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To date Brazil is the world leader in Eth production, and use. The US will of course be last.
I look at the US like I looked at school yard bullies. If the US can not have exactly what they want, when they want it... They will destroy everything to prevent others from enjoying it.

IF The US allowed personal Eth production there would be NO NEED for big oil. That industry would collapse. Same for the economy here. Eliminate the tax revenues from fuel, and liquor... No more US.

The solution? Tax personal manufacture of Eth based on recorded ferments, and legalize/tax pot.

Simple deal, easier life, no more BS from corrupt bureaucrats!

Fixing sh** is easy for me.

Lol, i look as taxes as a subscription to everything.
We pay minimum 36% (+8% market contribution) and then almost everything is already paid for. I like paying taxes. It makes me want to use the government paid universities to get an education and a high-paying job so i can get the things i want later without ever being in debt.
Why would i ever want to produce ethanol personally? It's much cheaper and more efficient to let those specialised in it do that and then buy it later on. It's easy to make ethanol, but it's hard to do it efficiently with waste products.
If everyone in capialist america tried to make their own ethanol, first by using pure sugar, you would run out of that, then by fermenting stuff, then you would run out of whatever you're fermenting, then by using enzymes to cut starch from corn or straw into ethanol, you will also run out of that since every single citizen can't control the process as delicately as a facility to several billion which employs chemists just jo monitor the process and make it more efficient.

You need to stop being so naive. Without big companies, we would have very very (very) little and slow technological advancement in the higher techical fields as chemestry, material properties and engineering. All which are the fundaments of the modern world.

Without big companies to develop enzymes to synthesize ethanol and other big companies to create engines, how would you get bioethanol and what would you use it for?

My 1st real bike besides mini's was a 72 Honda CT70 auto 3 speed. I abused that bike and it never failed to start or move ya down the road. Unbelievable quality build on that bike. Tranny took a lickin and kept on kickin.

Yeah, it's a very old and sturdy engine construction.
As long as Kymco has chosen good materials, it should be very good used on the K-pipe aswell.

Cutting the CDI will alow you to get higher rpm. Up to 9000. This should only be done after you've removed your restriction in the CVT, or if youre very careful not to let the rpm get too high. Double the rpm and you've quadrupled the wear om the engine, give or take, so no reason to drive high rpm, if you can get higher speed simply by making the CVT better.

When you've removed the restrictions, you will go further per revolution of the engine and therefore you can increase rpm without significantly lowering the life of your engine, measured in distance driven.

9000 rpm won't give you imidiate engine failure. I've had the 1 spring per valve version up to 9000 rpm a lot of times without failure and with the 2 springs per valve version i have had the original engine at 12.500 rpm.
When this is said, the force acting on the connecting rod is a function of the mass of the piston times the speed it moves at squared. Double the speed (the rpm) and you'll quadruple the force on the engine parts, so a minor flaw in the metal will become critical. I know a guy whose connecting rod broke after he derestricted it and Kymco wouldn't give him a new engine because he derestricted it which put more stress on the engine parts.
But that's the only guy i've heard of.

I have not done the calculations, so i do not know how much stress the connecting rod are exposed to. I will need the weight of the pushrod and some measurements of the diamentions. I already have measurements of the weight of the piston. If someone can supply me with this, i will be able to tell you the stress of the rod. To precisely tell you what the rod sould be able to cope with and what is material flaws in the production, i will need to know the material, which i will possibly roughly be able to estimate if someone can supply me with a sample. Broken or not, as long as there are more than 4 square mm free plane surface, so i can check the hardness and crosscheck it with CES Edupack material library.

The K-Pipe is a pretty cool bike, but it's such a shame they didn't put a real clutch on it :*** I was thinking about getting one until I heard that.

