Don't know if I mentioned that the 75 GT185 I bought recently on eBay is for my daughter. She did her first ride on it the other day but is really struggling with take-off. The clutch/throttle timing. Important but taken for granted by those who have it down. Tough for a learner. Especially on a bike with zero down-low grunt, very little flywheel weight, and a tendency to go from moped to wheelie-monster at precisely 5k rpm with no build-up before that point.
This week, I'll have her help me get one of the CB160's in good tune so she can learn and practice on it before going back to the GT185. Once she can launch the GT consistently, she's taking the AMA rider training course. Trying to talk her mom into doing the same.
While she's doing the AMA course, I'll tear down the top end of the GT and see what it needs. I suspect it was either seized (or nearly so) at some point or the cylinders were allowed to rust. Hopefully a honing and new rings will boost the power output dramatically.
It's supposed to make 21 horses but I think it's only doing about 15 or 16. And it's a lot more anemic at low revs than it should be.
I'd love to do some internal power mods (especially in the low and mid ranges) and might end up doing so this winter. The engines in these things are only good for about 30k miles and it's my belief that it's because they're tuned to have to run at such high RPM and full throttle nearly every second they're running. If we can get more mid-range out of it, I can change the gearing and hopefully have the engine live a while longer.
As it is now, once the engine is up to full operating temperature, it's all it can do to pull my 220 lbs at 60 mph on level ground. If I lay on the tank, the speedo slowly climbs to 70 mph. Sit back up and it quickly comes back to 60. If I encounter even a small hill, I have to downshift to 4th and even then it comes down to about 50 mph.
I'm pretty sure 21 horses should be able to keep me at 60 mph without using full throttle, and keep that speed up most hills in top gear.
