Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

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Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by vintagegarage »

Technically this one is called a MP-150F-JCL according to the details on the body decal. Not sure how much interest there is for this one on this forum, but I can't find an AutoMoto forum that is still active..

This post is a continuation of the original post in:

http://hondaspree.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31062

Please have look at that post if you want to get up to speed. Here is my first post in that topic, repeated here.

So this happened yesterday:

As you can see, it is a real mess and almost everything on it is broken, but it does have a Florida title, so I am thinking of fixing it up. As near as I can tell, the Auto Moto 150 is really a Xingyue XY150ZK.

Here are some good links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL8fGotzq5c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP330sz-y8U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqmiyu-KvkI

The previous owner cut the seat in half, and added more storage room behind the seat. I think he had seen the UPS commercial in this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9ORfFortN0

It came with a new windshield, but I will still need to find a few impossible-to-find-parts, notably the windshield wiper and an original two person seat. I do have all the underseat plastic panels but they aren't in the photos. This one was originally silver. To get this one usable, I will end up spending way more than the $650 asking price for the very nice silver one in the 2015 ad for $650, and it won't be nearly as nice.

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Last edited by vintagegarage on Sun May 27, 2018 6:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by vintagegarage »

The previous owner sent me a photo of what this one was like when it was new:

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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by vintagegarage »

I may have found an original two person seat and windshield wiper setup. Hopefully they will arrive here in a week or so. Right now I am painting the body. I finished the rear pieces this week. I have finished the mechanical work. The engine seems to run well now, the tilt works as it should, all lights and the horn seem right, new front master cylinder works well. I have two new rear tires on order from China. It is titled and licensed now, and I am driving it around every day to see if anything breaks on it.

mm is right.. it is pretty slow for a 150, and it feels heavy, but seems to handle well. Advertised top speed is supposed to be around 45 mph, and it will reach that easily going downhill, but it is tough to reach 30 mph going uphill.

This is what it looks like as of today. This weekend, I hope to paint the front body, front fender, the engine cover, and if all goes well, all 7 of the plastic roof pieces that are colored. There are an additional 7 black pieces that form the interior of the roof, and all of them need repair and cleanup.

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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by motormike »

:urban: ...following.
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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

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I finished repairing and painting all of the front body parts and the engine cover three days ago, and finished repairing and painting all the roof pieces yesterday, just ahead of the rain today in Florida. I'm going to watch the Monaco Grand Prix, The Indy 500 and the World 600 today on the shop TV while continuing to assemble the Xingyue. The darn thing has taken over the shop. It is huge and has more than 25 painted plastic parts, most of which needed repair for broken tabs or cracks.

Image

It will take me the better part of this week to put it all back together. I found an original two person seat, a set of windshield wiper arms, and a clear used back window in Colorado, and UPS tracking says they will arrive late in the week. Same for the new rear tires, due to arrive via UPS from China on Friday. I have been reluctant to ride the scooter much because one of the tubeless rear tires had a bad sidewall split, and I repaired it by putting a wrong sized inner tube in it so I could roll the scooter around in the shop. I am not sure that the scooter would be controllable with a rear tire blowout at 45 mph.

I am still missing at least two critical parts.. the floor of the rear storage compartment, and the rear bulkhead that the backrest screws to. Both are described in the parts fiche as made of "scaleboard". I spent some time with google trying to figure out what scaleboard is, and was unsuccessful. Perhaps someone from Australia, New Zealand, or Asia will see this post and let me know what it is. My guess is that it is some sort of heavy cardboard, that can be molded when wet. There was some of the floor of the rear storage compartment left, and I think it was about 1/8" thick when new, but after sitting outside in the Florida weather for several years, swelled up and rotted to a dry powdery mess more than an inch thick.. sort of like OSB that has become wet and disintegrated. I have already made a new floor for the storage compartment, as it was flat and pretty easy to figure out. The bulkhead is another thing though. It is molded and has a complicated shape. I found these three videos, (while recorded in the wrong aspect ratio), to be helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FvB2mbae5I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSbqCkX9e2s

The bulkhead is shown in the second part between 7:24 and 7:31 in the link above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goDnFPL3GmY

I will probably end up making the bulkhead out of multiple pieces of fiberboard if I can't find a real one. Here is a link to the parts fiches. When I found this, I was hopeful, but the company in Texas has been out of business for more than 4 years, and I can't figure out who ended up with their inventory:

http://www.jclusa.com/MP150F-sellparts.htm

This link shows the body parts and you will see how many there are:

http://www.jclusa.com/parts_details_tab ... SSEMBLY(4)

