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Why’s the Zip RS re-introduction to the UK a big deal?

The Zip RS (and Zip SP) is the lightest, best handing, most tunable scooter Piaggio have ever built, as far as I’m aware no other bike has won any UK or European scooter championships at all, and the race fields are 95% Zip RS / SP’s anyway, which says something for how good they are

Singled sided front suspension allows you to run Malossi RS24 suspension dampers front and back to provide the perfect handling, the 10″ wheels on the Zip RS are some of the only scooter wheels which the tyre manufacturers make super sticky race compound rubber for, the stuff you can get your knee down with!

The Zip RS is powered by the legendary liquid cooled Piaggio Hiper-2 Pro motor, which when derestricted alone normally does a very healthy 55mph, and can reach 85mph+ when fully tuned with Malossi MHR Team parts under racing conditions!

No prices have been confirmed yet but apparently they will be around the £1450 mark, making them cheaper than the Piaggio NRG and Gilera Runners, as well as being lighter and having better handling.

The standard Air box is setup to work perfectly with your standard engine and exhaust so doesn’t need changing for a Malossi open filter. Adding a Giannelli race pipe makes the engine more efficient (throwing extra fuel make into the cylinder that’s normally lost out the exhaust) and also rev higher, so it is using slightly more air, but not enough to warrant changing the to a Malossi filter yet.

Adding a Malossi 70cc kit however, and things change; there is a 40% capacity increase there, so it’s obviously going to benefit from the greater airflow the Malossi air filter gives. Does it make a big difference though?

No, not really. It’ll improve the low down punch more than anything, but not real differences apart from it sounding better

The important thing to remember is to UPJET when fitting one; otherwise it’ll run lean and cause a seizure. I normally go up by 6 sizes or so depending on the model, and don’t fit one until I’ve got a Giannelli exhaust and Malossi 70cc kit fitted either, as a lot of models won’t run properly otherwise.

The other thing to consider is with British weather especially, it tends to rain a lot and an open Malossi air filter is going to get wet, then your scooter won’t tune very well at all. I know you can get open air filters with a cover on, but with half of them covered up, they don’t offer any air flow advantages really.

The amount of tuning parts for Chinese scooters is surprisingly low considering they’re generally the best selling scooter when you group all the various brands together who sell the same basic scooter, but there’s now enough parts out to get a fairly good performing scooter, although it still won’t be a patch on the 2 stroke scooters.

Unlike the 2 strokes where the exhaust makes quite a large difference in power delivery, 4 strokes aren’t affected as much so firstly I’d recommend fitting a big bore kit, after all, there’s no replacement for displacement.

Airsal manufacture an 80cc big bore kit for the 4 stroke Chinese scooters, which is a surprisingly high quality piece of kit, with an Aluminium cylinder and nickel silicon carbide barrel coating for minimal friction, which helps when you consider how many piston rings the 4 strokes have!

Fitting the Airsal big bore kit is fairly simply on the Chinese scooters, although it’s still a lot more complicated that two strokes since you’ll have to line the cam shaft up afterwards so if you’re uneasy about there it’s worth forking out for a qualified mechanic to do the job, since if you get the cam shaft timed up wrongly you can end up with bent valves and damaged pistons.

After fitting the Airsal 80cc big bore kit, your Chinese scooter will want a nice meaty performance exhaust to compliment the new kit, and LeoVince now produce the goods. It’s the 4road model exhaust, which is a straight through downpipe with a stainless steel can. After fitting both of these it’ll be worth going up a couple of sizes on the main jet, carrying out plug colour readings to make sure. The Airsal big bore kit says it requires no increase in jet size, but with a LeoVince race exhaust fitted as well it would probably benefit from a few sizes larger on the main jet.

Fitted both of these? Malossi now produce their MHR Multivar Variator kit for tuning your Chinese scooter, as well as a Kevlar belt. Normally I don’t recommend changing belts from standard when road tuning any scooter as most standard belts are Kevlar anyway, but the Malossi Kevlar belt for the Chinese scooters is actually 5mm longer than standard. This combined with the MHR Multivar Variator will give a slightly better range of gearing, helping both acceleration and top speed.

Done all this? Want more speed?

Tough luck unfortunately, the Chinese scooters are built as budget commuters with excellent fuel economy, they’re not designed to be speed machines so you’re options are to wait until someone produces aftermarket performance cam shafts for them or upgrade to a 50cc 2 stroke or a bigger bike.

Peugeot Speedfight 50cc Tuning: Performance Exhaust

Although I usually recommend fitting a Giannelli exhaust to most 50cc scooters when tuning, Peugeot Speedfights work very well with LeoVince performance exhausts as well.

For the Peugeot Speedfight, both these exhausts are similar priced with the LeoVince ZX being £126 and the Giannelli Reverse exhaust being £117.

As always, the decision is between maximum power and reliability; the LeoVince ZX is a slightly higher performing exhaust and has roller weights included with it, but the Giannelli Reverse comes with a warranty.

