Scooters are a great way to move around from one place to another, they are comfortable, easy to ride and reach decent speeds. But sometimes you might want a little more than a decent speed. And you start wondering what you can do to make your scooter go faster without changing its entire engine.In my 10 years+ experience with scooter I’ve also felt the need to make my scooter faster, and over time I’ve gathered a lot of tips and tricks on how to do that. So I decided to make this article to share them with you.
How do you make a 49cc/50cc scooter go faster? In order to make a 49cc/50cc scooter faster you can make adjustments at the following:
- Remove the Restrictions
- Variator
- Fuel/Air mixture
- Aerodynamics
Before going into any more details, I want to remind you that you have to be careful with your local laws, making a scooter go even 1 mile faster can make it require a new license. So make sure to read up on the laws before making any changes.
Table of Contents
Remove the Restrictions
The first thing that you should do if you want a faster soccer is to remove the restrictions. Most Scooters come with restrictions that limit the scooter in order to classify in certain categories.
The most common restriction is usually found on the ignition module ( or CDI ). This restriction is in place to ensure that 49cc and 50cc scooters don’t go over 7000rpm.
If you want to remove the restriction you have 3 possibilities:
The first one and the simplest is to go to a mechanic, this is probably the simplest and it’s not very expensive, it can cost you anywhere between $10 and $30.
The second option is to buy a new ignition module and change it. In order to do this you don’t have to be a professional mechanic, if you follow a youtube video you should be able to do it yourself. As for the price, it can vary a lot, you can find very cheap ones, and you can find very expensive ones, so it’s up to you how much you want to spend.
The 3 and last option is to remove the restriction yourself. This can be a little tricky if you don’t have any experience, but is the cheapest option. So it’s up to you if you want to do it or not.
Now let’s move to the next part.
The Variator
The Boss
One of the most common ways people have managed to increase the speed of their scooters is by shaving off 0.5mm or 1mm. By doing this you will push the belt out a little bit further and as a result your scooter will be able to run a little faster.
From my experience this method works and it’s completely safe as long as you don’t cut your boss to half its size. As a proof that this will work, you can look at kits that improve the speed of a scooter. Most of them will come with a boss that will be slightly shorter than the one you have right now.
The Rollers
The Next thing that you can do is to install a new set of rollers that are the right weight for your needs.
The weight of the variator rollers affects how the gear ratio of the CVT changes. Lighter rollers mean the transmission holds onto a lower gear for longer, giving you better acceleration. On the other hand heavier rollers mean the transmission “upshifts” earlier. Heavier rollers may give you a slightly higher top speed, but it may take longer to get there.
So when it comes to rollers there is no correct weight, since no weight will give you more speed and more acceleration, so it’s up to you if you want to accelerate a lot faster, or you want to have higher potential speeds.
Fuel/Air Mixture
Now let’s take a look at the Fuel Air Mixture. This is the only way that will make the engine on your scooter more powerful without replacing it with another.
The engine produces power when the fuel inside it burns, so to make it more powerful you have to get more fuel in there and make it burn faster. The downside to this is that you will burn more fuel and as a result you will have to spend a little more money on it. And the whole process can cost you quite a few dollars. So if you are not interested in spending too much money you might want to skip to the next item on the list.
To improve the fuel air mixture you will need the following items:
- A cylinder head with more valves
- A more free flowing air filter
- A more free flowing exhaust system
- A larger carburetor / larger jets
- And possibly an upgraded ignition system
The cylinder is what gives a scooter it’s capacity, a bigger capacity means that more fuel can enter, so more fuel can be burnt, so there will be more power. But be careful when changing the cylinder because after replacing it with a bigger one your scooter won’t be a 49cc or 50cc anymore, it might be 70cc, 80cc or even more.
All of those parts have to be proportional. If you just buy a bigger carburetor, it won’t be able to do too much on its own, you have to make sure that all the parts have about the same capacity. Otherwise your scooter will be bottlenecked by a part and most of the upgrades will have been for nothing.
Aerodynamics
While aerodynamics won’t make the biggest difference in the world, they might be able to get you a few extra miles per hour.
The first and most obvious one is, don’t wear baggy clothes. Baggy clothes will make the surface with which air comes into contact a lot bigger, and this will make you considerably slower.
The next thing that you can do to improve your aerodynamics is to get a small windshield and duck behind it when driving. Doing this will reduce the surface with which air comes into contact and as a result it will make you faster. This is also a technique that all professional motorcycle racers use, to gain speed more as well as higher speeds.
When it comes to scooter aerodynamics the idea is that the smaller the surface the air can hit, the better.
Upgrade
The final tip that I can give you is that if you want more speed you should upgrade to a more powerful model.
As you have seen most things that you can do won’t increase your speed that much, maybe 10mph in the best case. If that is all you wanted to get then your current scooter model should be fine. But if you want even more speed your only option is to upgrade.
Conclusion
So those are the ways in which you can make your scooter faster. As I’ve said if you follow them you should be able to get around 10mph more out of your scooter. If you want more than that you will probably have to get a new more powerful scooter. But if 10 extra miles per hour is what you wanted that here is again the things that you will have to look into:
- Remove the Restrictions
- Variator
- Fuel/Air mixture
- Aerodynamics
I hope you found this article useful, and if you have any questions you can always leave them in the comment section and I will answer them as soon as possible.