The Mosquito!

We did a little work on the rear brake. We were warned that the linkage we had fabbed up may be robbing us of some leverage. They were right...

We did two things:
1) Made a longer arm to be welded to the outside (with several holes for adjustment)
2) Drilled a lower hole on the inside arm of the pivot.

Doing these two things gave us back the leverage we needed. Excellent pedal feel and I can actually lock up the rear brake if I wanted to.
I may trim of the extra length on the outside arm, but leaving it there would provide adjustment for a future owner who may have shorter legs than me. There is also adjustment left in the rear set foot pegs, so the bike could be configured to fit a range of riders.

Forgot to mention: I think we will adjust the brake and shift lever up just a tad. (Just the levers, not the pegs) I don't think I stand a chance of ever dragging either one, but if I leave my toes below the shift lever or have the rear brake on while making a RH turn, my feet/toes get a little close to the pavement.

Again, if I weren't so long legged and the bike wasn't so small, the pegs could be moved up. It is what is is, though and nothing but the tires have touched the pavement so far....knock on wood.

Took it out for a ~25 mile shake down run and discovered a few things....

A) It's LOUD! The home made baffle sounds mean and surprisingly deep for such a small bike, but I'm going to find the correct baffle for the stinger we used to make the mega-phone.

B ) It vibrates like crazy. I need to replace a few lost nuts with nylon lock nuts and apply some blue lock-tite liberally to a few others.

C) It's very lean. Scarily lean. It never acted like it wanted to seize up, but my I.R. temp gun gave me readings of ~300 degrees on the cylinder when we got home and the spark plug is very white.
I did figure out that the carb is from an RD series Yamaha. I have a friend who is a 2-stroke guru and will ask his opinion on clip setting for the needle and maybe raid his parts bin for a larger main jet.

I got her up to 78 MPH and the tach showed a little over 7,000 rpm. Factory literature says max HP is at 9,000 rpm, so I either have an aftermarket tach that is reading off a little or she just plain ran out of gas.
I'll get some more fuel in the carb and try again, but I feel like it'll do 80+ eventually.

Oh, we also weighed it using the bathroom scale method and she's just over 250 lbs.

Some pics from the shake down run (I'm still waiting on my tank badges).

In the above pics, you can see what I mean about the levers. I want to bring them both up to be a little more parallel to the ground and closer to the height of the pegs.

Here's the spark plug reading....YIKES! I guess we got lucky on this ride. We'll definitely do some adjustments before any further riding.

This has been a great thread to follow! Love the work and how it all came out! And super light! Looking forward to more shake down results!

Well, no need to worry about the exhaust being too loud. It cracked where we welded on the tab.
I loved the look...hated the sound, though.

Luckily, I had purchased a muffler for this project a while back, before I changed directions and went with the stinger.
We simply cut the head pipe of, fabbed up a rubber mounted hanger and bolted it on.
Because of some carb tuning we're doing (and waiting on jets, needles, etc.), I haven't been able to hear it yet. I DO have a buddy that has a CB200 with a pair of these mufflers and it sounds pretty good....and MUCH more quiet than the KZ250 was!

Here's another look at the muffler. Also in this shot, notice that we adjusted the pedal position on the brake and shifter levers. I had a few people voice concern over them being too low, but this is a small bike and I'm a long legged guy.
I've been watched while riding it and I'm in no danger of dragging anything (if I'm leaning it that far over, it's too late anyway!), but my Dad did notice that the levers were the lowest point and may have put me in danger of catching my toes on something, especially when applying the rear brake. So, now they're a little more horizontal. And remember, these pegs are on the same plane as the stock pegs were.

Really nice project. I'm hoping to put my hands on a KZ Single or Yammie SR250 in the near future.
Thank you,
Ruff

Well, how's the new muffler doing, and did you get your tank badges on???

-KR

Awesome looking little bike.
Great build thread too, keep up the good work.
Be sure to throw up a video of the Mosquito on song, I'm sure it'll sound sweet!

The Mosquito is doing OK. Sorry for the long pause between updates. It took me FOREVER to get the badges done. I actually had to retrieve them from one shop and found someone else to do them for me.
They're not quite as bold as I would have liked, but they turned out OK, don't ya think?



My only problem is that the silver prismatic background of the flags kind of clashed with the whit of the badges. They could both be white OR silver, but not mismatched, IMO. I'll probably look for some white/red flags for the side covers.
This pic are a little washed out from the sunlight, but...