ClareQuilty

I have an old Kawasaki Cheer that leaks oil, and all the mechanics have told me the problem is unfixable. It is moderately prohibitive to change the oil every month or so (it gets pretty low after about a month), so, I've been topping up for the last few weeks from the left-over oil bottles from my car's oil changes. You know how in Thailand they often give you the remains of a big bottle of oil to put in your trunk, since there's always a fair amount left over after re-filling the car. I must have 3-4 of these bottles around the place.

I'm wondering if this is OK to do. I don't know if car-engines use a significantly different oil in terms of weight or thickness or viscosity or whatever.

I apologize if this question is plain stupid… Please help – I have no idea where else to

get the answer…

When I bought my Forza, I asked the dealer specifically about what type of gasoline to

use. He said “95 preferred, 91 minimum”. I asked about gasohol – just to make

sure. He said “under NO circumstance!! Or you damage your engine”. I

– it was 91 Gasohol I filled it with..

Gasoline 91 is NOT used anymore i

Then finally, on the front cover of Owner’s Manual I see 2 circled signs, with 95

(orange) and 91 (green) – looks to me like a clear indication that Gasohol is

indeed OK for Forza. Well, then here comes another question – if I fill it with

pure 95 (not Gasohol) by any chance – will it be bad at all on the engine??

Now I need to make a decision – I got around 3 liters left and I rode around 210 km on that first fill up… Can somebody clear these questions once and for all ??

Yeah you'll never damage anything by using real gasoline - anything that is made to run on gasohol mixes can run on actual benzine (after all, even gasohol 20 is still 80% real benzine). I think the dealer is an old fashioned kind of guy - It is true your Forza was made to be able to use gasohol, but obviously it would be better to avoid that nasty stuff if you could, alas nowadays it isn't so easy. I use PTT's yellow benzine 95 in all my bikes, even though it is 47 or so per liter. Its still available up here in Isaan, I don't know about where you are - might take a bit of hunting to find it.

Up here in Isaan most PTTs still have the yellow 95 benzine - I haven't noticed any dropping it. I've had some fear that they might, as I imagine few people buy it, but anyway so far it is still there. I see a few young guys buying it who seem to care about their bikes, but most people seem to be putting the gasohol garbage in their older bikes.

Just keep it and use the cheaper battery and the better gasoline (benzine 95). I don't really see any problem here - replacing batteries every year is not that unusual (though few Thais would bother to replace it).

Lickey it is so many years ago now - maybe 2-3, that I can't really remember. I think my friend has generally been able to rectify the problem momentarily (if he hasn't taken a spill) by twisting sharply on the throttle handle, very higher and then lower, and it then sort of goes back to normal.

more than likely all the fuel didnt leak out, and was an exaggeration. If it did then i was wrong.

Yeah, it all ran out - I had to go buy a whiskey bottle full of fuel to get it to the gas station. After.. I guess about 3-5 days.. can't remember exactly. Anyway now it seems to be holding.

. I mean an old Suzuki Hayate - how much can it be worth at this point? Probably less than 20k baht?

I think less than 10,000 for sure. Nobody wans Suzukis - by that I mean Thais don't want them.

Unless of course it is an old classic Suzuki RC or something like that.

In all seriousness, I'm afraid I can confirm that the bike does accelerate wildly on its own - it used to do it for me sometimes, years ago, before I sold it to this guy.

Not joking, really, who is stupid enough to buy a second and car in Thailand ?

If you only have 50,000 baht, you have no choice - and some of us are clever enough to find something good even in a tough environment. My old Ke-70, while hardly anybody's dream car, has served me very well. Of course it helps to be 'in good' with middle class Thais - buying a one owner car is better than dealing with those 'tents', obviously - in fact my sellers allowed me to pay in five monthly installments of 10,000, while driving the car all the while.

Could be your friend has an undiagnosed medical problem. My dad had one. One day a decade ago he was supposedly backing his car into the driveway but for some reason he put it in "D" and slammed the accelerator flat to the floor, screamed across the road and crashed into the front verandah of the house opposite. He had cuts and bruises but the car was a right off. Next day he was released from hospital and didn't remember a thing!

Maybe the bike is just fine.

Haha, in that case I'll try to buy it off him cheap. Thanks BSJ. :v

Monopoly (or near monopoly) will tend to lead to increasing prices. Its kind of the purpose of getting a monopoly. There's really only the two bike companies in Thailand now, and Yamaha isn't even much of a factor, alas.

Another one with more dollars then sense..

That or more likely just some time to kill with the never-tiresome sport of trolling. (There are a lot more trolls in this world than high-rollers).

Friend of mine has a Suzuki Hayate - it is a strong and sturdy bike (for an automatic), but it has one fatal flaw which has plagued him for years and years - it accellerates suddenly and for no apparent reason. He's crashed once or twice due to this problem, and spend thousands of baht on fixes, including a new carburetor a year ago.

Anyway, I've told him that in my opinion it is a hopeless case, but what could cause this? I believe the mechanics have checked into the obvious possibilities such as a kinked or binding throttle cable, or a caught or otherwise malfunctioning throttle mechanism. Now the mechanics who put in the new carburetor a year ago say this carburetor is now also no good, so it needs another one.

Any advice about the Suzuki Hayate? After observing my friend's difficulties (and my own very minor troubles with an antique Akira), I've developed an extreme aversion to Suzukis.

The road to disappointment is littered with the likes of Alfa, Peugeot, Renault and the occasional VW. But if you like to tinker......

