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Ok, I don't think anyone remembers, but I've posted here in the past about the scooter I used to own back when I was living in Italy.
If you don't remember, basically while I was living in Italy (my father was stationed, Air Force) you can't drive according to Italian law until you're 18. What did me and my friends do when we hit 16 and we had no ride? Well, scooters are the norm there before getting a car. Most of these scooters are just 50cc slow-mobiles. However, they are geared toward a very specific young audience, with sweet looking designs and, believe it or not, liquid cooled engines and dual caliper slotted disc brakes. Needless to say, these bikes had some serious potential.
Naturally, I began to mod the holy shit out of it. I replaced the engine with a 70cc Polini aluminum racing cylinder which was designed to rev up to 18,000 RPM! I swapped out the whole transmission for a "built" one (think: Shepard transmission for a scooter) and after all was said and done, I clocked mine at 92MPH from a Mercedes 190E. Dyno graphs of similar setups were showing close to 20HP at the wheels!! The power to displacement ratio is INCREDIBLE.
So, now that I am seriously considering going with a custom turbo setup and megasquirt on my 2GNT, I began to wonder what would keep me from building a custom MegaSquirt to modify one of those 70cc engines to fuel injection. Then, what if I could turbocharge it? Needless to say I would need to find a VERY small turbo and push very low boost, but in an engine of that size, it would most likely still make an enourmous difference.
I don't see why 40 or 50HP would be out of the question. According to a few 1/4 mile ET calculators, 50HP at the CRANK would be good for mid 10s in a scooter of the weight mine was (275 pounds).
So, why wouldn't this be possible? Any ideas on possible turbos to use? Any comments, flames, questions or anything? I think this would be an extremely cool project to pursue, and you may just set a few world records doing it  . . . Oh no! My sig died! I'll get another one. Member and Co-Founder of FLDSM
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