EFI for 50cc-250cc Scooter!

by Gregory Singer
(Boothbay Harbor, Maine)

This article on EFI for scooters was written and submitted by Gregory Singer of Maine. It is not meant to be a product plug, he has no association with Ecotrons or their EFI kit. Gregory is just a regular scooter user who sees the advantage of having EFI on his scooter.

*This article reprinted with the express permission of the author, me.

Why EFI?

Every one of us loves our little scooters. They are fun, convenient, cheap to operate, easy to work on, and did I say fun? Many of us use them as our primary transportation, scooting all over town on our two wheelers or three wheelers, 50s, 250s, and all sizes in between.

The small scooter engine sips gasoline. That's one reason we ride them. 100 miles per gallon or more. While an SUV might take $100 to fill up, we just borrow their overflow container to fill our tanks.

As we all know, most scooters have carburetors. While this is cheap and effective, it isn't really the ideal option considering the technology we currently have at our disposal. They are inexpensive to produce and easily modified, but they are also touchy, sensitive to environmental changes, and sometimes just don't work well. Some of the most basic issues are resolved by answering the question, "Did you clean the carburetor?"

Electronic fuel injection has the potential to make the scooter more reliable, have more power, and get better gas mileage. In other EFI engines this is the case, so why not for our scooters? EFI kits for small-engined scooters aren't widely available and remain a dream to many, until now.

A few companies have started making "bolt on" EFI kits made specifically for small engines, from 50cc to 350cc or thereabouts. Since the kits have only been recently available, their actual usefulness and usability have yet to be determined.

Enter me.

I LOVE my scooter. In fact, I'm starting up a scooter rental business this summer to rent and sell scooters. Growing up with EFI cars, I am well aware of the reliability and ease of use of EFI systems. I have only been dealing with carburetors for the past year or so, mainly because of this scooter. I would like the reliability and the tunability of an EFI system.

Now before you yell that carburetors are reliable and they are tunable, let me concede those facts. However, you have to be somewhat knowledgeable in how carburetors work in order to tune them.

If you are going on a road trip from the seashore over the mountains, you most likely will have to suffer bad engine performance along the way, or suffer a few stops to tune the carburetor to the changing conditions. A properly programmed EFI system will make those changes automatically, by computer, or even a Palm Pilot on the side of the road.

Ecotrons is one company I have come across that manufactures small engine EFI kits. I have been in contact with Ecotrons and they have sent me a unit to evaluate so I can write this article.

Read more here:
http://scootdawg.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=discussion&action=display&thread=37715