Nothing absolutely terrible about an old rear-drive Peugeot if its drivetrain has been entirely replaced by one out of an old Toyota. I've often thought of getting an old Peugeot 505 or 404 and having a 1300cc Toyota engine put in it as they do.

If it ain't got Honda written on it, don't buy it!

It's that simple.

That's probably a reasonable point if you're buying new, as the other makers seem to have been destroyed by the monopoly, but as a collector of very old bikes I can say in the past they were all closer in quality.

As for the original question, is it really necessary to get a Click or Fino? For less money you could get a new Honda Dream (or Wave), or a Yamaha Spark or Nano: whatever their standard bike is called. They're much sturdier machines than the autos.

He may have made a repair to the vacumn operated fuel tap that has gone wrong again, or raised the float level in the carb to give it more fuel, if this is the case the fuel could be escaping through what some call the overflow pipe in the float bowl, I look on this tube as air replacment for the fuel that is sucked out,

Ok, if its the fuel tap, the fuel will go into the engine, if its leaking onto the floor, try putting a piece of wood under the side stand, just to keep the bike more upright,

Let us know where the fuel is going, Cheers,,

Actually that's precisely what he asked me - was the fuel in a puddle under the bike. I couldn't remember however. In the end it came back fixed, though for another 100 baht. This guy always charges 100 baht for everything - very different from my other mechanics. Now that the bike's more or less in order I don't think I'll go back to him.

I actually don't know where he fuel was going, I can't remember if there was a puddle under the bike when ti was leaking.

Got the Akira back a couple days ago, it ran fantastic, back to using too much fuel but oh well at least it is driving well. However, today I noticed that after his carb-tinkering, a problem it had a month ago has returned - the fuel all leaks out when it is left sitting for a few days. He had previously fixed this problem very well and it hadn't leaked a bit in a few weeks, but I guess his disassembly and reassembly of the carburetor caused it to return. So, now its back with him again!

Hard to say what he's done, but can't be much considering the cost.

Maybe he just dropped the needle a few notches.

Not sure what carb is used on an Akira, but guess it's a basic one, so not that much can go wrong...

Well I'd say he definitely over charged if all he did was some adjusting. Dropped it off back there today and he asked me to leave it 24 hours to get it back to the way it was before, warning me it would probably go back to using a lot of gas.

I have an old two stroke Suzuki Akira in great overall shape, that's been a lot of fun, and a fairly reliable bike for just 3,500 baht. However, I noticed that compared to my old Honda or Yamaha two strokes, it was using a totally unreasonable amount of fuel. I took it in to the mechanic and told him 'kin nam man yuk mak' and when I got it back the next day the bill was 280 baht. He seemed keen to warn me of something, speaking in Thai about 'something something blah blah economy', but as I couldn't understand I just left. The bike ran fantastic at first, but on the highway it experienced all kinds of problems between about 40 and 60.. basically it seems choked off, like at a certain point the throttle gets cut off.

So, I'm going to take it back, but I'm trying to figure out what he might've done. Any ideas? Maybe some kind of economy carburetor? Or 'jets' or whatever part(s) could cause a constriction? I'm all for reasonable economy (my Tenas are marvels of economy for 2-strokes), but it is unsafe to drive a bike that can't accelerate smoothly from 40-80.

Trying to get answers on other threads but failing. What fuel are Nouvo Elegance drivers using now benzene 91 (red) is gone? Is everyone using benzene 95 yellow? Or are some going with gasohol 95?

I think you should use 95 Yellow 'benzine', for sure. Don't touch gasohol if you can help it.

"an even smaller 1000cc unit from a 'Tercel'"

I didn't know the Tercel came with 1000cc engine....which would be too small for the Tercel and the Corolla. I may be wrong but I think it would be a Starlet engine you have.

Could be.. I think 'Starlet' is the name of the thing that predated the Tercel, but it is essentially the same car, isn't it? The one the size below the Corolla in whatever year one is talking about.

BSJ, I believe my air-con is a retro-fit - presumably installed by the dealer - though it blows through the factory vents, the controls are in an odd position at the lower right of the steering wheel and definitely look 'added on' rather than built-in.

In fact, I think that this retro-fit air-con overstrains the car's cooling system, which may have contributed to the original owner's wife blowing up the original 1300cc engine quite a few years ago (you know how it goes, the old man took care of it, after he died the poor thing fell into the hands of the lady of the house). It was replaced with the current engine, an even smaller 1000cc unit from a 'Tercel'. Its a mighty slow old car now, and many people have heard it running and said to me 'I didn't know they put diesels in these'!

Nowadays I can use the air just fine as long as the car is moving, but I have to be careful to keep an eye on the temp-gauge if it sits in traffic a long time. I added an electric fan to the outside of the air-con's radiator (which sits in front of the regular radiator), and it seems to help a little.

I had my air fixed up on the ancient Ke-70 around a year ago - it had been a bit less than cold. After the fix it has been great, but about every 3 months it goes out, either due to a short/fuse or other electrical part, or due to a leak. Each of the first 2-3 times this happened the guys I'd paid around 2,500 for the original fix took care of the problem for free (a fuse, a little freon, whatever).

This time they finally started charging me, as an electrical part had gone bad. Total bill - 400 baht for the part, nothing for the 45 minutes of labor, and I've my cold air again. Ice cold at night, a bit less cold in the heat of the day. Hey, its the best you can expect on an old Ke-70! And it doesn't even die (though it seems it might) when the compressor kicks in.

There's 95 benzine until the supply lasts, but yeah it can be pretty expensive at almost 50 baht a liter...

You mean they're not making any more 95 benzine? Just using up an existing supply?