No matter how big, or how small a bike may be, if it has two wheels and a motor,
it can be raced. There are many categories for motor racing, the smallest being
50cc. 50cc racing is popular in Britain, and if gas prices continue their gravity-defying
ascent, 50cc racing may become more popular here, too. AMA Superbike
racers only dream of getting 70 mpg on the track.
Enter
the
moped: A 50cc motor boasting 1.5 hp that's just waiting to be
uncorked like a bottle of fortified wine. The availability of go-fast parts and
the collective experience of tuners like Ryan Weibusch and Michael Mike Nazarof
can help to get your grocery runner get up to speed. The price of entry is cheap,
and the pint-sized motors sip fuel like a duchess at tea.
In
part three, the final segment of moped video podcast series, I speak with Ryan
Weibusch and Michael Mike Nazarof about performance tuning for closed-course racing.
We'll learn about carb jetting, port tuning, how an expansion chamber works,
and we'll solve the mystery of the variator.
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