Though I didn’t post about it, I’ve been having some pretty confusing and troublesome scooter problems. The new engine that I got a couple weeks ago has been pretty hard to start. It took ten or so kicks to get it going. I figured the carb wasn’t “dialed in.” I’m not exactly a pro at that, so I just figured that I would adjust it as I went (it was pretty close – except for the difficult starts). But the problems got worse.

Yesterday morning it started up just fine. I then shut it off after about a minute. A few minutes later, I tried to start it again. Nothing. It was dead. I tried many times, nothing.

So I figured maybe I was flooded. Tried new plugs, deflooding, cleaning jets, checked float. The weird part is that after I deflood and put the plug back it, it’ll fire just once. The plugs weren’t wet, but it was getting gas. I definitely had spark as well.

When these types of problems happen, often it is something called “the float.” I didn’t know much about floats, so I changed the whole top of the carb (where the float lives). And whaddya know, it started!

And then wouldn’t start again. What the crap?

I was confused and defeated. I thought that I had it beat, but clearly, same problem as before.

So this morning, after trying a few more things, I decided to rebuilt the carb. Since the carb was new, nothing was worn out, so I took it all apart and cleaned the crap out of it. I figured that there was some grit that got somewhere where grit shouldn’t be.

Here’s a diagram of what I did.

I put the carb back in and it started up! And then wouldn’t start up again. And again what the crap?!

That was the last straw. I had another carb that I could use, but didn’t want to. I wanted to figured out and fix the problem, not just say “the carb is broken,” which is a silly statement. But whatever.

I tore apart the new carb, cleaned it, put it all back together and installed it.

And finally… finally, the scooter is working! It runs fine, it starts with one or two kicks… just like new should have been!

So clearly, the old carb was broken. That’s the only thing that makes sense! I’d love to give it to someone so they could tear it down and fix it. But whatever. I just want to know what was wrong with it. If I have some time, I’ll go over it some more. I, and a few others on StellaSpeed messageboard, were thinking it was a clog in/around the idle jet. We’ll see.

Next project is the tail light. Most folks HATE this tail light, but I love it. You can see it here.

Oh, and while I was working on it, I had this Rollins song in my head. It’s originally by Wire, but I had the Rollins version in my head.

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