X-Pro 150cc // Vader 150 // Lifan 150

[ProDigit]

The end of a project.

Perhaps I was hoping to secretly find a way to get the 150cc to gain another 10MPH, for cheap; however, I've spent way too much time, effort, pain, and money on it already.

If you plan on doing what I did, save yourself the hassle, and do what everyone else did.

In this order to save yourself lots of hassle and pain:
1- Open the right-side fairing, to gain access to the carburetor and airbox. About 2 big Philips head bolts, 4 small ones, and 2 plastic ones in the front. The plastic ones, you have to twist 1/8th of a turn, then you can remove the center pin, and also the plastic rivet. It's not a screw, just a rivet held in place with a plastic rod that has a philips head.

2- Buy a POD filter (like $8), and replace the airbox with it.
I would only do this if you live in a fairly clean environment.
If you plan on doing trails and dirt roads, you may want to keep the stock airbox.

3- Without removing the carburetor, open the top part where the jet needle is. You'll need to find a thin washer to put under the needle. In order to do that, you'll have to unscrew the throttle, so you can have a bit more cable length.
A small <0.5mm washer under the jet needle clip, will be enough to adjust the Air/Fuel ratio, and gain a lot of acceleration past 5k RPM.

4- Close everything up again. Carburetor, side panels....

5- Take off the stock exhaust and paint it completely with Rustoleum (2000F) black paint.

Run your bike like this and be happy with the 60MPH you're getting.
It's not going to run much faster with another exhaust.

The washer underneath the jet needle clip will also make the exhaust less loud.

The exhaust isn't specifically restrictive, however it rusts quite quickly.
You can replace the exhaust when the stock exhaust is rusted through.

Aftermarket exhausts don't actually fit.
Even with 2 copper gaskets, you'll still get exhaust leaks, as the after market exhaust will touch part of the frame of the bike...
So if you're on the edge about a new exhaust, it's more problems than solutions.

If I had known this beforehand, I would have just done the air intake and raised the jet needle by a bit. That's it.
Doing an exhaust does allow you to lower idle RPM from 1500, to 1200. So that's something....

The Air/Fuel screw seems to do exactly the same as the idle screw. Inject more fuel.
I wouldn't mod the stock carburetor.
I just wished I could actually have an idle adjustment screw; as the idle rpm screw adds more fuel into the mixture. Good for top end, but bad for idling (as the bike already is running very rich at idle).

The side panels seem to be able to handle about 2x opening and closing them up. After that, many panels start to deteriorate, break, clips breaking etc....

The X-Pro Vader 150 has very weak passenger handles.
Lifting up the rear of the bike with one of these handles, will cause their mount points to bend.

This will be the last test to my bike, due to time and money constraints.
I hope this thread will have saved a future person from the mistakes I've made on mine.

Good luck, and keep riding!

[ProDigit]

I've finally reverted the OEM carburetor back to stock settings (just the choke valve (flap) removed), and put one washer under the jet needle, and the bike is running great.
It does have noticeable acceleration gain across the board compared to the stock settings.

Still a little lean on the top end, but kind of starts working better as the engine warms up. No bogging.

It does idle pretty high at 2k RPM idle from cold with the idle screw to the lowest setting, and indications of a lean running bike (when revving the bike, it lowers to 2k RPM quite slowly), despite the exhaust smelling still a bit rich.
Once the bike is warmed up, that problem disappears, and idle is closer to 1500RPM.
I would try a second washer under the jet needle clip maybe another time, as with the stock airbox removed (and using a pod filter) I only need to remove the 2x 10mm nuts, to lower the carburetor enough to access the jet needle. I can do this without removing any of the fairings now.
So changing out the jet needle settings should take less than 30 minutes.

I did install the performance exhaust with 2 copper gaskets:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/385603922733
Which apparently, I could order from Alibaba for half the price...
The pipe doesn't quite fit the bike, the bottom is touching the frame, causing the header to be in a slight angle, hence the 2 copper gaskets. I do hear the air coming out the header section when riding slow, but there's nothing I could do about that.

My recommendation, if you are going to use a POD filter, is not to cap off the crankcase vent hose.
I did cap it off, but drilled a small pilot hole in the tube, so gasses or pressure can exit the case, but hopefully oil will drip back into the crankcase.
I did cap off the fuel tank vent hose.
The ~10in aluminum pod filter pipe didn't fit the bike, so I screwed the pod straight on the carburetor.
If I found another pipe with vacuum line connection, I could add the fuel tank vent hose to that.


Top speed (with a little tailwind) in 5th gear was 68MPH indicated (this was with 1 washer under jet needle clip, tucked in, and the fastest recorded speed), though generally it'll top out around 63MPH in 4th gear (60MPH GPS verified) at 8-8.2k rpm without tail wind, or 55MPH GPS verified in 5th gear.
I use it more as a cruising gear than a gear to go fast with.

Around 8k RPM, the engine also is nearly vibrationless (balanced).

I also supplied the bike with 5W30 oil, after the top speed test.
This should mean the bike could run even faster with this type of oil.

The ~200 mile oil change had some minor metallic flakes, but nothing serious. The oil screen was clean.


My recommendation for new riders on the shipping oil, is to use it to start the bike, set the idle, let it reach up to temperature idling, lightly revving the engine (to like 4k RPM), to feel throttle response, and go for a few hundred feet of a ride and back at low RPM, to see if everything is working normally.

Then dump it, never use it for actual riding, and fill up with break-in oil (Lucas oil with zinc) added to standard 10W40 oil, for the first 50 miles.

Then use any regular 10W40 oil (you can add some of the zinc oil as well), for the next 150 miles.
After this, the engine is pretty much broken in, and you should use 10W40 motorcycle oil for the first 1000-3000 miles.
Don't follow my example on using 5W30. I only do it for testing purposes.

Other things I disliked:
The passenger handles are weak. I almost bent one from picking up the bike's tail by one handle. Always pick up the rear end using both handles; and even then, I feel the construction is too weak, and prone to breaking.

The Lifan 150 engine used is not a very efficient engine.
It barely ekes out at 60MPH, meanwhile Honda Grom 125cc engines, and the older Chinese 125cc pushrod engines top out at 65-70MPH; and the pushrod engines can actually get 120MPG easily (with the right gearing, and 100MPG when driven hard).

The lifan 150 makes most power at a high 7.5k RPM, which costs MPG and efficiency. It doesn't pull a 19T with the stock 34T rear sprocket at speeds over 6-6.5k RPM in 5th gear, but I can get the bike up to 8.5-9k RPM in 4th gear.
I will swap out my 34T rear sprocket with a 30T sprocket, which should give me higher top speed in 4th, and better cruising speed between 30-50MPH in 5th.

[ProDigit]

300 mile review.

After putting the 5W30 oil in it, I noticed my top speed was higher than before (I reached 68mph once, and 67mph another time today on that same stretch of road).

While during the break-in, I felt as if the bike only ran well up to 5k rpm and after that had a flat torque curve, lifting the jet needle with a washer, made my bike so much more responsive.
After 200-300 miles, it feels like the bike pulled better past 5k rpm, all the way to 6.5 and even 8k rpm.
The bike's vibrations have significantly reduced, and now I can actually see and feel where the fairings and pegs vibrate the most.
Below 5k rpm, vibrations are little, and generally following the following pattern:
2k-3k rpm: smooth
3-3.9k rpm: little rougher
4-5k rpm: smooth
5-6k rpm: vibey (with 5.5k rpm being the worst)
6-7k rpm: smooth
7-8k rpm, very vibey, mostly around 7.5k rpm.
8-8.25k rpm perfectly smooth.

With the lifted jet needle, the bike occasionally burps rich at 1-10% throttle, runs great between 10-50%, but beyond that, I hear the exhaust gets loud again, leading me to believe it's still running a little lean on the top end.

One of my next projects, now that I removed the airbox, and can access the carburetor easily, is to hacksaw open the OEM pz27, and measure the used jets, to install new ones in a new PZ27 I bought for like $20 on Amazon.

I'll then choose a smaller pilot jet -2 (if stock is 40, I'll try to install a 38), and increase the main jet +8 (if main is 100, I'll put a 108 for starters), which should be close to ideal jet sizes im expecting to install.

I'll also lower the jet needle back to it's stock settings.

I'm kind of interested to see what the new 19t sprocket with proper jetting will get in terms of fuel efficiency, as well to see if properly jetting the new carburetor will net better mpg values?

As is, I'm pretty content with the bike so far, but there's always room for improvement.

I also bought a seat cover, to protect the seat from rain and sun.
The cover helps distribute my weight on the seat better, which makes sitting on the bike for longer times much less painful.

[delzy]

If you ditch the stock airbox and just go with the pod, you can slip the carb out easily or even change the jets without removing the throttle cable. Of course, you need a carburetor with screws for the bowl.

