Fettling and commuting.

The rattle from the kickstarter turned out to be due to a crack in the support bush in the side casing that was letting the kickstart ratchet to float around and rub against the variator. Without buying a new engine side cover (surprisingly rather expensive), the best way to deal with this is to remove the entire kickstart mechanism, and get the electric start working.

Seat bin out, then I can get to the engine and wiring to check things over with my voltmeter. It confirms that there's voltage getting to the starter motor when the button's pushed, so there's a fault inside the starter. It's easy to take off of the engine, then the starter cover is held on the starter motor by two long screws. I should have marked the cover how it was assembled to the motor body, as it can go on in one of two ways. If you get it wrong, the starter runs backwards when you push the button, and the bendix doesn't engage with the starter gear on the variator. Guess how I know this....

Inside the starter motor, I find a wire that's fallen off of one of the brushes. The threads it should screw into have been partially stripped on assembly, and so won't tighten up properly. A small stainless self tapper does the job, and the motor goes back together with some assistance from a second pair of hands to help lining the brushes and springs up with the commutator. The least said about putting the cover on upside down, the better. There's a birds nest of insulating tape on the earth strap going to one of the starter motor bolts. Removing that reveals a corroded cable with missing insulation, so I trim it back to clean copper and solder a new ring terminal on the end.

Stabbing the starter button now has the motor spinning nicely, and after some head scratching resulting in me spinning the cover of the starter around 180 degrees, the motor is turning over. It starts easily with a whiff of throttle. Nice.

I take off the now redundant kickstart assembly and plug the resultant hole with a bicycle handlebar end plug that I had lying around. It fitted perfectly, and you'd not know the kickstarter was missing unless you'd seen the bike with it fitted.

Getting that sorted coincided with a spell of wet weather, enough to make my normal commute by bicycle uncomfortable. Taking the car would be madness because of the amount of roadworks being carried out on my route - five miles could take an hour on a bad day - so the scooter was pressed into service.

First impressions are that it's perfectly adequate for my commute. I can pootle up between the traffic, getting to the head of every traffic light queue. The small size of the bike makes it easier than on my larger, faster, bikes, and a pair of light overtrousers combined with the effective leg shields keeps my dry in downpours. Commute time is a rather good 15 minutes each way.

What is apparent is that the rear tyre is a little too low on tread to inspire confidence on wet roads. The internet finds me a Michelin City Grip Winter delivered to my door for £28, only a little more than the cheapest no-name nylon tyres. Bikes need their best tyres fitted to the front wheel, even more so with the tiny 10 inch tyres fitted to these bikes, so I move the front tyre onto the back wheel, and put the new one on the front. These are tubeless tyres, but they fit easily with some tyre lube and a ratchet strap around the outside of the tread to get the beads to seat enough to start pumping air into the tyres. Once they're started seating, remove the strap and pump them up until the beads seat evenly all round the rim, then adjust the pressures to what they should be.

That makes a massive difference to how the bike handles, with much more feedback from the tyres.

Filling up the fuel tank after a week and a half's commuting and pottering around reveals that I'm getting just under 110 MPG. I'm rather pleased with that.

Back on the Road

One day the dog will work out that sleeping underneath the letterbox isn't a good idea. I've got all of the bits to put the scooter back on the road, and the dog's got a bump on his head.

The new speedo cable's dry, so I greased it lightly and fitted it. A quick spin of the front wheel and the speedo needle moves, that's all it needed. I've also ordered a replacement front brake lever which bolts straight on. That lets me push new fluid through the front brake system as it was a little discoloured and of unknown origin.

All that's left to do is sort out the non-functioning horn, then bolt the plastics back on the bike. A quick check with the volt meter shows that nothing is getting through to the horn when the button's pushed. Taking the switch apart is simple enough and reveals that it's fallen apart internally, fortunately nothing's broken so I reassemble it and the horn springs back to life. Back on with the panels and I'm ready for a test drive.

A couple of prods on the kickstart and the engine's burbling away. On with the riding gear and we're off up the hill.

Gawd it's slow....

It crawls up to the top of my hill onto the flatter road and off it goes. At speeds up to 31mph, when the limiter kicks in and performance hits a brick wall. I'd noticed a sensor next to the clutch bell when I had the covers off. That's what senses the speed of the bike and when it reaches the preset speed limit the CDI retards the ignition preventing the bike from going any faster.

This is dangerous. At 31mph, you don't pick up enough momentum going downhill to give you enough oomph to get up the other side so you end up with a queue of impatient traffic behind you as you struggle uphill at 15mph. Allowing the bike to run to its real top speed downhill will reduce this problem, so I removed the sensor from the belt cover. This is the "pink wire" mod you'll find described on the internet without having to butcher the loom.

That's better. A 50cc scooter isn't ever going to be fast, but it'll pull 43mph on the flat and doesn't struggle uphill so much.

I'm going to ride it to work for a few weeks to see if anything breaks. Worryingly, the kickstart's making odd noises already....