Performance Upgrade Package for Honda Ruckus
The Honda Ruckus is an incredibly popular scooter in the greater Portsmouth area. Known for its bulletproof reliability and motorcycle-esque styling, the Ruckus is a popular choice for those who want to be on a scooter, without it “looking like” your conventional Vespa-type, fairing clad scoot scoot.
A black Honda Ruckus in all of its minimalist glory.
A downside of the excellent Honda engineering is that the stock engine is fairly hard to modify. The engine does not readily accept 70cc “big bore” engine kits, which are a great bang-for-your-buck upgrade on equally prevalent QMB-139 / GY6 Asian import engines. While that’s a bummer, we’re happy to announce we are now offering Sport Package Upgrades for Honda Ruckus and Metropolitan scooters. Priced at $295 for a limited time only, we think this package provides a great boost to your scooter’s acceleration and top speed.
Without getting too technical, we want to tell you a little bit about what we carry out when we install a Ruckus sport package, what you’re paying for, and how it improves your engine’s performance. Check it out:
Carburetor Tuning
The first thing we’ll address on your scooter is the core of your fuel delivery system, your carburetor. The carburetor takes fuel from the gas tank and mixes it with air so it can be detonated inside your engine - this is why your engine is called an “internal combustion” engine; you explode fuel inside your engine to produce power. Cool! This highly pressurized explosion is what makes the power that is ultimately delivered to your back wheel and, simply put, makes you go. Layperson logic says, “more power, more go!” and that is totally accurate here.
An exploded diagram of your carburetor assembly.
Now, as cool as the Ruckus looks, its still a moped. Mopeds are designed with fuel economy as a #1 priority. As in, Honda cared more about how many MPGs you get, than how many MPHs you can achieve. We can respect that, since fuel economy is awesome in its own right, but in this article, we’re here to talk about performance upgrades. So, we’re going to adjust the carburetor in a way that will have a slightly negative impact on fuel economy, but a positive impact on power output. A worthy compromise if you ask us.
By increasing the size of the fuel jet(s) - nearly microscopic orifices that deliver fuel to the engine - we can provide more fuel to the engine. Great! But, fuel combustion requires oxygen (air) - so we can’t simply add fuel and hope for more power. In fact, if we increase fuel supply, we must also increase air supply. At Port City Mopeds, we modify the stock air intake so it can breathe in more air. Sure, aftermarket air intakes are available which might provide even more air, but they’re a bit gaudy for our tastes, they don’t do as good a job keeping your air clean, or your carburetor dry, and they are way louder. We think a modified stock air intake assembly is a nice way to increase power output while keeping the scooter reasonably quiet and stock-like. We call this a “sleeper” - when that stop light goes green, fools won’t know your ride’s been modded till their suckin down your exhaust smoke.
This process takes a bit of trial and error, as every engine is a bit different and has slightly different fuel/air demands. They call it “tuning” since its like dialing in an old radio: try a given setting, then listen to determine if its just right. If not, make an adjustment, and try again. Repeat, until you’ve converged on the perfect setting. Since we have to test ride the scooter at each iteration, this is where some of the install time goes.
Transmission Tuning
Believe it or not, the modest carburetor tune we perform is the only modification in the Sport Package Upgrade that actually causes your engine to generate more power. That might sound weird, but just as important as how much power your engine makes, is how your transmission gets that power to your back wheel. By tuning other subsystems, like your transmission and ignition, we make better use of the power your engine produces, which will have a positive impact on acceleration and top speed.
No doubt, your Ruckus uses an automatic transmission. This means, unlike a manual transmission on a car or motorcycle, we have absolutely zero control over how our scooters shift through their gear ratios. This is great from a usability standpoint - anyone can get on a scooter, twist, and go! No need to think about upshifting or downshifting. But from a performance standpoint, this is really limiting. You don’t remember Vin Diesel and Paul Walker driving automatics, do you? That’s right - performance tuners and drag racers will always drive a manual transmission, since it gives them complete, on-the-fly control over their engine’s gearing and consequent performance.
In its factory-stock configuration, your scooter’s automatic transmission is tuned for - you guessed it - excellent fuel economy. We’ve already agreed fuel economy is boring. While we can’t convert your scooter from an automatic to a manual transmission, we can tune your automatic transmission to bias it for performance, rather than fuel economy.
Think of it this way: if you’re familiar with driving a manual transmission car or motorcycle, there’s a few ways to go about it. Hop in the passenger seat with Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel, The Fast and the Furious), he’s going to hit the accelerator and push that engine speed (measured in RPM) damn near redline, then he’ll upshift to the next gear, then repeat until top gear. This uses every bit of power your engine is able to make, while sucking up a lot of fuel while we’re at it. If you’re driving around with grandma, she’ll probably do it differently: she’ll push your engine’s speed up to about 4,000 RPM, then upshift. While this isn’t a particularly enjoyable way to operate a car, it will feel nice and smooth and render good fuel economy.
We learned everything we know about performance tuning from Dom Toretto
While your scooter’s automatic transmission doesn’t work in exactly the same way, the principles are the same. With our Sport Package Upgrade, we will adjust the parameters inside your transmission to keep it in a lower gear for longer. This will push your engine speed higher than it would typically rev, allowing it to make more power than stock. Awesome. This will also help you tackle hills, with your scooter more ready to “downshift” when encountering incline
Ignition Derestricting
After carburetor and transmission tuning your engine is going to be inclined to achieve higher engine speeds (measured in RPM). Since engine speed is generally related to travel speed, this is a good thing - higher revs mean more power output and higher top speeds. The bummer is, the stock Honda Ruckus’ Engine Control Module (ECM), is programmed to stop your engine from accelerating past 8900 RPM. This rev limiter is in place to keep things in check and the engine moving at a comfortable pace. We’ll need to remove this RPM limiter if we are to fully enjoy the modifications to the fuel delivery system and transmission.
Our friends at NCY have devised an ingenius little doodad - an unrestricted CDI box for integration with Honda Ruckus ECM. Sparing some of the technical details, we wire up this little red box to work in cooperation with your ECM. Like the ECM, it senses your engine’s speed. When we hit the pre-established RPM limit of 8900 RPM, the NCY CDI box bypasses the ECM’s limiter, allowing the engine speed to continue to rev well past 8900 RPM.
Courtesy of ScooterWorks, this NCY-made CDI box bypasses the RPM limiter on your Ruckus. Supported by: charts and figures.
The higher rev limit helps a few things. For one, we talked earlier about how the transmission tune will keep you in a lower gear for longer, before upshifting, pushing your engine speed higher than normal. If we didn’t derestrict the CDI, the engine wouldn’t be able to rev as high while acceleration. Second, no doubt your travel speed is associated with engine speed; the higher we allow engine speed to climb, the higher the top speed we can achieve. Finally, we’ll really get to enjoy some momentum from downhills.
Results and Wrap-Up
This excellent Honda Ruckus Sport Package Upgrade is available at $295 installed until further notice. This includes carburetor tuning, transmission tuning, and a derestricted CDI box. While results may vary, expect this modification to take you from around 37mph to 40+mph, and with a significant gain in acceleration and hill climbing ability. Solid bang-for-your-buck when it comes to tweaking a bit more out of your bone-stock Honda Ruckus setup. Interested? Book an appointment today and we’ll get you hooked up!