50 with 5500km on it the pads still look like new!

The Honda NC700x is a great bike. I have been eyeballing the Kawasaki KLR-650, but wasn't as impressed with the gas mileage it gets. The Honda at least gets 10MPG higher, probably due to more efficient gearing, as the kawi is also semi-geared for off road conditions.
Perhaps I'll take a look at that bike at a local dealership!

On most of my Chinese scoots, the ODO is surprisingly correct! It's usually the speedo that's off, I've never had an odo that was off by more than 1 or 2%, compared to the Google maps results, so I don't think MPG is in any way affected by the false speedo readout.
It's quite easy to see, when doing a 100 mile tour, and fueling up just $4 on gas, or $10 like on my Honda VT750.

For people living on the flats, and those who live in minor hill areas, you actually would prefer a neutral. Being in N while rolling downhill saves a huge buttload of gas, and makes MPG numbers skyrocket. It's not less safe than taking your bicycle out on the road, downhill.

the difference between 70 and 80 is really not much, but it starts counting over time.
What you need is a bike that fits your pattern of riding.
The Roketa MC-05-127, with a rear sprocket change from 41 to 31T, does that for me. It rides in town just fine, while having over 110MPG.
If there would be an option for the same bike with an easy to access Neutral, I would get that bike instead, and probably reach over 120MPG (I'm getting an avg of 115MPG on my last rides, with a 118MPG peak on an easy ride).

So compare 120MPG, to 60 or 70, and yes, that's a lot of difference!
That's like paying half the price of gas, with the only downside that the 125's top speed is rather low (55MPH)