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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.

As a scooter mechanic, I’ve worked on pretty much everything at one time or another, from Piaggio’s, Peugeot’s, Yamaha’s, and right down to the cheap and nasty crap like the first generation Chinese scooters.

As far as I’m aware, Piaggio actually released the first big selling 4 stroke 50cc scooter with the Vespa ET4 50cc, over 100mpg compared to 65-70mpg for it’s 2 stroke counterpart definitely made it a winner among commuters, but with it’s high European build quality and all metal monocoque chassis, it wasn’t the cheapest scooter on the market, and this was the way the market was heading: 16 year old lads still wanted scooters with the best handling and performance (a niche pretty much dominated by the Piaggio NRG, Gilera Runner and Yamaha Aerox, in that order), and older people trading in their cars for cheap transport wanted something just that; cheap.

The problem is as I see it, most car owners see their £6-7000 car (at the cheap end) as a big machine, they then look at a scooter and thing “oh it’s only a scooter” and wonder why it costs £1600+ for the top of the range Italian liquid cooled 50cc’s, not realising that just as much development goes into these as modern cars get, right down to race track testing.  So with this in mind, the car owner trots off to find the cheapest scooter available, and usually finds the cheap Chinese scooters being sold en-mass through the internet and eBay.

So what’s wrong with them?

Admittedly, they have got a lot better recently; the first generation Chinese scooters had the worst build quality imaginable, with lots breaking by the time they got to the end of the street with faulty electronics etc, but they have improved a fair bit in later years.

I think Chinese scooters are perfectly acceptable forms of transport, as long as you see them for what they are; cheap transport with good fuel economy.  If you pay £500 for a brand new scooter, don’t expect Italian quality because you simply will not get it.  The way I see them is, if you buy one you can use it everyday for a year, not service it and throw it away, and it’s only cost you £500, or £1.37 a day, which is less than what a bus to and from work would cost you, let alone a car.

Since the Chinese scooters are so cheap and don’t have a regulated dealer network, you also tend to find that most Chinese scooter so called “dealers” are either one man bands selling them from his garden shed on eBay, or a car dealer in to make a quick buck, neither of which have any specific scooter experience or significant backup.  In the early days of Chinese scooters, this was a major problem as when they went wrong, their “suppliers” didn’t carry any spares and most places ended up having to order in extra Chinese scooters, just to break them for spares for warranty work, as by law all new and second hand vehicles require a 6 month parts and labour warranty if sold by a dealer, unless sold at auction, which is why so many where sold on eBay originally, because it got the Chinese scooter dealers out of any liability.

Nowadays, the spares backup isn’t so much of a problem, as there are now a few major importers and stockists, as well as increased quality and multiple Chinese scooters being sold under different brands, sharing the same spares and parts.

As a former mechanic, my biggest problem with Chinese scooters was the fact they weren’t sold by proper dealers, and these people never got paid a PDI fee like the bigger franchises do.  The PDI is a Pre-Delivery Inspection, but it is also meant to include a strip down and copper greasing off all the bolts for later servicing in the scooters life.  Although not essential, if you’ve ever had to remove an M6 low quality mild steel bolt after a year of picking up road crap and rusting, you’ll know why they need greasing from new!  At my work I was trained to do every major bolt that was used regularly in servicing plus a few others before the scooters even turned a wheel, so when it came back for servicing, our life was easier and the customers life was easier if they needed work doing, the costs for drilling out rusted and snapped bolts tend to be a lot.

Due to the fact that most cheap Chinese scooters don’t have any of this done from new, just battery acid and air in the tyres (if that!), most mechanics and scooter dealerships won’t touch them with a barge pole.

If you’re planning on getting one of these cheaper Chinese scooters, it might be worth ringing around your local mechanics and telling them you already have one, will they work on it?  If it’s no from everyone, I wouldn’t bother getting one unless you’re fairly mechanically able yourself.

So can you get decent Chinese scooters?

