Waking up vehicles of the past

Hi,

I am really excited to have stumbled upon your project. One of the things that has me most excited about what you are doing is the potential for giving new life to older vehicles (particularly motorcycles). Refurbishing an older vehicle and exploring the possibility to try alternative fuels is very exciting to think about considering the future and the uncertainty of the climate and use of fossil fuels. If I am able to test a Beta Kit, I would try and run some different fuels like E85 or even more exotic fuels like woodgas. I am comfortable getting my hands dirty and trying things out. I love playing with small engines and I live, eat, and sleep fabrication. I have a 3D printer and design software so I would get straight to work on making mounting brackets and figuring out how to package and adapt the kit to my motorcycle. Here are the specs:

1982 Yamaha SR185
185cc SOHC, Single Cylinder, 2 valves per cylinder
28mm Carb diameter (engine side) 43mm intake diameter
7000 max RPM, 16ish HP
Electronically Controlled variable Ignition Timing

The bike weighs maybe 250lbs and is a blast to ride and easy as heck to work on. The current carb sputters in the midrange and I don’t exactly know why. I think I might need to get a bigger jet for the carb but I want to hook up some way to measure the AF ratio. I haven’t looked into how to do that yet but with the Beta kit, it would probably be able to display that info so I could tune the bike and squeeze every last pony out of that 185cc thumper.

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@bday988

Welcome to the forums.
Nice ride you have there.
There is a lot of talent here now, so it seems anything is possible, nano efi, with closed loop running E85 will put a lot of life into some of the old machines, at least that’s what I’m hoping.

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Welcome @bday988! :wave:

I’m right there with you on woodgas. Do you have experience with gasification already, or looking to get into it?

I picked up Ben Peterson’s Woodgas Builder’s Bible some time ago. Twice actually, both the paperback and digital versions. And have been following his progress on the newer WasteBot system. Super interesting work, a great mind for sure.

NanoEFI currently has Wideband O2 support. You’ll need an external wideband controller. Here’s more info:

My understanding of the changes necessary to run E85 well is still a bit soft. I’ll get up to speed properly some point soon, I promise :smile: