Aprilia SR 55mph

Today I decided to spend a little time with the most ridden bike in the stable as of late, the SR50. When I purchased the sweet scoot a few years ago it came with an uninstalled, nearly new, carbon fiber canister, Leo Vince ZX-R pipe with the stipulation that the SR was way faster with the stock pipe. This puzzled me as usually a performance pipe on a two stroke is like a high flow down pipe on a turbo car, simply amazing! So with all this in mind I gave it a go installing the pipe and after a quick ride to the park with my son, it was definitely much slower than it was with the stock pipe. Google revealed a bunch of other just like me who put a Leo Vince on and was slower for their efforts. Was this pipe made for the ruckus crowd who cruise slow and low? Well the forums revealed that none of us bothered looking in the header to see if there was a restrictor inside as these pipes were made for the EU market who have strict regulation on scooter power. After finding this key info and removing the pipe, close inspection revealed the problem!

A little Dremel work would take care of this quick, but mine was 20 miles away! Luckily I had just received an order of tungsten carbide bits that were scheduled for duty on my upcoming Derbi project, but more on that later. With tungsten bits, my handy Craftsman 19.2v, and a bunch of sweat and tears, mission accomplished!

After all this a fast 55mph test ride was in order! Definitely made a huge difference!

Looks really sweet too!