When tuning Peugeot Speedfights, bear in mind LeoVince exhausts come with a restrictor cone in the manifold end of the exhaust that is tack welded on, you’ll need to grind / hammer / chisel this off unless you want a restricted moped again!

Depending on what year your Peugeot Speedfight 50cc is, you may need to go up 2-4 sizes on the main jet when fitting your exhaust.

Peugeot Speedfight 50cc Tuning: Performance 70cc Big Bore Kit

LC Peugeot Speedfight Motors:

Malossi only produce their Malossi MHR Replica 70cc big bore cylinder kits for tuning the Peugeot Speedfight LC models and this weigh in at £225. Although these are a very good kit and produce bucket loads of power, they love to rev and make this power at higher rpm. I prefer to get road tuned scooters making their power at lower rpm as it is better for reliability and easier to setup.

Polini produce a cast iron 70cc big bore kit for the Peugeot Speedfight 50cc LC (£132) which I’ve had excellent results with when used in combination with a LeoVince ZX. Using this combination will allow a Speedfight LC to be almost as fast as Piaggio motors with a similar setup

AC Peugeot Speedfight Motors:

Malossi do manufacture a cast iron 70cc big bore kit for this engine, which is £122, or Polini do a alloy cylinder kit for it at £107 although I prefer to use the Malossi cast iron whenever possible for tuning road scooters. If it does go bang, then you can rebore them and just fit an oversized piston, instead of having to buy a complete new kit.

When tuning Peugeot Speedfight 50cc’s with big bore kits, you’ll usually have to increase the main jet another 6-8 sizes or so.

Peugeot Speedfight 50cc Tuning: Performance carb

The standard carb on these uses a stupid bolt on mount which makes finding just a replacement carb difficult; I’ve used 19mm Arreche carbs which bolt on in the past with poor results. Luckily, the Peugeot Speedfight 100 comes with a 17.5mm Dell’orto as standard, and its inlet manifold also fits the Peugeot Speedfight 50cc crankcases, making it an ideal tuning part as you can pick them up from breakers or eBay, and it is essentially the same as a new Malossi carb anyway

Peugeot Speedfight 50cc Tuning: Performance Variator

As per my usual recommendation, buy Malossi every time and you won’t go far wrong. An aftermarket Variator will help acceleration and top speed slightly, and if your Speedfight has been restricted for a long time and worn a grove in the standard Variator, it’ll cure that and stop it bogging at 30mph.

After tuning your Peugeot Speedfight, it is probably worth upgrading the suspension also, as the standard units are poor at best, and usually have failed by their 1st or 2nd MoT test

I’ve had experience with LeoVince exhausts, Hebo exhausts, Kundo exhausts, Technigas exhausts and many other major brands of performance exhaust manufactures, but in my mind Giannelli Exhausts have always proved to be the best I could fit when tuning 50cc scooters.

The problem I’ve always found in the past is that shops who supply parts only tend to push the cheaper brands more than the quality exhausts as there is a lot more mark-up in them, especially brands like Technigas. From working as a mechanic in a dedicated scooter shop, we always refused to sell cheaper brands as it was us who would be fitting them 9 times out of 10, and us people would complain to when their mates scooters ended up faster because they had a cheap Technigas exhaust fitted, so we quickly found out that Giannelli Exhausts offer the best package for tuning road scooters.

My personal favourite Giannelli Exhaust is the Giannelli “Reverse” Exhaust which retails at around £117.99, as this delivers the best performance and is very well made out of many individually welded cones. For those on a budget however, Giannelli Exhausts also offer a slightly cheaper model called the Giannelli “Extra”, which retails at about £87. This exhaust isn’t made up of individual sections and is just 2 sides welded and pressure-blown out, however it still offers excellent performance that is only marginally less that its big brother, the Giannelli Reverse. I think there is about 0.5bhp difference between both Giannelli exhausts if I remember correctly.

The thing that has always won it for me with Giannelli Exhausts is however, the fact that Giannelli exhausts aren’t sold as “race only” like most aftermarket performance exhausts. This means they’re e-marked and road legal, although most people don’t care either way as hardly anyone checks the stamping regardless. The big factor with this nonetheless, is it means that all Giannelli Exhausts come with a warranty as they’re designed for road use. So as long as your Giannelli Exhaust is bought from a VE-UK dealer (as far as my knowledge goes, I cannot guarantee other Giannelli Exhaust importers offer any kind of warranty) and is fitted by a qualified mechanic, it’ll be covered against manufacturing faults for a year.

Another nice thing about Giannelli Exhausts is the fact that they don’t come with a restrictor cone welded into the downpipe like other brands so are 100% derestricted ready for increasing your scooters performance from the word go. I recently spent some time helping one of this sites readers diagnose his scooter wasn’t running as well as it should be, and it turned out he never broke the restrictor cone off his Technigas exhaust he had purchased.

