Hill impact on a two stroke scooter
 

I owned a 49cc two stroke scooter (really a moped). It has a CVT transmission and was advertised for 100 mpg or so. I live in a mountainous area and consistently got 60-65 mpg and I was wondering if that was a consequence of the big hills on the two stroke engine, or of false advertising!

I always made an effort not to drive with more than about half throttle (extra power beyond that was pretty minimal anyway), but I imagine short circuiting was exasperated anyway (fuel/air mixture being blown right through the engine when scavenging). Alas my scooter has recently died, which is what got me thinking about it.

Anyone have the real world experience or technical expertise to take an educated guess? Thanks a lot.

Have you tried more throttle at all? As you said it's not making much extra power beyond half throttle anyway. It might be worth a try.

I think the smaller displacement engined scooter's fuel efficiency is highly depended on the weight that it carries..

how much do you weigh?

what is the most common speed range that you travel on your scooter?

When you say "big hill", do you mean sustained hill that are long in distance or steep in gradien.. maybe both?

Do you ride in higher altitude? is the carb jetting setup to compensate?

I weigh about 163 lbs. The speed range is all over the place because of the hills. It can be 20 mph uphill, and 45 downhill. Average speed was 35 mph pretty consistently. There are hills that are both steep and sustained on the route I most commonly drove, although most were longer and shallower. I never was able to drive it someplace flat to measure how it did. In fact when I had the ScanGuage II in my car it was very difficult to tell what the ideal level speed for my vehicle was around here! Well, it's Vermont. I had a different brand when I lived in Mass. (old sucker with a single gear ratio - that sucked up hills). I don't think the altitude here is high enough to warrant carb adjustment. What sort of heights would matter for that?

Since the scooter is now dead, I can't really do any experiments on it unfortunately. It needed a repair that it wasn't worth performing given it's low initial price.

I once had a bicyclist from Canada try and pass me (they come here to train on the hills). She almost made it when we were on a slight decline, but then it became a slight incline and she couldn't sustain her speed. It was really impressive to see what she could do!

Scooter's gone, but I always avoided it because the owner's manual said that cranking the throttle was a lot more inefficient. I guess I should've thought to drive consistently that way for a tank's worth (it only had a one gallon tank) to check that out.

I'm slightly tempted to get another scooter (different brand) because I have no friends or family where I live and the scooter made it possible for me to bring my car in for repairs by myself (put in on my trailer then ride it home). Maybe I'll just ride my bike or make a friend or two.

Oh, yeah, this was an MZ Moskito Classico.