[ProDigit]

300+ miles, and still hitting only 66mpg :/ .
I do run it hard, accelerating between 6 and 7k rpm.
Despite the 19t, it still has a decent amount of acceleration between 50 and 60mph.
I am still waiting on the 30t rear sprocket from rebel gears, which will lower rpm further.
Its unusual for it to take longer than 3 weeks to arrive...

I also purchased a drill kit for jets. If I want to, I could drill out the main jet a bit, if I don't have matching jets to replace it with. It should give me a bit of extra top end power, and allow me to keep the jet needle stock (not raised by a washer).

These are projects for this weekend (hopefully).

[ProDigit]

Today was carburetor day.
Spent a good few hours jetting the OEM carburetor.
After my diamond rotary grinding discs arrived, and I was able to take out 2 of the 3 screws on the OEM carburetor. The third one I needed to drill out, as it was literally chipping off from me trying to loosen it.
All copper bowl bolts were replaced by higher quality steel hex bolts (no more flathead or Philips screws).

The OEM carburetor came with the same jets as a stock PZ27 from amazon that I had purchased as a backup.
The jets are interchangeable. The OEM jets are silver, the Amazon P27 jets have a golden color.
The OEM jets weren't numbered, but I measured a 40 pilot, and a 95 main jet, which is quite low.

I live near ocean level, and needed a fair bit more on the main jet than 1 setting, so I skipped the jet size 100, and drilled it out to a 105 jet.

When installing the carburetor back in the bike, I removed the washer under the main jet, as it would sometimes make the bike burp off idle (rich condition).

After a test ride, I noticed overall it ran better than with the washer, but still ran too lean from about 50% to 100% throttle. Having this obnoxiously loud aftermarket exhaust, helps tell me when I'm running too lean.
The richer I run, the quieter the exhaust gets. And this time around, the bike made more noise at 50% and up of throttle.
I lost some top speed as well.

The next drill I had was for a 110 jet size, and I was afraid that that was going to be too much; and I was right.
While idle ran great cold, as soon as the bike 'warmed up' it started throttling, and lost top speed compared to the 105 jet.

I couldn't jet it smaller anymore (I mean, I could, by putting solder back in but wasn't going to keep myself busy with that). Instead I decided to just use one of the jets of the jet-kit that was between 105 and 110. The 108 jet.

The 108 jet also ran great cold.
But as soon as the bike warmed up, I noticed the bike was slightly rich at ~10-50%, but slightly lean at 75%, and leaner the more throttle I applied from there on.

I've heard someone say it, and it's true;
The bike's carburetor is kind of hard to set up right.

So I kept it at a 108 main jet, and a 40 pilot, without raising the needle.
It caused me to lose a bit of top speed compared to stock with raised needle, but it seemed to run smoother overall.

The 40 pilot seems to be running quite rich when cold, but turns a bit more stoic when hot. I wonder how that happens?

Engine temperatures also decreased drastically. I remember doing top speed runs on the stock 95 main, and could feel the heat of that engine rise from under the tank.
Now it's running a bit too rich in the mid section, so I don't notice much in terms of engine heat radiating from under the bike.

I have to say, the bike has wonderful acceleration from a stop to about 50MPH; then creeps from 50 or 55 to 60 (indicated). My top speed does seem to be affected by the weather. Colder weather seems to slow the bike down a bit. This could be due to a new pod airfilter I'm using, that has a plastic tube longer than the other one. Should get better idle, but worse top speed. I might swap out the pod tomorrow, and see if it really affects top speed or not...

also, with the pod intake and aftermarket exhaust, the bike now idles fine around 1k RPM, vs 1.5k RPM with stock exhaust and air intake.


If you ever buy the Condor 150 or the X-Pro Vader 150, and live near to sea level,
- You can either go the easy route by putting a thin washer under the jet needle;
- Go the difficult route, and use the OEM carburetor and drill out the jets to a 105 or 108.
- Or go the more expensive route, and get a PZ27 from Amazon or Fleabay, and a jetkit, and install a 108 main jet.

For some reason, there are no pilot jets available for a PZ carburetor.

I'm interested to see how my MPG values will change. Probably lower MPGs.
Will need to do an MPG run soon, once the 30T rear sprocket arrives (apparently the company had sent mine to the wrong address).

[ProDigit]

Well, the project is still continuing.
The 30T rear sprocket arrived, and in combination with the 19T front sprocket, it makes this bike feel much more like a bigger bike.

