MOPED ARMY

Either a new tomos or if you completely rebuild a bike (correctly of course) and follow the maintenance religiously.

Check out the top two videos in this link to get what I mean by maintenance:

http://www.mopedarmy.com/wiki/Moped_Safety_Videos

where is "you know who" when you need him?

mine's about 50 miles roundtrip. Totally fine. And that's why I rock a new Tomos. And that's what I recommend you do. 80 miles is pretty tuff stuff.

PA 50 II, PC50 or a Vespa Grande. Or new Tomos.

i drive about 60 miles round trip twice a week.

It's competely possible, on either a new Tomos Sprint, or a completely rebuilt older bike. I have put 300+ miles a day lots of times on my '03 Tomos ST, my former '05 Tomos ST (since traded for an '08 Sprint), and my completely rebuilt '80 Puch ZA50. If you buy an old moped, It will need a complete rebuild to do that (most likely), if you get a new Tomos, unless it is a Sprint, it will need one modification (use search function), and possibly a new aftermarket exhaust eventually, because the new A55 Tomos mopeds come with a catalytic exhaust that plugs up after about 1000 miles, and a stock A35 exhaust won't fit. An alternative would be if you could find a really nice, low mileage, late model ('05 or earlier) completely stock Tomos. My stock '03 ST, with the one modification I mentioned, has over 14,000 completely trouble free miles on it, almost all of them highway miles, at WOT. Peace. Jerry.

Thanks for all the replies guys. A new Tomos is really out of the question as far as costs go. I was hoping to put something together with a budget under $500. Is this at all possible if the commute is made, say, once or twice a week?

It's probably just a pipe dream, but at 80 mpg, I realized I could spend about $600-700 on a moped and still save money when compared to my car and gas prices.

I actually have a Sears Allstate I'm working on, but it's in no condition to make any such trips.

I don't know about Jerry's info about the cat and the taking off the oil injector. I have 9000 miles and counting on a 2007 A55 with the cat and oil injector and the Revival will do 42 mph confirmed on GPS all day long. And that is with the stock exhaust. It has been trouble free and I am about to change out the rear tire. The only major thing I had to do was change out the chain at 6500 miles.

I'm wondering if you guys with the long miles on stock exhausts had some preventive maintenance before you got the bike, or if your catalyst blew out. Can you tell if your pipe was drilled to prevent the symptoms of plugging? I had one catalyst come loose and work its way to the back end of the pipe (where it caused plugging symptoms), but it might be possible for the occasional catalyst to disintegrate and blow out gradually. It resembles very stiff, fine steel wool. At least the wad of stuff I pulled out of my pipe was like that.

You may still be able to find a late model Tomos A35 in excellent condition with low miles for $500-$600, that would easily make that trip. My dealer gave me $500 trade in on my '05 ST, it was in showroom condition, low miles, still had the belly pan on it, but it did not have the other part on it. Premix only. She said she could get $700 out of it easily. I would have sold it for $500. Peace. Jerry.

"I suspect WOT highway use is not as likely to plug up a pipe as city stop and go part throttle riding. "

Possible true. And the fact that every night when I get off work (1-4am) leaves me with a 25 mile ride that I take WOT on a highway is prolly the reason that my pipe burns itself clean. I try to ride WOT everywhere I go, in my ideal world my moped would only have two speeds, full and idle.