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No use jivin', no use jokin'

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mr72

mr72

Joined
Apr 23, 2020
Messages
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Location
Cedar Park, Texas, USA
Life got too busy and then it rained a bunch, so now my old GS500 tags are quite expired. I need to get it running for that one time a year I ride it, to go get it inspected. I assume it's broken, but honestly I haven't tried it yet. I'll see if it'll fire up in the morning and go get it inspected.

Mrs72's scooter has started acting really crazy. Idles at like 2500 rpm so it nearly won't stay still, but if I lower the idle at all, then it won't idle. Before someone suggests that the pilot jet is clogged, I just replaced it. I went through an exercise of dialing in the pilot jet size with a kit full of jets. It's also making a lot of valvetrain noise and has like no power. So if I have any time at all this weekend, I hope to crack it open and see if I can adjust the valves, maybe that's the won't-idle problem too? Man, I just need to replace that scooter.

Speaking of scooters, my !Vespa was having an issue running, so I replaced the carb with a brand new one, which didn't fix the issue or really affect it at all. Then it developed a new issue, which I guessed might be a bad vacuum fuel pump. So I replaced that part. Now it won't start at all. And I know it's getting fuel. So I guess I need to fix that too. Summertime is the perfect scooter weather. Maybe I can get a BOGO deal on a coupla new Vespae. With fuel injection this time.

Good news, as usual, my British motorcycle remains absolutely perfect in terms of reliability, even as it marches towards the 20K mark. What a brilliant machine.
 
Update:

Tried the GS500, and in fact, it was broken. Battery is shot. Two different chargers said it was charged, and it won't turn the engine over. So I have a new battery on the way. I am hopeful it will run when the new battery gets here.

The !Vespa saga... well, I swapped the carb back, putting the new one back in. While doing this, I discovered what was likely the running problem. A while back I disabled the AFR solenoid for closed-loop running because it was causing a hunting idle and various other issues, essentially by cutting off and plugging the air inlet hose on the carb. When I pulled the carb, I discovered this hose had cracked, so it was likely leaking lots of air into the carb causing it to run very lean no matter what. So, the fuel pump likely had nothing to do with the problem. So, I fixed that while putting the new carb back on. And now the scooter won't start at all. The new fuel pump doesn't seem to be pumping fuel at all. I tried it with a hand vacuum pump to be sure. So today I'll probably go back and put the original fuel pump back on.

I never got to looking at mrs72's scooter. But there's still a day left in the weekend.

I did ride my ever-reliable Triumph down to the Handbuilt Motorcycle Show in what was a miserable hour of stop and start traffic in Austin to get there and nearly as long getting home in the 92 degree freakish April day. My dad came along with his nearly identical Triumph. We saw a lot of amazing bikes there, but the coolest thing there was not even a motorcycle. It was a stunning Myers Manx with a prototype Australian radial 3-cylinder engine.
 
Well, nobody cares, probably because the title of the thread is ambiguous. What, no Dylan fans here? smh.

Anyway, got a new battery for the old GS, still haven't started it yet, because I don't want to run it inside the garage and there is a disabled scooter in the way that needs to be moved before I can get it out of the garage. But I am pretty confident it will at least try to start. Might run bad for a few blocks while the stale gas moves through the carb, but my fuel stabilization game is good. And I'm an optimist.

Speaking of the disabled scooter, thats my !Vespa. So, I am getting very tired of working on motorbikes. Anyway, this is a pretty bizarre setup, and I can imagine how I could improve it. The situation is, theres a little reservoir that holds about half a pint of fuel that's up under the seat. The fuel pump pumps fuel straight uphill until this reservoir, where it then gravity feeds down to the carb. There is no way to open the reservoir and manually fill it, and if you remove the carb you wind up draining this reservoir because it doesn't have a petcock on it. So that means every time you pull the carb, you end up having to pump over half a pint of fuel up into the reservoir using the vacuum fuel pump, which takes a whole lot of cranking to do. So much, in fact, that it will kill the battery several times over.

So, for convenience, I used a hunk of romex to hold the rear brake lever while cranking it on the centerstand. And it would drain the battery, then I'd recharge, go back and crank some more, charge, repeat, repeat. Eventually it turns out I somehow didn't get the charging clips on perfectly and instead of charging, it drained the battery all the way overnight, because I had left that hunk of romex on the brake lever and foolishly left the key on, so the brake light was on and it deep discharged the battery. Battery is 1.5 years old, and it's now shot. Won't charge enough to spin the bendix fast enough to engage the starter.