It's not that big of a deal as soon as you have learnt to use the pedal-activated clutch.
I thought the clutch was the worst thing too, until i tried it. It was wierd and took me a couple of hours of driving in the span of a week to fully get used to it, but now i know how to use them. If you want to go down in gear smothly, just let the rpm fall low in whatever gear you're in before down-shifting. If you need to push the clutch imidiately because you need to break, just push down into the gear which is lower than you are in now and hold the pedal with your foot. You can also use the clutch as normal by only pressing the gear-shift lever halfway down, but there is a real chance that you burn the clutch by driving too much like this.

If you really feel it's that big of a deal, the engine was made in the 50's or 60's, so there are many parts for it and a conversion kit to normal lever-controlled clutch should be easy to find and mount.

To me, the biggest problem is the speed abilities from 80 km/h and above (or the lack of it) and that you get blinded by your own light.
But that can be solved by some change of carb, cam and sprockets. Without being sure, i guess you should be able to hit true 100 km/h with this bike, possibly 110 km/h, but i've yet to see a 125cc go much higher. Only the most expensive from Yamaha and Honda, which costs 4-6 times the price of this can go 120 km/h. I don't know about the Kymco Quannon 125, which on the paper looks great, because the importer here in Denmark is the same guy who imports Honda and he would rather sell CBR than Quannon.
When it finally get too cold for me to drive the motorcycle, i will paint "eye shadow" on the headlight to make sure i don't blind myself and i will show you the result of it.


By the way, someone mentioned Honda Grom, which i think is what is sold as MSX here. I've looked at that one at the dealer also and the K-pipe is slightly bigger.

Hey guys. I've got the K-pipe 125 here in Denmark and i have some news for you. I haven't written about it here, since there are no subforum for it yet.

First of all, it has only 6 kW and a top speed of 90 km/h @ 10.000 rpm and i'll tell you a bit about why.

The power of the engine is restricted by the diamensions of the carb and intake and by the camshaft.

The carb is only 17,5mm which gives a restricting effect from only 6500 rpm (500rpm above max torque), because the air speed in the intake passes 0,3 times the speed of sound. A 20 or 24mm would be more fit for a 125cc and specially when is has to go up to 10.000 rpm, where it has to suck in the air in a very short time. I am very curious if the diameter in the intake tract of the cylinder head continues to be this small, but Kymco has put a security bolt to fasten the manifold so i can't remove it and check at the moment.

The intake valve is only open for 150 degrees because it closes before the end of the intake stroke and the exhaust valve way too long time before the exhaust stroke is done. Also there is no valve overlap but a couple of degrees between the closing of the exhaust and the opening of the intake. This suggests that they have not been able to comply with the emission control with a carburated engine while still keeping the power high and the cost low.

I do not know much about the exhaust, other than that the pipe from the engine to the silencer has an outer diameter of 25mm and that the outlet from the silencer has an inner diameter of 17mm. Visually, the exhaust on the 125cc looks identical to the 50cc model sold in Germany and other European countries, but since it is not sold here in Denmark i cannot find any data or anywhere to measure to compare.

The top speed is limited both by the low power output and because the highest gear (4th) has an output 0,96 while the chain sprockets are 14-36. I am about to mount a 34-tooth rear sprocket which should give a 6% speed increase, which is what the dealer said i should go for to not loose to much power. Because the wheel is already in the position closest to the engine, removing two teeth behind can be done without having to shorten the chain.
The top speed at the moment in the original state is a stable 90 km/h @ 10.000 rpm if the wind is in the back or it is downhill, 93-96 km/h if lying behind a truck on the highway. If the wind is in the face the top speed will fall to 70-80 km/h when i'm trying to keep an aerodynamic body position. My weight is 56 kg and then i'm equipped with a leather suit, a flip-up helmet with sun visor, leather boots, leather gloves and a 1,3m steel chain, putting the total weight added to the weight of the motorcycle at around 80 kg. This makes me conclude that this is a kind of ideal scenario.
Also, don't try to go above 90 km/h. The engine vibrates noticebly above 9.500 rpm and a lot above 10.000 rpm. Below that, there are no problems with the vibrations though.