Actually, yes you can now, but with varying prices, because as quality goes up, so does price unfortunately.  They’ll all do around 40mph when derestricted, but 30mph as per the law when restricted.
The 3 main groups of Chinese scooter are:

The traditional cheap Chinese scooter (Sukida, Lifan, Skygo, Baotian, Zhongyu, Kinroad, Jianshe, Jialing, Jinlun, Xinghue, Skyjet etc you get the idea), all the 50cc scooters are pretty much the same bike (Baotian QT50)

These are the original Chinese scooters sold by many, and in my opinion, are perfectly good bikes providing you use them for what they are; cheap transport.  Like I said before, if you buy one and use it for a year then throw it away, it’ll still cost you less than your bus fairs would.

Generally as well, most of these are bought unregistered, and you have to pay a £65 registration fee and £15 tax on top of this (along with number plate and petrol), which is something to factor into the cost of buying one too.

Pros:  Cheap transport, excellent fuel economy

Cons:  Not PDI’d properly most the time, no official spares supplier, hidden costs.

Peugeot VClick

This is the same as above believe it or not, just the normal Baotian Chinese scooter but rebranded under Peugeot.  This retails at £829 according to the official Peugeot website, and this includes a PDI, Petrol & Number Plate.  However, this doesn’t include Registration fee and Tax, so add another £80 to this for on the road price.

Pros:  Proper dealer network and PDI with a full 2 year warranty

Cons:  Still the same cheap Chinese scooter as the originals, nothing to stop you buying one and just fitted Peugeot parts to it if it goes wrong.

Piaggio Zip 50cc

This is the classic Italian Piaggio Zip, but now assembled in China, even though it still uses many Italian parts.  The price is normally £1099 OTR, but is currently reduced to £999 OTR.  The £999 cost is exactly that - £999, includes PDI, Number Plate, Petrol, Tax, Registration, everything.  You just need to sort out your own insurance as with any bike, but even this Piaggio cater for by providing very good insurance rates through Piaggio Plus run by Lexham Insurance.

The Piaggio Zip’s come with a full 2 years unlimited millage parts and labour warranty, backed up by the biggest scooter dealership network in the country, with next day delivery spares if it even breaks down.

Our local CBT & Test training centre tried one of these out and were so impressed they made their entire 50cc fleet the new Piaggio Zip’s, which in my mind, really proves how good they are, considering they’re being used all day everyday during CBT’s, and my old work has never had any returned for warranty work yet either.

Pros:  Huge dealer network with next day spares backup, very reliable, top quality, top brand and will hold their money compared to other manufacturers

Cons:  Most expensive of the Chinese range, but still cheap at only £999, which includes registration and tax and everything.

My overall opinion on these bikes is, you get what you pay for, and they’ll treat you how they treat them.  If you buy the cheaper Chinese scooters, PDI them properly, and service them regularly, they’ll happily last 2 years nowadays, but after that don’t expect brilliant resale value.  If you’re not mechanically minded enough to do this yourself, the Peugeot VClick or Piaggio Zip’s are the better option, although the VClick is just a rebranded cheap Chinese scooter, so I personally don’t see the point in paying £900 after fee’s for one, considering the Zip is better quality for only £999, and will still easily sell for £5-600 after 2 years.

You’ll further save money if you’re getting one of these scooters instead of a car for commuting, they all do 100-120mpg, so the fuel savings alone will cover the cost of their purchase after 6 months or so, and if you passed your car test before February 2001, you don’t even need to take a CBT to go on the road, nor need L plates!

Extremely early Yamaha scooters (I know the original Billywhizz for instance) had a restricted CDI unit, as far as I’m aware the new ones do not anymore, and won’t need a replacement CDI unless you install really high revving / high power race 70cc kits, which I do not recommend doing for road use unless you like rebuilding your Yamaha scooter a lot. I’ve had a relatively high revving Hebo kit installed in a fairly new AC engine before combined with a Hebo exhaust and it ran fine without a replacement CDI.

