Squirrel Power: Saving a Suzuki FA50

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We went to our closest small town hardware store and found some brass tubing that was the perfect ID for our pin.  We then cut a piece off to press into the seat (pro tip: keep the pin inside the tubing when you cut it.  Brass is soft and will deform really easily, crushing the cut end of the tube and making it impossible to push the pin through).  The tube was a tight fit into the seat and because of the overhangs for the seat itself, it was a bit of a debacle getting the tube in.  Pressing involved a hammer and a punch.

But once pressed in, the pivot works as it should.  Hopefully this will prevent further damage from occurring to the seat.  Best of all, the tube only cost a couple bucks and makes our original seat even better.

The license plate bracket was smashed flat against the bottom of the tail light.  With some Clarkson technology, we were able to make it functional again.

Now that our little Suzuki is running and reliable, we are very happy with it.  It’s still very slow though and there remains some work to do.  While there aren’t a ton of mods for this bike, there are a few things we can do to add some grunt to this little motor.  Some cheap mods include bumping up the compression ratio, adding a good air filter, and playing with the ignition timing.  A decent exhaust with expansion chamber will also add some ponies (some exhausts will actually double the FA50’s power).  A 12V electrical system would allow us to upgrade the entire ignition system and give us a hotter spark, as well as install brighter lights and a louder horn.  And if we get really ambitious we can turn to porting the head and installing a 60cc cylinder kit.  Plus, there are high performance (read: modern and not dry-rotted) tires, a fancy rear shock, higher performance brake shoes, and some clutch tuning we can add to the mix.

For such a forgotten bike, the possibilities are pretty wide.  How greedy will we get?  Depends on how many close encounters with traffic we meet.  For now, this bike is sitting in the garage as riding in in below 30 degree weather is pretty miserable.  As the weather warms up, we’ll play with it more and see if we can beat the neighborhood kids on their foot powered Razors.

 

As I write this, we are definitely not in moped weather anymore, though we are in perfect VehiCross weather!  Right now the FA50 is sitting in the back of the garage, waiting for a warm day to ride again.  While it sits, we'll buy a few simple speed parts and get it ready for the Spring.  Our FA50 has already proven to be a unique little bike and one we can't wait to put some miles on.  Who knows, maybe it will even turn this car guy into a bike guy.
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