It needs a bit more fine clutch control to start from a stop, but no complaints about acceleration.
1st gear accelerates fine, second and third a bit slow, so I usually try to hit 6-7k RPM in third gear. Fourth gear easily hits top speed at 8.4k RPM (roughly 64MPH indicated), meanwhile fifth gear does between 47 indicated (45GPS) with a slight headwind, to 60MPH on the way back.

So top speed definitely suffered, due to lack of engine power.

The rear does allow for a 29T should one so desire, however, I'm going to keep the 30T on there, and take out the amazon bought PZ27 carburetor, and swap out the OEM one.
Not because it's bad, but because the fuel bowl is cracked around the screws due to drilling them out, and it'd get more and more difficult to keep opening and closing it.

At roughly 10ft above sea level, and 90 degrees weather, the OEM carburetor came with a 40 pilot, and 95 main jet.
I upped this to a 108 main jet, but the exhaust is still running lean at 75-100%.
So I thought of opening up the PZ27, take out the pilot jet, use some solder flux on it generously, and add some solder in the jet, and just heat the whole thing up.
That way, a microscopic layer of solder lead will coat the jet, narrowing the opening hopefully by just enough to lower the idle fuel ratio, because it's running too rich.

With that setting I'd be able to richen up the main jet to 110, and get a little more power out of the engine, to match the 19/30T sprocket setup.

Unless someone has found a link to a smaller pilot jet for the PZ27?

The engine itself seems to gain some power around 6k and 8k rpm, and I'm wondering if this is valve float-related?
It's especially noticeable with taller gears, where the bike has trouble reaching 55MPH (<6K RPM) but then seems to accelerate faster from 6k to almost 7k RPM (55-63MPH) in 5th gear.
I'm not complaining. Bike hits well over 64MPH indicated on a short run in 4th gear (8.1k RPM) if I want to go faster.

5th gear now makes the bike want to stay below 5-5.5k RPM (45-50MPH), where it should get much better MPGs; except for with a tail wind or downhill.

I was thinking, when the main jet is upgraded, the bike runs cooler. That means if there was an easy way to increase compression ratio, you could increase performance, while consuming even less fuel.
I don't yet have sufficient knowledge on pushrod engines to make this happen.

On the other hand, I took an angle grinder, and ground down a bit of metal on the motor mount, to make the after market exhaust fit.
It significantly reduced the exhaust leak, to the point where I can't even hear it anymore.

[ProDigit]

Finally made the switch to the Amazon PZ27.
I refrained from doing, just to see if I could reuse as many of the stock parts as possible, but because of a rich running 40 pilot jet, I wasn't able to continue that route.

I probably misread the Amazon PZ27 idle jet last time, because it clearly states it's a 35.

I'm currently running with the Amazon PZ27, 35 jet (included), and had to increase the 95 main jet to a 110.

Currently, the bike rides phenomenal with a slight tail wind, but with a headwind I need to shift to 4th gear, where it generally runs at between 6.5-7.5k rpm peak at ~50-60mph gps. 65 if I tuck, which is the same speed as in 5th with a tail wind doing 6-7k rpm.

It works a lot better, but I'm going to take off the pz once more, to install a 112 main jet if I have it.
If not (and the kit only has a 115), I'll leave it running slightly lean.
The summer is coming up, and that means less dense air, which a lean running bike will benefit from.


My overall suggestions have changed though.
If you own a condor or Vader 150, and you want better top speed,
You have to get an open exhaust, remove the stock airbox, swap the carburetor with a pz27 (set main jet to 110-115), get a pod air intake, and install following sprocket setup:

- 17/29t (no drilling or grinding required).
- 18/31T minor grinding needed on the sprocket cover
- 19T (with OEM 34t sprocket; some grinding necessary on both sprocket cover and engine case).

If your bike is well tuned, you could run an 18/29, or 19/33 or 32t on the rear for max top speed. A 19/30 or 19/29 isn't ideal, as it only reaches top speed with a tailwind or if you're drafting behind a vehicle.
It's ok for better mpg though.

Aside from that, I grind down the handlebar stop blocks, by 2 to 3 mm.
It's a small detail that took me a while to do, but it allows me to better turn the bike in tight spaces, even though it only resulted in 2 to 5 degrees of extra steering angle both ways.