The part I need is #47 and if you scroll down, you will see it described as "SCALEBOARD,CUSHION FOR LEANING ON". It was available brand new four years ago for $80. Any leads on a used one would be much appreciated.
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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by vintagegarage »

I finished installing the front plastics, the engine cover, and re-assembling and installing the mirrors today. I hope to install the roof panels and the front windshield tomorrow. Here is a photo after this noon's test ride:

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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by motormike »

Hey Vaughn...if you wanted to add baby moon hubcaps to the rears, old Snapper riding mowers are probably a fit. I have used them, long time ago, forgot the diameter, either 6 or 8 inch.
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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by vintagegarage »

MM.. I hear you.. on the subject of wheels, this one has 7 inch rear wheels, and road tires seem to be harder to find than TG50 rear tires. The size is 16x8.00-7 and there are a ton of them for sale on eBay with an ATV off-road tread pattern, but I couldn't find any with a road tread. I could find them on alibaba, but the vendors all sell in sea contained sized lots, and wouldn't talk to me about buying a pair. I finally got lucky and found a warehouse in Shanghai that would sell me two and ship them here via UPS. They are supposed to arrive on Friday, and I have my fingers crossed that the tread pattern will be the one I want for the street.

Likewise the used original two person seat and windshield wiper arms are supposed to arrive via UPS on Friday from Colorado.

I spent another long day today working on the Xingyue. I have put in about ten eight hour days so far. My biggest reason for the slow pace is my failing short distance eyesight.

On my test ride today, the fuel tank sending unit packed it in, so I now have one on order. The points in the slider failed and came apart. One good thing about GY6 scooter parts, a new sending unit is about $10 on eBay.

I did have a bit of a breakthrough today. When I got the scooter, the previous owner had thrown away the carb and the CDI unit and replaced the CDI unit with one of those with the colored aluminum heat dissipating "racing" CDIs. The carb is one of the standard GY6 cheap ones on eBay and I looked at the mainjet and it is a 102, just like the one I ordered for my TGB 150 with the same problem. The TGB missed badly under heavy load at any speed, until I put in a 120 mainjet. The TGB now runs perfectly, and the acceleration is thrilling. The first week that I had the Xingyue, I replaced the "racing CDI" with what was supposed to be a factory stock black GY6 CDI. Sometimes when I tried to start the Xingyue it kicked back, like the timing was too advanced at slow speed. Yesterday, I ordered a CDI with adjustable timing, to see if I could improve the starting. I am lucky that I didn't break the starter as the kickback was quite violent. I also found this youtube video showing Patrick from Georgia riding his out to the lake:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koH-NXk3AOY

The same man has many youtube videos and he regularly cruises with the speedometer needle straight up. Just like you said in a previous post, the speedometer on the Xingyue seems to be accurate, unlike most of the other Chinese scooters. In this next video, you can see that straight up is roughly 45 MPH, and he effortlessly is able to hold that speed up and down hills.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n82bIqVU6YQ

With my Xingyue, the top speed on the level was about 36 mph, and the scooter would slow down to about 25 going up a slight hill. As I said, it felt sluggish and heavy and it would be embarrassingly in the way in traffic.

Just to see what would happen if I put the "racing" cdi back in place, I did that and went for a test ride with the Xingyue. The result was amazing. The scooter now throws you back into the seat when you accelerate, and 45 mph is effortless, uphill or on the level, and it is still briskly accelerating at 45. It would go faster than safe on the maypop rear tires. On the way home, I went by my insurance agent and bought a liability policy for it. The acceleration and top speed is now very similar to the TGB 150. Even though it has a 102 mainjet, the Xingyue doesn't have a miss under acceleration. I may change to a 120 mainjet just to see what happens.

The bottom line is that now the Xingyue is scary fast instead of a slug.. It is now "something", rather than nothing. Here is the photo I took today after my test ride:

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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by motormike »

7 inch !?...some genius must have made that decision.
I like how the racing CDI turned out to be a real performer.
Good job on the body...what percentage of the total number of fasteners
did you find missing during the tear-down ?..just curious... :urban:
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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by vintagegarage »

mm,
The CDI issue is a real puzzle. I wish I had the original one to see if the performance was the same as the "racing" one. My bet is that it was the same. I hate it when the P.O. throws away original parts. Same for the carb. I'd really like to know what was the size of the factory original main jet.

