First legit ride

Took my first legit road trip today, put on about five miles.  Went out to where my son's school is and drove around the parking lot filling it up with smoke.

I think what happened is, I filled up the gas tank and put in some Seafoam to start cleaning things out - it smoked like a Jamaican at Hempfest!  Seriously at one intersection there was such a cloud of smoke all the cars passing by slowed way down to see what was going on, thank God there were no cops because they would have wanted to check it out the smoke cloud was so bad, but after making a few stops to fiddle with the carb getting it dialed in, going up and down a couple steep hills it's running with only the requisite smoke you'd expect from a 2-stroke.  For a 30 year old, 49cc engine hauling my 185lb carcass 30mph the way it did... no wonder it's called a Champ!

I figure the next task is to work on getting some new tires, preferably some knobbies to get a little off the beaten path, or at least some tires with tread, and without dry rot!

All in all a good days ride on the Champ!

Check out Jack's Scooter Shop

Jack has some invaluable information on scooters in general and some on the Yamaha Champ, you can find his basic repair page here.

What you'll find there is good stuff and the general service schedule you should follow for your Champ.

Riding the Champ

What a good running LC50 should sound like, and what it should look like with a kid on it!

The LC - QT connection

While the LC50 and QT50 are very similar, they are not the same.  While the frame and wheels are obviously different, careful examination of the engine bloc and carb will reveal they are also quite different, though they do share some parts and most electronics.

Service manuals are frustratingly hard to find for the LC50, so I have added two additional pages to this blog one is the service manual for the Champ, and the third is the service manual for QT50.  Just look over to the right hand side of this blog and you'll see those pages.

LC50

QT50

The Champ

Nothing is more depressing than to get your new-old Yamaha Champ LC50 scooter home only to find that there is not much info about it.  What I've tried to do with this blog is create a place for Champ owners to discuss and share information, gripe and generally have fun with these old bikes.

One of the most interesting and vexing aspects of these little bikes is over the top engineering, if you have ever taken those two top covers off you know what I'm talking about.  If you have never taken the cover off, be prepared for the shock and awe of what surely must have been the result of Japanese engineers at Yamaha in the late 70's totally baked on crack and steroids trying to out engineer the guys at Honda, Suzuki and Kawasaki!  I think they succeeded!  You be the judge.

This is only a 49cc 2 Stroke

I'm still in somewhat of a state of shock with all the pumps and vacuum hoses in this little 49cc engine.  While getting the carb dialed in can be a task it has a surprising amount of pep for such a little bike.

My Champ is just shy of 4000 miles as of the writing of this blog and gives no indication of slowing down, however one of the most common problems that can afflict the Champ is the bimetal valve (BMV) which sits on top of the cylinder head and acts as an automatic choke, it's a temperature actuated spring thermostat. These are not manufactured any more and when they go are problematic to deal with since you're Champs engine will run as if the choke is on. In later posts I'll go over a hack that should give you some options for running with BMV that's toast.

Otherwise here's a lamp shot of my Champ with my XR 250L in the background.  Love the look of that chrome and glass on the Champ!