When looking away from the engine and speed, there are both good and bad things.
The speedometer is off by 15%, which is kind of a lot because it is a digital speedometer.
The headlight has a design flaw which means that you partially blind yourself when using the long light.
The gearbox is with a centrifugal starting clutch and a pedal-activated main clutch, which gives some opportunities for very fast gear shifts, but requires the rider to learn to drive this way, since you have to engage every gear and have to keep the gear pedal pressed if you want to unclutch. More of that if we get a subforum to this. It was wierd at first, but now i'm comfortable with the gear box and can use it properly to my advantage.
The ride is very comfortable with soft front shock absorbers and a kinda hard rear spring, but i haven't had a passenger with me yet. I can see that the passenger has to have kind of short legs though because the footrests are kind of close to the seat.

I've got both the workshop manual, the parts list for the 125cc and the parts list for the 50cc as pdf files if anybody want them. I can see from the workshop manual that it may have been planned to be with a rear disc brake but is now with a drum, so i guess it can be possible to get a disk conversion kit when it's been fully introduced to all markets.

Anyway, the bike feels good, comfortable, safe and of good quality, but it can be felt that this bike is made in a way to minimise costs. And it is really cheap.


I won't fill this thread with too much of this bike, but if you want to see pictures and videoes, you can see my thread here, but it is in danish, so you might be forced to use a lot of google translate.


I'm looking very much forward to seeing it launched in the US, because there will be more parts on the market, which will eventually leak to Europe.

Baddi, could you tell me how you connected the rev counter?

I got mine first connected the original way, to the coil and Ecotrons CDI unit, but that didn't work. The signal comming from the CDI was not what the Rev counter needed.
Now I have connected the Rev counter directly to the pulser/pickup, it is responding now but it's not 100%. It spikes a lot.

I have had the Stage 6 speedometer both with the Ecotrons setup and with the original setup. The rev counter wire has one wire that should be tapped into the puckup output (the wire from the pickup to the CDI) and then it has another wire that should be grounded (-12V or to the frame somewhere without paint). Some rev counters might have a single wire and then it should be connected to the pickup output.

I have also had some spikes, but as it is now, i only get one spike when i hit the rev limiter at 7500 rpm where it for about a quarter of a second will show 12-15.000 rpm untill it updates the figure again. I can't figure out why this spike is appearing, since the output of the pickup should be the same, no matter what the ignition system does. If you connect it in between the CDI and the coil, you will get many more spikes because the spark angle is changed often in certain conditions and it might interfere with the way it count the revs.

I have the Naruku on a spare engine. The "coating" on the skirts is more of an ink-jet application that very quickly wears off (1000km) That being what it is the engine rev'd higher, and made more power with that kit.
I can confirm everything you stated about the CVK being less than a good carb as well. I have fought with them for a few years, and also found that slightly rich across the spectrum is the best you can do with them. I did have problems with burning intake valves (believe it or not) . I would think the intake charge would cool that valve but it is always the one that burnt.

They are goofy litle engines that like you say are very hard to kill.

One thing I have not tried is an Iridium plug. Going by your findings I will be using one because I am due for a new plug anyway.
Thanks again Baddi! I real happy you came back to update.

Aaah, i'm sad to hear that the coating is just paint. Ceramic coating would be so great but having foreign particles coming from the piston is not so great. :/

The cheapest place i have found iridium spark plugs is http://www.ebay.com/itm/NGK-IRIDIUM-IX-LPG-UPGRADE-SPARK-PLUGS-FAST-WORLDWIDE-SHIPPING-LOW-PRICES-/171071495319?pt=UK_Car_Parts_Vehicles_Automobila_ET&var=&hash=item27d4a7dc97
Iridium spark plugs has a finer tip, which means that the air/fuel mixture is more likely to be in contact with the spark, giving better chance of ignition and also, the finer tip absorbs less heat from the expanding ball of fire, while giving it more space to expand and this gives a more reliable spark, even if the fuel mixture is a bit off. Also, the material is much harder, has a higher melting-point and less electrical resistance, making it last about 3 times as long as a normal spark plug.