I also needed to grind down a bit of metal from the motor mount, to fit the aftermarket exhaust

[ProDigit]

The conditions were just right today.
Was late on my way to work, dark clouds over the road, so I had to take my Vader 150 on the highway.

About 75F, humidity close to 100%, minor rain, a slight tail wind, and a car in front of me cutting the wind.

The Vader did a good job keeping up with the cars to 60, slowly creeping up to 65. I then tucked myself, got behind a F150, and after a minute or so, read 77mph indicated.
That's about 72mph gps verified.

I'm still running the 110 main jet, so it should be slightly faster with a 115 main jet.

I realized, doing 72mph isn't a whole lot of fun on the Vader, and thus I have been thinking of swapping out the 30t rear sprocket for a 31T, and up the main jet to 115.

Usually my trip to and back from work takes one line of fuel.
This one way highway trip took 2 lines of fuel.
I wouldn't be surprised to see mpg readouts drop with next fuelup.

[ProDigit]

Took the Vader 150 out today on a run.
I think I had dialed in the carburetor just right today. 110main jet, and 2 turns on the AF screw.
While the bike does seem to run slightly rich idling, and stoic at top speed, it seems to run a bit lean in the middle, especially during acceleration.
The 19t front and 30t rear is a bit hard to ride, due to the fact that I can barely reach 6k rpm.
So I've been thinking to either swap out the 30t for a 31, or 32 t.

I've ordered a 32t, because soon I'll change the oil to 10W40, from the 10w30 I'm running right now.

I ended up losing the silencer of my cheap $36 slipon exhaust
This after I had drilled out the tab in the rear, because I thought the exhaust isn't made for 150cc bikes, but rather up to 125cc.
The silencer just blew off, despite it being loctited down.
and when I found it, the bolt holding it in place was just sheared off, causing it to be catapulted out of the muffler.

It's a piece of junk. Ordering another one, which I'll drill some more holes in the end pieces, to handle the extra pressure.

[dirtbkr188]

Just an FYI that saves a lot of work, dropping down 1 tooth on the front sprocket is the equivalent of going up 2 to 2.3 teeth on the rear sprocket


19/32 = 1.68:1
18/30 = 1.66:1

[ProDigit]

Thanks. According to my math, I really needed to increase 1.5 tooth on the rear to 31.5 tooth. 31t would still give me not enough power to overcome the first 6k rpm with the 19t front. Additionally, the higher weight oil ill be using, will also somewhat slow the bike down, so 2t is really the closest to the ideal ratio I could think of.

On the other hand, an 18T might actually work better with the 30t, as the 19t up front is one millimeter away from the gearing wires.
And would translate to 30/18*19=31.667t, which is indeed closer to the desired 1.5t difference needed.

It's cheaper as well than a rear sprocket.
I might try this, thanks for the suggestion!

At 19/30t, going down 1t up front, results in +1.6t on the rear.

[ProDigit]

1k miles maintenance:

Aside from an oil change (oil still looks very good),
I had to take off the front headlight assembly, and fix the cylinder lock which had loosened.
While I was there, I noticed most of the front wasn't done with Loctite.
Aside from a few bolts and nuts I Loctited, I also put some loctite on the threads of some harder to get to nuts (like those of the blinkers). hopefully the loctite will dry on the thread, preventing the nut to rattle loose.

The handlebar riser pieces also started coming loose, so I loosened the nut, applied Loctite, and tightened those.

The engine and transmission on most of my Chinese bikes are loctited, but the parts that end up falling apart, are usually the bolts and nuts on the rest of the bike.

I also learned never to put loctite on a screw that's screwed into plastics, because that screw won't ever come loose again.

So far, no matter what I do, the bike seems to top out at 55-60MPH, and 65MPG, regardless of sprockets or carburetor setting. Sure it goes faster with a tailwind, but the 138cc is in my opinion just a 149cc engine with a 138cc small bore kit (probably for longevity). It's only marginally (10%) bigger than a 125cc, and I find the small increase in cc disappointing.
They could have gone with a true 149cc instead, which would make this bike go perhaps 5MPH faster, with more torque. The 5MPH is really important when you're having a headwind, as this 138cc can go from 45MPH with a strong headwind, to 70MPH with the same tailwind.

[dirtbkr188]

What is the actual bore and stroke of your Vader 150?

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by dirtbkr188

What is the actual bore and stroke of your Vader 150?

one site says "62x49.5", another says 138cc.
From the performance of this motor, I'd say the 138cc is probably closer than the 62x49.5 (=149cc).