It’s hard to say, especially for me, a person who has never owned one until now.

How did it happen you might ask? How do you go from looking for a reliable, name brand ATV such as Honda, Polaris or Yamaha and end up buying a Tao Tao?

Price to be honest. I stumbled across the following craigslist add “NEW 150cc ATV for $949”, so obviously I could not resist. A few days later, I had purchased my 1^st Chinese ATV, a Tao Tao 150 automatic, with reverse (!!!) ATV.

I can invest $950 bucks into an ATV without many worries but $9,000 (comparing new to new here) makes me a little uneasy. I realize that the cheap ATV does not have many of the features that the high-end quads do, such as fuel injection, independent suspension, shaft drives, 4 wheel drive, etc., etc., the list goes on and on. Most I can live without as long as the thing does what I need it to do and that is exactly what I intend to find out over the next few months, possibly years (if it last that long, lol, I crack myself up).

I plan to post and capture some video regarding its reliability and performance and hopefully help make the decision a little easier on someone in a similar situation. I did as much research on Tao Tao as I could but let’s be honest, there’s just not a lot out there. Sure, there are plenty of sites to get parts, which was a big plus by the way, but there aren’t that many sites that discuss their performance or reliability.

What do I think so far?

It’s easy to start, electric start is great when it works and you have a good battery. I am a bit concerned about the fact that there is no other way to start it, kick start or pull start would be nice if ever needed. It runs and idles well. I do have to let it warm up for a few minutes whether it’s cold or warm outside. It shifts into gear easily, the automatic transmission seems to work well. Top speed I would say is right around 45 to 50 mph. If you ever buy one, make sure and check all visible bolts, screws and nuts for tightness. These ATVs are shipped only partly assembled and most of these “dealers”, if you will, that sell them, don’t give a rats about final assembly or QA. I tightened most and even found a few missing. Frame and engine are generally already assembled and good to go but exterior plastics, lights, racks, seat, etc. need to be checked well.

Wiring suggestion:

One thing I Noticed right off the bat is how all of the wiring is just out in the open, loosely zipped tied to the frame, sort of exposed in a bad way. It wouldn’t take much to jerk a wire loose or accidentally clip a few and cause major electronic problems. I went to Lowes and purchased wire shielding (plastic, split, beveled shielding) and a few rolls of electrical tape. Using that, I simply covered all of the exposed wires and then secured them back to the frame.

Just though I would take a moment here to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

1st Post: Nov 10th 2008
Latest Post: Dec 30th 2011
Total Posts: 238
Subscribers: 4,835
Comments: 2,486

If you ever in Corpus Christi, make sure you check out the USS Lexington. Thanks Mark for the awesome photos!

Smoking Notes/Tips for UDS:
30-40 minutes/lb
Our turkey: 14 lbs
Smoked for 6.5 hours directly on grill
Internal temp: 165 F
Check internal temp in at least 2 places, make sure everything hits a minimum of 165 F

Cut the top out, I used an air hammer/chisel.

Cut air holes in the bottom.
I cut 4, 2 inches from the bottom and equidistant around circumference of barrel.

Burn the barrel out, inside and out.

Paint it, outside only. Lid as well, I used the bottom of a webber grill for the lid.

Season it, coat the inside with oil, I used peanut oil.

Mount bolts to hold grill top.
I used 4, 4 inches from the top of the barrel and equidistant around circumference of barrel.

Mount temp gauge about 4 inches below grill, 8 inches from top of barrel.

Build/Buy burn basket, I made one out of expanded metal and a 16 inch pizza pan.

It’s done!

Break it in, 1st smoke.

Supported PSP Models:
All 1000s (AKA: Phat, Fat or Thick)
All 2000s (AKA: Slim or Lite)

Unsupported PSP Models:
All 3000s
All PSP Go’s and later

Refer to the PSP Identification Guide for help with identifying your PSP model.

