In the interest of getting parts needed to get the Twoty Scooty (actual name pending) running on order soon, George gave me to go-ahead to start working on his Scooty’s fuel system to try and determine what is wrong.
For those of you just joining, George bought an in-op motorized bicycle off craigslist. We suspected the problem was fuel because there was nothing going through the filter and we were mostly correct.
First off I stuck my phone in the tank to see if the strainer was clogged, which was my first guess. For better or worse, however, the tank looked clean and the gas if not fresh at least OK.
Moving on, I pulled the filter off to check the flow out of the tank. Good news! Fuel flow out of the tank was fine. I went ahead and replaced the gross filter with a new one and replaced the hoses with some injection line I had from when I repaired the Alfa’s fuel line.
Unfortunately the injection line was too thick and made it hard to get a hose clamp on at the carb. Such is life, I suppose. A decent amount of prying got it on and tight, but I still wasn’t getting decent flow into/ through the carb.
Heh, OK. I guess I’ll drain the carb.
I took out the bowl drain and only got a little trickle of gas out. Hmmm... so either there is no gas in it or the bowl is all gummed up. I suspected the latter so I took the bowl off and yeah...
... it was dirty.
While the bowl was off I confirmed there was fuel flow through the carb, and there was, and after a comprehensive cleaning of the bowl, I reassembled the carb. Sadly, I still wasn’t getting the fuel flow I was looking for so the whole carb needed to come off.
All off, things looked better than expected. The main jet looked a little gummed up, but OK. I sprayed everything down, reassembled, and... still not great flow.
Screw it, lets try it.
After much pedaling it eventually sputtered to life, but wouldn’t stay running without throttle and had little to no power. This is usually a symptom of an air leak, but these aren’t particularly complicated and I was pretty sure it was sealed up.
Damn.
Oh wait... replacement carbs are only $14 shipped. Yeah let’s do that and keep the old one for parts.
Still much to do while waiting for the carb. The light mounts need (to be) adjusted, the chains need (to be) cleaned and lubricated, the brakes need (to be) cleaned and adjusted, the spark plug wire needs (to be) bodged or replaced, the clutch could use to be adjusted, and the whole bike could use a good wash.
Oh and that this is basically undrivable with the clutch and throttle on the same side. Not only does the throttle cable block access to the clutch lock, but it is also REALLY hard to do all that crap with one hand. That is priority #1 in my mind.
And I’d love to delete all the baskets, but that is up to George.
Yawning Dog A for your time.
