BECAUSE i have spent so much time tinkering with mine, I figured I would let everyone know what is involved in a proper 12v conversion of this scoot. It is not for the faint of heart. I am an engineer and because of the lack of accurate information available and a mixed voltage system (AC and DC voltage) it has taken me several months to get this all figured out lol. I have about 20minutes to 1 hour a day to work on the scoot, I have an autoimmune syndrome called Ankylosing Spondylitis, so sometimes I can't work on it for a few days at a time.

THESE WILL BE RAMBLINGS of what i have learned of this scoot. Not a guide, not an understanding by any means, and i'm an engineer lol.. (AC/DC mixed systems piss me off because I don't have an O-scope at home or even have the money for a proper meter for measuring mixed voltage)

BACKGROUND ON MY SCOOT
I picked her up for 30 bucks from a crackhead in Rantoul, IL. I got it basically as a toy for me and my kids to play on. It is missing most of it's body panels, it was peeling 4-5 layers of spray paint, had scratches everywhere, spider infestations, rotted this and that, etc. After a lot of cleaning, removing of the stock airbox and a full dissassembly of the engine and scraping and cleaning and custom gasket making, and .... Well, just tons of work, but no parts needed, it started up and ran perfectly. I don't know what year it is.. Maybe 85-87 from reading around because it has the expansion chamber exhaust. Mine was missing a battery, rectifier, and other important things which forced me to learn about the charging system.


OK THE BASICS
The "Lighting coil" in yamaha's description is the only thing that matters when powering the scoot. The Pulse coil and the "charging" coil have to do with operation of the CDI/Spark/Timing system, so have nothing to do with 12v conversion.
The lighting coil is a double wrapped coil. Half of the turns on it go to the headlight and the other half of the turns go to powering everything else and charging the battery. Both of these put out around 8ish volts at idle. The headlight side of the coil DOES NOT get rectified as incandescent bulbs work on ac or dc, just regulated to 7.5v and under (Yellow wire red stripe). The other side gets rectified or else it wouldn't charge the battery (white wire).

What I did.

Since my coils weren't working properly anyways I ripped out the dual 6v coil and picked up some similar gauged enamel wire from my local generator repair shop *(always use local shops, they are fastly dying and need our help) and rewound the entire thing to one continuous coil. Tossed out the stock 7.5v stanley regulator ebayed a 14.3v regulator that would usually go to some odd alternator, grabbed a 50a bridge rectifier from radio shaft, and am now running a 12 volt system with the headlight being fed straight from the battery instead of from a jankety AC line.

More on how I did it later, my hands are filthy and i need to snap some photos for everyone, because I also repainted this beast. and it is quite beautiful now even if it is missing all the panels. Oh and I also custom laid fiberglass to make a panel on the front so when i scoot my kids around my yard they won't step on hot engine lol. More later I dont have time I just wanted to get some info online.

Let us know when you find out what year this scooter is. Is it a Yamaha Razz?

Wow. As a former CV80 / Riva 80 owner I'm very impressed with your work. The archaic 6 volt system is one of the main weak spots with this scooter.

So are you still using the same headlight? I'm not electrically inclined, but my understanding was that 12V power would likely blow this 6V bulb eventually. I thought all the lights would need to be changed, although with some other stuff like the horn, flasher relay etc. Maybe this is coming in part 2....

No michele it's not a Razz. The Riva 80 was the big brother to the Razz's predecessor, the Riva 50. You can read about the Riva 80 here:
http://motorscooterguide.net/Yamaha/Riv ... eluga.html

Same headlight, it nominally gets 7.5v from the stanley reg. But it seems to handle the overvoltage fine. If it blows I am going to custom fiberglass an HID into the reflective casing. ONLY if necessary though. Yeah the stock electrical was TERRIBLE! My kids go back to their mother's tomorrow so I will have more time for ramblings soon lol. flasher relay is failing from double voltage, two turn signal bulbs blew, horn is fine, all bulbs need replaced with 12v versions. Even the t10 bulbs behind the gauges. LED versions of them all Cost 13 bucks off ebay for every bulb including turns and brake lol. and another 5 bucks for an LED compatible 12v flasher relay... Makes power draw sooooo low. Because even rewound to 12v the amperage output is fairly low compared to modern generators. If i had some larger gauge wire available I would try rewrapping with larger wire and see if I could still maintain 12v and squeeze some more amperage out of it.