For some brands, Giannelli Exhausts also come packaged with the correct rollers for use with an otherwise stock scooter (Yamaha and Peugeot do as far as I can remember). Piaggio engined scooters (Piaggio / Gilera / 2004+ Aprilia) don’t have any rollers supplied with them, and these require 5.5g rollers fitting which are available as genuine parts from Piaggio.

All Giannelli exhausts are manufactured from mild steel and come painted in heat resistant lacquer; this does wear off after a while and like any performance exhaust, will cause the Giannelli exhaust to rust if you don’t apply heat proof paint at every service. If you prefer something a little flashy, chrome plated Giannelli Extra’s are also 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.

Early Suzuki Katana’s had the Suzuki air cooled engine in them, whilst later Suzuki Katana’s had Suzuki’s new liquid cooled engine, and where designated AY50R for the race production version.

One notable feature of the Suzuki Katana’s are their very low gearing, which means the engine does more revolutions per wheel revolution compared to other scooters, this provides very quick acceleration but a lower top speed, even on tuned engines, most other derestricted scooters can keep up on top speed, but will struggle to match a race tuned Suzuki Katana on shear acceleration.

Although some people see the Suzuki Katana’s low gearing as a problem, it is also the scooters greatest strength, with blisteringly fast acceleration, most other scooters will struggle to keep up with it in an urban environment, as even when others are tuned and kitted up with performance parts they’ll still struggle to match the Suzuki Katana’s 0-30 times. When the liquid cooled Suzuki Katana is tuned it is practically untouchable against all the other 50cc scooters on the market in these times, it’ll only loose out on longer roads where speeds of 50mph+ can be acheived by other LC scooters.

The Suzuki Katana’s are primarily restricted mostly in the exhaust, so in the very early models it requires binning and replacing with a race exhaust, whilst in the later versions with a 2 part exhaust, you can grind out the internal restrictor cone and refit the exhaust, although nothing will match the performance that an aftermarket race exhaust gives for the Suzuki Katana. On the very early models, the CDI is also restricted and requires replacing with an aftermarket model, although this isn’t a problem on the later scooters.

As with my usual reccommendation, Giannelli Exhausts generally make the best performance exhausts for scooters, and since they’re all e-marked, completely road legal and come with a warrenty when fitted by an authorised mechanic, so are by far the best tuning option for road going Suzuki Katana’s, and all other scooters that are being tuned for the road.

When fitting a Giannelli race exhaust to your Katana, it’ll require a slightly higher jet (0 to 2 sizes on non catalysed Suzuki Katana’s, I don’t think they made any with catalytic converters) and slightly lighter rollers, since performance exhausts allow the Katana to make more power but at a higher rpm. Tuning the rollers to 0.5 - 1 gram lighter than standard generally does the trick for Giannelli race exhausts on the Katana’s, but it varies between exhausts and tunes, and the Suzuki takes 17×12mm rollers, 6.6g as standard.

After fitting a race exhaust, the biggest benefit the Scooter Katana will gain during tuning is by fitting a performance big bore kit, adding a 40% increase in capacity and more than doubling the power. Malossi and Polini make the best big bore kits available for tuning the Suzuki Katana, and will provide the best performance and reliability compared to the cheaper big bore kits on the market . As you’re increasing the capacity with the Malossi big bore kit, a bigger jet is required to be fitted in the carb, usually around 6-8 sizes larger, although doing a plug chop after a test ride to check the jetting is reccommended to check your scooter isn’t running lean after it’s tuning, otherwise it can be liable to go bang.

When tuning your Suzuki Katana, it is important to make sure you run it on the best quality fully synthetic oil, especially with the Katana’s oil pump system, as it can be prone to clogging up the exhausts, especially the standard ones. This is one of the reasons why fitting an aftermarket race exhaust to these scooters can provide such a huge difference on older models.

After fitting the Giannelli race exhaust and tuned big bore 70cc Malossi cylinder kit, you’ll have a exceptionally fast accelerating scooter, but without an amazing top speed increase compared to other scooters, due to the Suzuki Katana’s low gearing. You can now either keep the fast acceleration, or sacrifice a little and fit a Malossi gear up kit to your Katana, allowing it to use some of this new found power provided by your Malossi big bore 70cc kit to give you a better top end, good for another 10mph in most cases. Although it looses some acceleration by fitting a Malossi gear up kit, your scooter will still be faster accelerating than a standard untuned Suzuki Katana, so don’t think a gear up kit will make performance worse than before.  Top Racing also manufacture gear up kits and I have used these in the past too, but Malossi always make the best parts, and I prefer to use Malossi for the peace of mind knowing I have the best performance tuning parts in the business fitted.

For even higher increases in power, bigger carbs and aftermarket variators are available, but do not make as bigger differences as the Giannelli race exhausts, the Malossi big bore 70cc kits and the gear up kits. The Malossi variator will provide a substancial benefit if it is fitted onto a Suzuki Katana that is older and has done a lot of millage, as this combined with a new Malossi Kevlar belt will give a lot smoother acceleration and a slight top speed increase.

Done all this? Consider improving your handling and getting some new tyres and suspension