So you want to make your scooter faster?  Malossi manufacture the fastest, best performing, best quality tuning parts available for mopeds and scooters, and work closely with the major scooter manufacturers to build the best tuning parts and accessories available.

Every national and world class championship winning scooter has been tuned with Malossi parts, simply as they’re the best tuning company in the business!  If you’re ever unsure on what to go with, 99% of the time Malossi are the best to go for, although they’re not always the cheapest.

Does that mean there are better value for money alternatives?  Yes, but they’re not always the best performing, so it’s usually a careful balancing act when tuning scooters with a budget, as a lot of cheap tuning alternatives to Malossi are of poor quality, however there are some other manufacturers out there that are 99% as good for road tuning compared to Malossi, and half the price.

Generally there are 3 main things when tuning the modern automatic scooter we carry out: performance exhaust replacement (fitting a race pipe), 70cc performance big bore kit, and an aftermarket performance variator.  After this tuning gets very expensive and isn’t cost effective, nor suitable for road use; Malossi supply parts that can take any Piaggio / Gilera LC scooter to over 22bhp and a genuine 85mph+, but it’ll need new Malossi pistons every 500km and require changing the jets in the carb every time the weather changes, hence this sort of setup is only required when tuning a proper race scooter with Malossi parts.

Malossi Tuning: Performance Exhausts (Race Pipes)

This is the only part where I wouldn’t reccommend fitting Malossi when tuning a road going scooter, it simply isn’t cost effective and the Malossi tuning parts aren’t designed for road scooters.

The Malossi MHR Team Exhaust weighs in at a hefty £344 inc VAT in the UK, and is designed to work with the Malossi MHR Team full tuning kit, which is great for a race scooter where maximum power is obtained by sacrificing cost and long term reliability, but is useless when Malossi tuning a road going scooter, where you need it to last more than 500km and not break the bank.

My personal reccommdation when tuning is fitting a Giannelli “Reverse” race exhaust, which retails at £117 in the UK, less than half the price of the Malossi tuning exhaust, and is designed to work perfectly with standard 50cc kits or road based Malossi 70cc kits.  If you’re on an even tighter budget, Giannelli also produce the Giannelli “Extra” race exhaust, which is only £88 - 1/4 of the price of the Malossi tuning exhaust, and only slightly less performing than the Giannelli Reverse exhaust.  Again, compared to the expensive Malossi tuning exhaust, these are both designed to work on road scooters, and more importantly, come with warrenty and appropriate e-markings making them legal for road use.

Malossi Tuning:  70cc Malossi Big Bore Kits

This is where going with Malossi tuning is essential, you have a tiny piston moving at 9 or 10,000 rpm, with a few thousandths of an inch clearence from the side of the barrel, lubricated by 2% of your fuel mixture containing oil.  Cheaper brands do not get the same amount of R+D as Malossi tuning put into their products, and are not manufactured to the same standard as Malossi make theirs to.

When the engine is running, and usually at full throttle in the case of most 50’s and 70’s, things get hot and expand, and this is where the perfect clearances come into play, cheaper pistons are more likely to expand at different rates and possibly seize easier, or even worse, fracture and drop a piston skirt into the barrel.

The nice thing about using Malossi tuning parts is, even if you if manage to blow one up (which if you’re 16 and abuse it, is likely), they produce a full range of oversize pistons for the cast iron Malossi road 70cc kits, so you can re-bore the barrel and fit a slightly larger piston.

For road tuning, Malossi supply a 70cc Cast Iron big bore kit from £99 for air cooled Piaggio motors, and £149 for LC Piaggio motors, other manufacturers will vary but be roughly around that.  The Malossi tuning big bore kits are very highly finished and are like a work of art inside, with every port being finely chamfered around the edges to minimize piston wear and extend longevity.  These kits are also good for 5000km+ per piston with some careful owners getting over 10,000km out of a piston before they wear down to the point of causing seizures and so forth, hence I’ve always recommended paying £40 for a replacement piston at 4500 - 5000 km and fitting it then, instead of waiting for it to go pop and having to pay for a rebore as well.  Prevention is better than the cure.

