Learning from previous crises I’ve been in I’m finding the best way to keep myself from turning into a self-harm type of depressed is to just keep living life mostly as normal and taking things one at a time. As of right now I’ve halted all expensive projects. If it costs more than $20 to fix it’s shuttered. However, $20 goes a long way on something made in China!
2009 CF Moto Fashion 250 “Phoenix”
I guess I’m sort of starting a dead carb collection now? lol
Now with the scoot’s electrical issue out of the way, I moved to getting it running. First thing’s first I didn’t even bother to try cleaning the carb. I had a hunch it was a lost cause and wasn’t worth saving. Indeed, upon removal some awful smelling petrol got on my hands and it was pretty sticky. Oh well. I put it on my kitchen counter next to the original carb from the Gambler Chuckus and it’s noticeably more dirty. If the Gambler Chuckus’ carb only worked at WOT I doubt this one would have worked at all.
Putting the new carb in was quite possibly the easiest thing I’ve ever done to a vehicle. I’m not sure if I’m getting better at it, these little scoots are maintenance friendly, or both. Either way, I had the old one out and the new one installed in like ~15 minutes in freezing weather.
The old battery in this is shot and I’m not sure if my battery charger’s the culprit or if it’s just really old or damaged from being discharged/cold. Either way I got a new one that will arrive tonight. Barring any surprise electrical issues or a petrol tank in an advanced state of rot I should be able to get it running tonight. Outside of that I’ve also noticed that the throttle deceleration cable appears to be broken.
2005 smart fortwo cabriolet “Laura”
So this is weird. After a couple days on my battery charger this battery didn’t seem to get any more charged. I would hook it up to the car and while the lights and locks would appear to operate normally, the transmission actuator was so sluggish it couldn’t even get into Neutral and forget about starting the engine.
I then took it to AutoZone and while it got a clean bill of health and “fully charged”, it only seemed to get marginally more charged. I could now get the transmission to indicate Neutral, but it didn’t have enough juice to actually get into Neutral. Also, if I put it on my charger the charging light turns on and stays on even if you disconnect the leads. I wonder if my charger somehow killed the battery??? The car was starting just fine a month ago, so I doubt anything’s changed about the car. Next thing I’m going to try is jumping the car. If the car starts on the jump then I know the battery and possibly my charger is toast. I should be able to source another battery for free, but we’ll see. There’s no rush here as the car doesn’t need to move anytime soon.
And now for something completely different...
During yet another fun idea-filled weekend with Madame DeLorean I woke up in a sweat with a “brilliant” idea. I’ve always wanted to boost something, why not a GY6 scooter!? It looks like adding a turbo to a scooter is more work and money than it’s worth, but what about supercharging?
It looks like the only type of supercharger that could conceivably work is a roots-type. For the sake of saving money it would be best to do this to an aircooled engine. In my late night crunching I found a couple builds using Chinese superchargers but no information aside from not at all informative videos. One build modified the engine’s cooling fan to both do cooling and drive the supercharger. The other somehow made the Variator drive the supercharger. In both builds the supercharger was functional. Hmmmm...
Of course with current events this is something that’ll be indefinitely shelved but this is definitely something I want to play with one day. Am I missing something here or is it really that easy to supercharge a scooter?