This thing has a ton of hardware.. hundred or more of bolts, screws and clips, and I used the three disassembly videos that the man posted who took his friends apart to fix and paint it after a laydown. The videos were very helpful in figuring out if a bolt or a screw went in a certain place. For example, the "scaleboard" floor of the rear storage compartment was still partly in place and was held on by one of four M6 screws with a special round wide flat head that could be screwed with either a flat blade or Phillips screwdriver. Since I though I only had one of the four, I replaced all four with a normal M6 pan head Phillips head screws from Ace Hardware. However, at the end of the day, I found the other three specialty screws in the box of hardware that the P.O. had saved. Today, I'll replace the Ace Hardware screws with the original special screws now that I have found all four of the original ones. At first, I though about 25% of the screws and clips were missing, but I found a lot of the missing screws and clips laying in the belly pan where they had fallen or in the box of hardware that the P.O. passed on to me.

The box of hardware has been getting smaller and smaller each day as I put the scooter back together. I just discovered many identical square plastic parts that I realized yesterday are vanity caps to cover the back side of the windshield clips and back window clips. I am sure I have enough to do the windshield, but don't know if there will be enough for the back window.

Other than replacing the four storage compartment screws with the original ones, and installing the front windshield vanity caps, and then cleaning up the top of the workbench, I'm going to take most of the day off, as I have a day or two before parts arrive. I'll also take a longer test ride today as well.
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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by vintagegarage »

The used windshield wiper arms, rear windshield, correct two person seat arrived this week from Colorado, and a new GY6 fuel level sending unit as well. I had to rewire the new fuel level sensor as full was empty and empty was full. I still need to make some adjustments to the float level so that half is half and empty is almost empty. I put new rubber in the used original wiper that came with the wiper arms, and installed them, and hooked up the washer tube to the arms. The wiper and washer work as new now.

The big improvement today was finally getting a correct seat to replace my seat that had been cut in half. The used rear windhshield fit perfectly and is in pretty good shape, with only one blemish that looks to be a spot where a decal might have been, and the glue from the decal ate into the plastic. I took a long test ride this afternoon. I've now put over 50 km on the scooter so far, and it still running well. Here is the photo from today after my test ride.

Image

There are two more significant tasks left to do. The new tires arrived from QINGDA, straight from China, and they are perfect.. same company as the original tires, and same tread pattern, same sidewall markings but brand new. The size is 16x8.00-7. Tomorrow, I'll dismount the maypops, and paint the rear wheels, and then on Tuesday, I'll mount the new tires. Then I'll finally be able to make a few high speed runs to see what the top speed of the scooter turns out to be.

Here is one of the maypops:

Image

Here is one of the new ones:

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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by vintagegarage »

I painted the rear wheels with silver Nason urethane and then mounted the new tires. The wheels are just fabricated out of thin sheet metal and it is a bit worrisome to think I'll be driving the scooter at 50 mph on these puppies:

Image

After installing the tires on the wheels by hand, and then installing them on the scooter, I took the scooter out for a test run and found that the rear end had a very bad bounce at 30 mph, making it almost undriveable. The bounce clears up above 32 mph, and the ride was pretty smooth riding at 45 mph. I took the tires and wheels to the local tire shop and spun them on their balancer to see what was going on. Both new tires were pretty similar to each other and both out of round. I was running 30 PSI in the rear tires per the workshop manual, even though the max pressure rating on the sidewalls is 25 PSI. I dropped the pressure down to 20 PSI, and still had some bounce, but the scooter was now at least driveable. I was running the old maypops at 30 PSI and they had no bounce.

Unfortunately, I made one other change at the same time as changing the tires. There is a grease fitting on the swivel joint at the junction of the main frame and the rear subframe. The round end of the Chinese grease fitting wouldn't fit into my grease gun, and the swivel joint was clearly dry as the scooter creaked loudly with considerable resistance when I sat on the scooter and tilted it side to side. I picked up a metric thread grease fitting at O'Reillys that had a standard end on it, and greased the joint and the creaking went away, and the tilting became smooth. I'm not sure if greasing that fitting contributed to the rear end bouncing or not. Having it stiff may have had a damping effect. Unfortunately, I didn't make a test run with the new tires before I greased the joint. There is a massive single shock and spring that supports the rear end, and I'll have to try to source a new rear shock when I get to it and see if that helps.

In any event, I discovered a more significant problem in my test runs. The clutch would start dragging after riding the scooter for 5 minutes or so. After a 10 minute ride, it would be tough to sit at a stoplight as the clutch would be dragging pretty hard. I decided to go for a 15 mile high speed test run, so I rode 7 miles down the highway at 45-50 mph, and then started back home. About a mile from home, the scooter suddenly picked up a new serious vibration, and when I got to the only stop sign on the route, I found that the clutch was completely locked up and the engine immediately stalled when I came to a stop. When I start the scooter in a difficult situation, I usually put the tilt lock on, and then push the foot brake that operates both rear brakes. That locks the rear brakes and is called the "emergency brake". It also operates the rear brake light switch and that permits the starter to be engaged. I do this instead of holding the front brake lever, as it gives me more freedom to operating the throttle without holding the brake lever on. Luckily, the battery was fully charged, and I was able to start the engine, and the scooter immediately moved forward even thought the tilt lock and emergency brake was still on. I managed to get the tilt lock off without crashing the scooter, but I forgot to push on the foot brake to release the emergency brakes, and so drove home with the rear brakes on. When I got home, the rear brakes were very hot and everything was pretty much locked up. I put the scooter away and went to bed pretty discouraged. So far I have put about 130 KM on the scooter since I got it running.