Malossi tuning also supply the Malossi MHR Replica 70cc big bore kit for road use also.  This is basically a nickasil plated aluminium barrel designed as a lower performing, more road orrientated replica of the famous high power racing Malossi MHR Team cylinder kit.  My personal experience with this barrel is it costs a bit more, doesn’t provide a terribly great performance increase over the cast iron kitl, and if it goes pop, cannot be rebored like the cast iron kit, and nickasil re-plating costs almost as much as a new kit once buying another piston is factored into the cost.  However a well built (i.e squish set and ports matched) Malossi tuning MHR Replica barrel will provide a very good performing scooter, but is a lot higher revving than the cast iron kits and has the afore mentioned draw backs, so it depends on your budget and desired power output on whether you like this kit or not.

Malossi Tuning:  Malossi Performance Variator & Torque Spring Kit

When tuning a scooter, I usually leave tuning the Malossi variator until last as it doesn’t provide as bigger bang for your buck compared to the performance exhausts and Malossi 70cc big bore kits, however there are two exceptions to this, which I then fit the variator before anything

1.  You have a Yamaha Aerox, Jog R, Jog RR, or Yamaha / Minerelli engine based Aprilia SR50

The Yamaha Minerelli engine doesn’t seem to have as good as transmission compared to other manufacters like Piaggio / Gilera, although it can be tuned to just as higher state (Malossi produce their MHR Team full spec race tuning kits for these two manufacturers)

This engine as standard always seems to have an awful bog at 30mph, even if it’s been derestricted from new (see point 2) and the standard variator and transmission struggles to keep the scooters engine in the powerband.  It is perfectly ok for standard derestricted scooters as they still have a broad low down spread of power with plenty of torque, however, adding race pipes and high revving Malossi tuning 70cc kits start to move your powerband towards the higher rpm’s and make it very peaky.  The standard tranmission isn’t good enough to keep the engine spinning in this narrow powerband all the time and produces very pronounced bogging at certain speeds, so I recommend fitting a Malossi tuning variator before anything else.

2.  Your scooter has been restricted for a long time

99% of your scooters restriction is with a little washer that sits in between the variator and the outer pulley, which stops them closing all the way and moving the belt all the way up, restricting your maximum top speed via gearing.  Something akin to knocking 5th and 6th gear off a geared motorcycle.

If you’re riding around on a restricted scooter for a long time, the belt will wear a groove in the variator, which is fine until you come to get it derestricted, and it’ll start to catch on this grove on its way up to the variator’s edge.  Again, it isn’t that bad on just a normal derestricted scooter, but adding performance exhausts and Malossi tuning big bore kits start to make the powerband a lot more peaky and narrow, and it can quite easily drop out the powerband here under acceleration as the belt sticks in this grove.

A Malossi tuning performance variator basically is a variator with reworked angles for the rollers, and provides a lot smoother acceleration, and a very slight top end increase.  It is a worth while tuning modification as it increases drive ability and helps the power delivery coming out of corners a lot.

It’s also worth mentioning, Polini also do a performance variator, which is just as good as Malossi, however it doesn’t come with a torque spring, and is a stand alone unit.  Malossi tuning also produce an entire transmissions worth of replacement Malossi tuning performance parts, all designed to work with each other, so if you’re interested in upgrading even further, Malossi tuning is once again, the way to go.

Malossi tuning also produce a Malossi MHR Overrange kit, which is a complete variator, torque driver, spring, pulley and belt set, all matched to each other.  This is a pricey kit weighing in at about £200, but it improves your acceleration AND top speed, as it effectively increases the working range of the transmission.

If you want to tune your scooter to go even faster, Malossi supply even more tuning parts then listed here, but after these 3 main parts, Malossi tuning for road scooters isn’t very cost effective.  If you have an older pre-cat scooter, they used to come with small 12mm carbs which benefit from an upgrade to a Malossi / Dell’orto 17.5mm carb, although most post 200 catalysed models now come with similar sized carbs, and any bigger is mainly just wasting fuel economy on Malossi road tuned scooters.

If you desire to improve your handling and cornering, Malossi tuning also provide a full range of suspension replacement parts, with forks and front and rear fully adjustable race shock absorbers available, as well as Malossi performance sintered brake pads.

Got a comment? Comment down below

Got a question? Click here to use the forums