Thanks Skydeaner. It's good to hear about your experience. I hope that headlight holds up for you and you can avoid the time consuming switch.

It doesn't heat up any extra or even brighten all that much more, so I assume it will be fine. heat is usually the killer and it stays about the same (measured with infrared therm). I can now run a regular 4 pin regulator/rectifier that I find on any number of motorcycles. How exciting it is to be able to use something so "normal" on such an old scooter LOL. I think here the next two days or so I will snap some pictures and put together a semi- howto for you guys. So that the people that are halfway knowledgeable will know what to do.

That would be awesome. I'd love to see it. I know a few basics like using a multi-meter, but my electrical skills are definately my weak point.

It was a challenge to get my CV80 electronics sorted out. The scooter came with all the wired really messed up around the battery. No voltage regulatory, fuse was missing, a bunch of homemade wiring etc.

ok in case anyone is following this, DandyDan maybe lol. The headlight indeed couldn't handle 12-15v lol. BUT Instead of wasting my time fiberglassing I threw some pictures together of a very simple headlight mod.

Basically take your whole headlight and pop it in the over for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees Fahrenheit. This will soften the glue enough to pop the glass of of the front. Don't burn yourself by the way, 180 is enough for it to hurt Now after you pry the glass off, take and cut around the rear bulb wear it was soldered to the headlight. Use a rotary tool or a hacksaw, whatever you have available. A torch was enough to melt the solder they used, but was it was just too hard to get the solder to flow away from where it was, so i ended up just using a rotary air tool and a diamond cutoff wheel. Slice that puppy off the back and you will have a nice lip with which to rest the new bulb on. Glue the new bulb in with JB-Weld and forever hold your peace. It has the same connectors as our original bulb, but the high/low is reversed. You can take a flat head screwdriver and swap the green and yellow wires on your scooter side plug so you correct that. If bulb ever fails just slice it back off and glue a new one in. Less than ideal, but this sucker is ungodly brighter than the original.

I took lots of pictures of the bulb because you need to pay close attention the the direction you glue it in. The is a metal shield in it that would normally cause the light to direct AWAY from the center of your vehicle. As you can see when you drive at night your left light in your car points straight out and to the left and your right light points straight out and to the right. They don't cross in the middle because of this shield. So play around with it and see how you like the light pattern the most since we only have one bulb. I think i had the light pointing down? so that it doesn't shine in others eyes, and when the brights get turned on it shoots higher which is perfect. You will have to use your deductive reasoning skills here and just judge by the pattern it casts as once it is in I didn't take pictures of it like I should have lol. When you have it aimed how you like and it casts the pattern correctly slap the glass back on with some RTV silicone, or any other type of rubbery heat resistant glue you laying around. You don't want anything you won't be able to remove again, but you don't want anything that will break down with heat or that isn't water resistant.

Make sure you mix your JB weld darker than I did. I knew i put too much hardener but I figured it would be fine and it came loose, but mixed it darker the second time and I can't pry it out now with a pair of pliers.

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is all the pictures

Thanks for the update.

That's some innovative work to get the headlight open. Nice idea with the oven. Hopefully you've got it solved once and for all now.

I'm waiting on my generic Chinese 4 pin regulator/rectifier now instead of the separate units I am using, then I will post an update with pictures about all of the electrical workings. Coming from hong kong... gonna take a few days lol. But I figured with it only costing 6 bucks, this is something most people can afford and is much less confusing than the circuit board I have wired now.

Just a quick update because I have nothing else to do. I ended up having to make my own voltage reg because no factory ones worked right lol. So if anyone would be wanting to attempt this they would need to be handy with a soldering iron anyways, basically it is a LM317 voltage regulator IC driving a PNP transistor to up the power output. I have a potentiometer on it and can adjust the voltage anywhere i see fit. Works amazing. I run about 3.5amperes of current through it without a problem. I had to put a fairly large heatsink on it (an old cpu heatsink) because sometimes it is dissipating close to 100w of power, so it is a large and pretty noticeable piece lol.

Anyways, the project is so far over most people's heads I think I'm just going to forget making a how-to, as anyone that is going to be able to do everything shouldn't need my help anyways LOL. Anyone that is attempting to do it and has questions though, please feel free to email me @ skylerdprahl@gmail.com

I AM designing an LED headlight for it as well. Because the current one draws too much power. It is just going to be a huge grid of high output LED's. I'm wanting to stay around 30w with it. Could still be obnoxiously bright with 30w @ 12v