Honda Scooter: How to deal with clutch at 5 MPH??

[makoona]

My MV uses a 250cc Honda Scooter. Last year it was a snail pulling a small playa vessel (boat). The problem I have is that it uses a centrifugal clutch that's extreamly unhappy when asked to go slow since it has to slip the whole time. It fully engages at 11MPH, but that was often too fast. So, it would overheat and chatter like crazy. Any scooter heads out there have some ideas? Thanks!

[capjbadger]

At those speeds, yeah, you're going to burn out your clutch. Look into replacing it with a Torque Converter (Comet makes a good line of them). It's not cheap, ('bout $200 bucks) but it will handle what you want to do at those speeds.

Badger

[gyre]

There may be some ways to adapt the original clutch.
You might check a board for bikes if no one here knows.

[Lassen Forge]

You can play with the springs and whatnot (replace the balls, etc depending on which clutch unit it has - some have an actual adjustment for engagement speed) to get them lighter so the clutch engages slower. But it's hard o both the motor and the clutch. The reason that C clutch engages so fast is the motor has to have enough torque to pull the weight of the vehicle. Slipping it at a lower speed allows it to pick up the load gradually when operating normally...

OR...

You re-gear the back end (as long as its a chain drive and not a shaft drive) with a larger sprocket so the engine turns faster.

OR...

replace the centrifical clutch with a manual one like is on an old Honda 50. How mechanically inclined are you? Have a Cycle Salvage yard handy?

OR...

Go to a small engine shop and see if they have a clutch that fits that shaft and output that engages at a lower RPM.

OR...

build a new motive power plant designed to run at 5 mph, and save the scooter for scootering.

bb

[Zhust]

It fully engages at 11MPH

Can you put on a smaller wheel? Half the diameter would mean the clutch would fully engage at 5.5MPH. Perhaps have the scooter drive wheel rub on a bicycle wheel (probably through an idler to get the rotation direction reversed) that goes through a chainset to a smaller drive wheel on the ground.

[makoona]

I love this place! Such great ideas. It's a shaft drive, so new sprocket is out.. I like the idea of a torque converter, or converting to manual clutch..( although not sure that's possible, the clutch and variable ratio gearbox are all one unit, but i'll check) those would seem to leave the bike most serviceable as a regular scoot for the other 50 weeks of the year.

[makoona]

This is pretty much what it's got on it now, only the honda version, which might just be one of these with honda badging on it, it looks so similar.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v178/ ... utches.jpg

It's a comet torque a verter

[mdmf007]

Id see if I could reduce the drive ratio at the sprocket as that is usually the easiest to change. Either half the size in front, or twice the size in back would do the trick, or a combination of the both being changed.

later