This morning, the rear brakes seem OK, but the clutch is still locked up. I'm going down to the sign shop first thing to pick up the signs they made for the scooter. I'm getting two "MP-150F-JCL" vinyl decals, one for each side, and two "ABS" decals that go on either side of the vertical parts of the front fender. These scooters came with various logos depending on the reseller. Mine is a JCL, not an Automoto or a Vogue. When I get home, I'll apply the signs, and then start the job of removing the side cover and see what is going on in there. I found this video that shows pretty well the steps to remove the side cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIq8mgM8M0A

I'm still pretty discouraged this morning... even if the clutch is easy to fix, I need to do something about the rear end bouncing.
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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by vintagegarage »

I'm feeling better this afternoon after inspecting the clutch. The job of removing the belt cover wasn't as bad as I expected, and the video was a big time saver. I don't think I broke anything new getting the cover off. The rear brakes are fine after cooling down overnight. Here is a photo of one of the cute little aluminum finned rear brake drums:

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The belt cover came off pretty easily, and it was obvious what was wrong with the clutch:

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The belt looked like new, but is 10 years old, so I will replace it with a new Gates belt of the same size. I'll post this photo in case someone finds this posting a few years from now and wonders the size of the belt. This size of belt corresponds to a standard GY6 150 short case belt:

Image

One thing about GY6 parts.. they are pretty cheap and readily available. I ordered a new clutch and belt on eBay and the total for the pair with shipping was about $40. I also picked up the decals at the sign shop and installed them:

Image

As I wrote earlier, the Xingyue XY150ZK was sold by many resellers. There are three round logo badges on the car, and I guess Zingyue made special round badges for each reseller. I have seen pictures on the internet of the Automoto and Vogue round badges, but here is what the JCL badges look like:

Image

The bottom line today is that now I have at least four days off until the clutch and belt come in. I have to stay away from craigslist.org during my break or I may end up with another scooter. The Zingyue takes up the same room as four scooters, so I am about four scooters beyond the capacity of the shop.

I would say that the rear wheel hop contributed to the clutch failure, or else it might have been the cause of it. The reason I'm not sure that the wheel hop is cause of the clutch failure is that the clutch has been dragging since the first startup the day I got the engine running, including the initial less than 10 mph trip around the block with the old maypops mounted which didn't bounce. In other words, I think the clutch was slightly broken before I bought the scooter, and my high speed test run finished it off.

I measured the rear shock absorber, and have been unable to locate a new one yet. The way the shock is mounted though, it doesn't have much leverage, and it is hard for me to think that it really does very much. To stop the bounce, I'd think the shock would have to be mounted toward the rear of the engine case, but it is mounted on the trailing arm ahead of the frame swivel and well forward of the cylinder head. I can't see that it could have much damping action mounted there. I may break the clutch again if I can't solve the bouncing problem. I'm looking forward to the test after the parts arrive.
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Re: Progress on the Xingyue XY150ZK (A.K.A. AutoMoto)

Post by vintagegarage »

The new clutch arrived yesterday and I installed it this morning. I was hoping to find a clutch made out of stronger materials, but with stock clutch springs, but I don't even know what springs are stock. All of the high performance clutches talk about 1000, 1500, 2000 RPM clutch springs, but make no mention of having stronger materials. The last thing I want to learn about is tuning clutch springs, so I just ordered one of these regular clutches:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/CLUTCH-ASSEMBL ... 2749.l2649

The new clutch arrived yesterday and I installed it this morning, and then took a long test ride. After the ride, the clutch was still working fine and for the first time, I didn't have any clutch drag at the end of the ride. The "catch point" was exactly right, and power was smooth and acceleration seemed right. As near as I can tell, the new clutch is a pretty good match to the original clutch.

Now I am searching for a new rear shock. I started emailing vendors asking if they could help. The shock has an eye at one end and a clevis at the other end, and uses M10 bolts at each end. The distance between mounting holes is 235mm and the spring is very heavy duty with 6 1/2 coils. If anyone has any ideas for sourcing a shock, please let me know.

Here is a photo of the clevis end of the shock, looking up. The eye end is out of sight at the top.

Image
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