Required Software:
Magic Memory Stick Creator

Required Hardware:
Supported PSP
Memory Stick Pro Duo (1GB or larger will work fine)
Pandora Battery (Service Battery)

Pandora Battery:
A Pandora Battery is a special battery that will kick a PSP into service mode so that you can install firmware (hacked firmware in our case) from the memory stick. For the sake of keeping this guide simple, I will not go into creating your own Pandora battery. Either buy 1 off the web (check amazon.com, you can get them for around 5 bucks) or find a guide to build your own.

Magic Memory Stick Creator:
The above MMSC will create a bootable memory stick that will install 3.80 M33-5 hacked firmware.

Hacking Your PSP:
Extract the MMSC to your PC.
Launch the Begin.bat located in the extracted files.
Follow the prompts to create your magic memory stick.
With the magic memory stick inserted and the PSP completely off, attach the Pandora Battery.
The PSP will turn on automatically and launch the loader from the memory stick.
When Prompted press X to install the hacked firmware.
You’re DONE!

You can now format the memory stick and use it for games, emulators, homebrew, etc..

Recovery Menu:
With the PSP power completely off, hold the right trigger while turning on to boot into Recovery. In the recovery menu, you will want to set UMD mode to M33 Driver – No UMD Required under the Configuration section.

VSH Menu:
Hitting the Home button while in the PSP dashboard will now allow you to access a “VSH” menu, which allows you to adjust some config settings directly from the dash.

Download PDF Version
PSP Identification Guide

Download PDF Version

Power Connector Identification:

Xenon NAND Connections:

LPT Connections – All Motherboards:

JTAG LPT Cable:

1 account = $50/year
Family Pack (4 accounts) = $100/year ($25/account)

Dashboard:

Quickly access Reports & Settings:

Reports:

The account holder is the Primary account member or manager so to speak. The primary member can easily add accounts to the family pack via the dashboard. Microsoft recommends that the family pack members all share an xbox but notes that it is not necessary. So, get 3 of your buds, collect $25 bucks from each, grab a family pack and add them to it.

TripIt organizes travel plans into an itinerary that has all of your trip details in one place.

Simply forward confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com and TripIt will automatically build an itinerary for your trip that you can access anytime, either online or from a mobile device.

TripIt is free and has a mobile app for most mobile devices, check it out at:
http://www.tripit.com/

Ate at the Hard Rock…

and drove by the Kennedy Space Center…

The basics:
1. Create a table (spam_words) with 1 field (word) containing your master back list, so to speak, of all spam words.
2. Create a stored procedure (Spam_Killer) that can easily be executed at will or via a script to iterate through your spam list and mark all comments as spam that match.

Spam_Words table:

CREATE TABLE spam_words (
word VARCHAR (20), PRIMARY KEY (word))

Set the field (word) to be the primary key, thus minimizing duplicate entrees.

Spam_Killer stored procedure:

CREATE PROCEDURE Spam_Killer()
BEGIN
DECLARE record_not_found INTEGER DEFAULT 0;
DECLARE spam_word VARCHAR(50) DEFAULT “”;
DECLARE spam_cursor CURSOR FOR SELECT word FROM spam_words;
OPEN spam_cursor;
the_loop: LOOP
FETCH spam_cursor INTO spam_word;
IF record_not_found THEN
LEAVE the_loop;
END IF;
UPDATE wp_comments SET comment_approved = ‘SPAM’ WHERE comment_author LIKE CONCAT(“%”,spam_word,”%”);
UPDATE wp_comments SET comment_approved = ‘SPAM’ WHERE comment_content LIKE CONCAT(“%”,spam_word,”%”);
END LOOP the_loop;
CLOSE spam_cursor;
END

Executing a MySQL StoredProc:

Call Spam_Killer

Notes:

I call the stored procedure in a master script file that runs every night automatically. The master script not only cleans spam but also optimizes tables, deletes post revisions and performs other various database tasks.

Kara and I took some Trail Rides on horseback

Saw some Elk

Sam & Tyson had a good time too