A good ride

I took a good ride on the Champ, about 5 miles.  Had to tank up since I hadn't for about a month... I took $4 in to the Cumbys and said "put it on pump one." put in 91* and I only made it to $3.50 so I went back in to get the change and the lady says "you must have the smallest car in town." I said "no, it's a moped."  She laughed.

Then it was off to a bit of off road riding, you will notice I have rigged a makeshift coffee cup holder on the front rack, quite handy though not at all practical since I have to stop to actually drink.  The cup is held on with a bungie cord, so I was able to let it cool off a bit on my ride from the gas station, drink er down and slap the empty in my storage case.

 I've been thinking I might need to make some sort of carry rack for my two skateboards that would attach to the front rack.  Now I'm not too certain why I would need to do this, since I don't really skateboard anymore but since I have a moped and I'm riding part urban and part off road I figure having a couple skateboards with, just in case the mood hits me sounds like a good idea.

Before and after

So here's a few shots to give you some idea of what a Champ looks like without the splash guards (you can see the large crack I repaired),

personally I haven't found them helpful for anything which is why when the left side broke half way off again yesterday I figured I'd just cut them both off.  However it is also a cover for some of the the electronics which are on the front of the frame,

 so I will leave the cut off version on as cover.  So I took the dremel and smoothed out the edges after I cut them off to try and make it look nice and pretty.

I think the profile with the guard cut off is actually pretty good, and it will do the job of keeping the electronics dry.

Also note the more "aggressive" profile with those Shinko's!

Why not dirt!

So I decided after a day of gutting my house, and filling with the roll off with all the crap that I would

 

do some "radical" chopping on the Champ, so I too my dremel and.....

 

you know what that is, the left side was broken off anyway and I haven't been able to find any type of glue that really binds well to the Champs plastic parts anyway, and I really wanted to go a bit dirt bike looking anyway so I figured this wouldn't be too bad of a butcher job.  So here's the wide angle.

 And here's the up close, but mind you this is not finished, I'll smooth the edges so it's looking nice and fresh!   I'm also considering welding some dirt bike foot pegs on.

New service manual page

I decided to move the service manual for the Champ to its own page.  You can find the page over on the right side of my blog.

You now have two options for viewing the manual, one is just .jpg images of the pages loaded like I had in the previous post, and now I've added a link to my Google Drive with all the pages in downloadable .PDF format. 

Enjoy, your Champ will love you!

Finally Shinko on the front!

Well my front Shinko got here today, so after working on the house after work I decided to swap out the tires.  Just as I got the front wheel off a torrential downpour came out of nowhere and because it was warm out I was sitting half in and half out of the garage I have my makeshift shop in - I got soaked!

Anyway I kept working and the front tire came off without a problem, of course I have a slow leak in the front tube too so, after having already run
around town looking for a 3.5/4-10 tube and
nobody, and I mean nobody has one, I just
decided to break out the plastic and buy a
couple of new tubes off BikeBandit and
while I'm at it order new brake shoes for the
front and rear too. 

I have to say the Champ looks sweet with those knobbies, and after a few late evening laps around the local parking lot (it definitely hauls with new rubber and Seafoam in the tank) I'm ready for just about anything.  Going to do a little off roading this weekend maybe.

While I love the old Jap bikes (those guys were engineering wizzards), I never thought I'd see the day when I had fu$&%ng moped parked next to my XR!!!  FYYFF!

Out on the trails

Took the Champ out on the local putt-putt trail, and it was kind of fun!  Not XR 250 fun that I normally have, but while I'm working on the new house this is a totally minimalist ride.
Remember I weigh 185 so this thing is doing pretty good hauling my ass over terrain.

Now I have to start thinking of more farkles I can add... You know totally useless stuff on a moped.  Say maybe my old GPS?

Shinko 421

This is totally just showing off the Shinko's I think they speak for themselves, this shot is from the other day when I still had the original street tire on the front,  knobbies look awesome on the Champ! 

The more I ride with them the more I think it numb to have anything else on, they just work so much better than street (especially the old baldies I had) especially if you want to cut across the football field or park.

 I've been pleasantly surprised in how well Shinkos grip the pavement too, though at 35mph top, I suspect my dirty socks grip the road pretty well too!

So you're not convinced the Shinko's look swell on a Champ, here's another shot.

My latest dilemma is what to do about that broken and cracked rear fender... The more I think about it, the more I think I want to take my dremel and cut it to clean it up and give it more old school dirt bike look.  Maybe even rivet on a bit of black innertube mud flap?  Is that getting too crazy?

Going off road

I know that maybe a Champ with knobbies is a bit over the top, but I really could not handle the bald tire in the rear and soon to be bald front tire.  So I ordered up two Shinko 421's from Bike Bandit!  Well one tire got here late today, the other shipped separately from CA so I can see it's getting here Saturday.  But I just had to pull that tire old tire off.

Just look at that sorry old dry rotted piece of junk, it certainly did the trick letting me putt putt around but even my son said "oh yea it feels a lot more smooth" riding around in the parking lot next door.

It's definitely a better feeling ride going around corners that have loose sand.  Unfortunately I just couldn't wait for the new inner tube to get here before mounting the Shinko so I paid the price, realizing there's a slow leak in the old tube.  Oh well this was one of the easier tire mounts I've done with my little road irons.

Of course when I had the rear wheel off I realized that my break pads are well warn and need to be replaced too, but otherwise everything looked in good shape!

So my next project will be to replace the tube in the rear  once my new front tire gets here and then find a good pair of brake shoes for rear and front, might as well replace the front while I'm at it!

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!