Honda Spree and Elite 50 Forums

Can you start it with an electric drill at least? Be fun to check out what kind of gains you get.

I'd be interested in seeing what parts of the Urban variator even fit on Spree crank. Maybe you get lucky and can re-use the pulley half with sprockets.

And yes you can start these with a drill... have seen that many times and always give ppl crap about it. Will also allow you to run it with side cover and bendix removed... watch your pant legs.

quick look over lunch
the bushing for the VARIATOR, is the length of the entire eternal crank shaft. It may fit with shaving of the case. but then how do we keep it from eating up the shaft seal? we would have to fit a new bushing for the variator to slide upon. we would then have to machine the crank so that the vartiator bushing slides on and stops just before allowing the variator plate to make contact wit the shaft seal boss. but then who knows if there would be enough room for full varaition? i suppose that could be fixed with a shorter bushing? variation will be small, but better than nothing? i will beasure some more tonight. still looking slim...

lol ive ruined several pant legs on the hobbit. and some pretty sick scars falling once in shorts (like a noob). getting rid of my notched variator soon so it wont be so bad next time lol

Post pics, everything you can contribute helps, even if it's a failure.

stevespree7 wrote:quick look over lunch
the bushing for the VARIATOR, is the length of the entire eternal crank shaft.

That's kind of what I expected... crank end is too short on the Spree.

Or jsut swapped a vari af05e into the bike... or an dio motor. Becauae if you mess with the crank its jot a spree anymore.

That's why I suggested to change the vari side of the crank. For a longer shaft to accomidate a vari. If he already had the crank apart to drill holes in it, might as well experiment with different cranks while youre at it. Have to keep an eye on where the bearing notch is and where the oil seal will sit on the new donor crank half. If you had a pile of random cranks laying around you could match one up that's close?

I have no idea if theres even a crank out there with the shaft type that would jive with the Spree case. Im just shootin from the hip here.

The notch on the crank will absolutely have to be moved to make this work. (i dont think it ever will. Unless major FAB skills)

the area from where the face plate ends and the shaft seal begins is only about an inch an a quarter.... tops. i can see there being room to fit, but no possible way to variate. (since the bushing will have to be drastically shortened)


the oil pump area will have to machined out and welded to add more material, and maybe it would work with only half variation.


or we could have the varaiator on the end of the shaft, (possible, but the variator will extend about an inch past the crank end. the added end weight could snap the whole thing off, who knows.

but then this opens a whole new can of worms. an new variator bushing will have to be crafted. now, do we rely on the recessed variator nut to pinch that variator bushing on tight enough to not slip and eat itself? or do we machine a spline in the bushing to mate with the spree shaft? (almost impossible to match) maybe a new spline can be made just after the honda spline? sounds expensive, i dont have a 90┬░ cutter

Meh, swap in an Elite motor, pop wheelies all day at 40mph and call it a day.

Meatball wrote:Meh, swap in an Elite motor, pop wheelies all day at 40mph and call it a day.

Lol agree

Guess I'm also going to have to agree. Mine runs awesome and all, but wow, look how much money I had to put into just the engine. $100 for a BBK, $75 for gears, $200 for a muffler, $200 for a carb, and etc, etc, etc.

So like $6-700 to go 50mph?? Yeah, no way would I recommend that. Sure I did it, but I did it for a cause and purpose other then top speed potential. Went into it fully expecting and prepared to spend a few grand on the project. It stands to reason that is not the type of investment a typical person would want to make on a vintage scooter. Don't know that if one did spend that kind of money, that they would want to mess around with the harmonic balance and shafts.. * if you are gonna split the case anyway... CHANGE THAT, don't try making it do something it wasn't meant to do.

I think there was a variated version of the spree... the pal or something? I'm not sure, but I think it had a small variator on a spree af05 block.

Interesting to note, Kitaco sells a BBK for the PAL, though it is quite pricey.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/152333427651

There is no way a variator will fit in a spree. The crank is just to short. I tried to get one made but failed. I have the honda pal engine you are talking about. I put a BBK, 21mm carb, and mlm pipe on it and it ran pretty good but it still hit the 42 mph wall. I played around with that variator set up for days. I used diff clutch springs and rollers set ups with a koso variator. I even put my sa50 set up in from one of my bikes and just used the pal boss but the result did not impress me. I did have a good set up for the low and mid range with stock pipe but it would only top at around 36mpd with that set up. It did have some snappy acceleration but lost top end.

One of the biggest problems with the spree is the stroke. The little 37.5 stroke is pretty short compared to the aero50,se50 39.3 and the sa50 that is 41.4.

I do give you props for doing something different to the crank but the jb weld is a bit crazy to me. You could have measured the id of the drill holes and pressed in some aluminum plugs. Balancing the crank is the trick.