1. Yamaha Scooter Tuning: Malossi Variator

I always prefer to start tuning Yamaha / Minerelli engine based scooters by replacing the Variator with a Malossi Variator to start with. This is because, in my opinion, the standard Variator isn’t the best unit in the world and it seems to cause bogging at 30mph and struggles to keep the engine spinning at its optimum rpm (where it makes peak power). Although the standard Variator is fine on normal derestricted Yamaha scooters, when you start tuning you tend to end up with a narrower power band (the region where your scooter makes the most power) and since the standard Variator struggles to keep the rpm from fluctuating outside this range, causing bogging, a replacement performance Malossi Variator should be fitted before anything else.

2. Yamaha Scooter Tuning: Giannelli Exhaust

As with nearly every Malossi tuning guide I’ve written, I fit Giannelli exhausts 99% of the time for 3 basic reasons:

Cost: Giannelli exhausts are available from £88 for the Giannelli Extra and £117 for the Giannelli Reverse. Giannelli exhausts might not be the cheapest on the market, but the cheapest isn’t the best and they are by far from the most expensive exhausts available.

Power: Giannelli are very well performing exhausts, Giannelli’s perform equally well on both standard 50cc cylinders and Malossi tuning 70cc big bore kits.

Warranty: Giannelli’s are e-marked and legal. Although hardly anyone cares about fitting “race use only” parts, the main benefit this actually gives you is the fact they come with a warranty, race use only parts do not.

3. Yamaha Scooter Tuning: Malossi Big Bore 70cc kit

As per usual, I always recommend fitting Malossi tuning 70cc big bore kits. Malossi make the best tuning parts on the market. The Malossi tuning cast iron 70cc big bore kit is £158 in the UK and is the best value for money road cylinder kit available in my opinion; it makes the best combination of power, price and reliability. Malossi tuning also produce the MHR Replica kit which is an alloy barrel and nickasil plated cylinder designed to be a road going replica of the super power MHR Team race kits (which make 18bhp+ but are only really suitable for race use as they require another £2000 or so of parts alongside it to run properly). The MHR Replica makes a little bit more power than the cast iron kit, but in my opinion, not enough to warrant buying one for a road scooter that does the miles. If a cast iron one blows up, you can just get these rebored and a new piston, if an alloy kit blows up you need new nickasil plating and a piston, which costs almost as much as a brand new kit.

I did mention I have used Hebo kits and exhausts in the past on these engines with some success, but I wouldn’t recommend using them because they’re all alloy/nickasil barrels with a single ring piston. This is great for high revving power (due to less friction on the cylinder) but not so good for reliability and you’ll need to replace the piston often compared to the Malossi big bore kits. When combined with the Hebo exhausts, these kits are really high revving and make bucket loads of power yes, but are in turn, more difficult to setup (unless you have a dynamometer in your back yard). Also, my biggest issue is Hebo UK are possibly the worst suppliers I’ve ever dealt with when working in the scooter industry, poor stock keeping and make too many false promises about deliveries, waiting 6 months for replacement cylinder kits is totally unacceptable in my opinion. They used to have a guy called Colin working there who was a genuine bloke 100% concerned about his customers, but after he parted ways with them, Hebo UK have gone downhill rather sharpish in my opinion.

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.

The pistons in all cylinder kits, not just Malossi 70cc big bore kits, have a little arrow on the top of the piston.

This arrow faces the exhaust port, so it is generally facing down on horiztonal engines and towards the front of the bike on vertical engines.

Fitting the piston the right way round on big bore cylinder kits is extremely important, since the big bore piston rings arn’t complete (they need to split to squeeze over the piston), they have a point in the piston there the two ends meet.

These two ends generally line up between the middle and outer transfer (intake) ports on the rear of the cylinder providing you have fitted the piston in the right way round.  Fitting the piston backwards on a big bore cylinder kit will result in these two ends opening up slightly in the exhaust port and possibly catching.  As well as this a lot of pistons have a cut away piece for helping intake induction on a certain side, and sometimes are cast / machined to take more pressue on the exhaust / thrust side.

Another top tip for 70cc big bore kit fitting is not to forget to re-fill the coolant before the test ride on liquid cooled bikes….doh!