So. I ordered a new battery. It's only $22. I am pretty hopeful this will get the !Vespa back in business.

Now, I do have a solution to this reservoir draining problem. They should have put a filler cap on top of the reservoir so you can put fuel in it directly. In fact, you could replace the entire thing with a small engine fuel tank like for a chainsaw, but it'd need to have the overflow barb to put extra fuel back into the tank when the pump pumps it faster than you burn the gas. But, to remove this reservoir would require, and I am not kidding here, REMOVE THE ENGINE FIRST. You cannot get to the bolts that hold it on or pull it out of the frame with the engine in place.

Fortunately, it's too rainy for mrs72 to complain too much about her scooter not running perfectly or for me to not be able to join her. Maybe this weekend I'll go out and dial in the weird interactive balance between pilot mixture and idle speed that affects her scooter, but having it run weird is giving me the ammo I need to get her to let me buy a new one. Ever the optimist, I think I can fix the !Vespa.

I'll take the overdue Suzuki to get it inspected tomorrow if it'll start. Supposed to be a nice day tomorrow, maybe I'll go straight over and get the tags with the inspection report and go on a long Suzuki ride. Sure needs to get the cobwebs blown out.
 
Well, I can do an semi ambiguous decent version of Girl from the north country, or don't think twice (about buying a new scooter) if that's the kind of Dylan fans ya looking for.
 
TBH, I know very little of Bob Dylan's music, mostly only what songs he wrote that were covered by other artists who were relevant after I was born. The mark of a truly great songwriter.
 
mr72 said:
Anyway, this is a pretty bizarre setup, and I can imagine how I could improve it. The situation is, theres a little reservoir that holds about half a pint of fuel that's up under the seat. The fuel pump pumps fuel straight uphill until this reservoir, where it then gravity feeds down to the carb. There is no way to open the reservoir and manually fill it, and if you remove the carb you wind up draining this reservoir because it doesn't have a petcock on it. So that means every time you pull the carb, you end up having to pump over half a pint of fuel up into the reservoir using the vacuum fuel pump, which takes a whole lot of cranking to do. So much, in fact, that it will kill the battery several times over.
Click to expand...
Briggs a set-up like this on their horizontal 1-5 hp motors with carb integral to tank – only holding reservoir was in tanks and only held a few ml. The carb had a diaphragm cover on the muffler side. It would pick-up fuel from the tank and deposit it in the holding reservoir just under the carb mount where fuel would overflow reservior and spill back into the main tank (think float level). The reservior would act as a fuel bowl of sorts and carb vacuum signals were enough to move fuel around.

These engines were really popular on McLane pattern edgers. If the diaphragm was old and if you let the motor set any time, it would be very hard to impossible to start. The trick was to quickly roll the edger over on the handle to front wheel axis. The gas would fill the chamber and the engine would start with one or two pulls

AND no NOT a DILlon FAn (note caps - mimic Dillon's voice loudness level)
 
Same here. After i find a song i like by some old artist, it turns out Dylan wrote it. For instance "you aint going nowhere".
 
I’m a bit lost on the nature of the issues. Not that I’m not interested just too many scoots and expanding issues. Hope you get them sorted out.
 
The universe is expanding way too fast for us all. It happens to me daily now. Back when i was a teen, my friend's dad would bring us neighborhood moto wamma bees barely running vespas and lambrettas. We'd do the best we could to make em run then pretend we were Roger DeCoster, and flog them to death in the whoops. Thats my entire knowledge base and riding experience with scooters. My very peripheral understanding of them stopped growing about 45 years ago. They were dead simple but now seem complex :-)
 
On my scooter, the issues are because of two basic things: 1. It sat for 8 years while it was basically brand new, 2. The dellorto electronic carb system is flaky and screwy. It's difficult to work on because it's a Vespa P frame with an entirely too large engine and transmission crammed into it.
 
Waking up an old bike of any sort does requires patience and above all a systematic approach. I recall once reading about waking up an old motorcycle. Same procedures might be applicable to a scoot. All I can say is go slow and document everything you do so you can back track if needed. Try to address one issue at a time, just replacing parts won’t get you closer to fixing or understanding what the primary reason for it not running is. I know that doesn’t really help you much. Good luck, everything can be fixed.
 
Yeah, I'm in denial about the rust likely in the fuel tank that I can't see. That's going to be a bear to sort out. Not to mention rust in that little reservoir that probably can't be cleaned at all.
 
Miracles do happen! With a fresh battery, my old GS fired right up and ran great. It also passed inspection, and now has new tags. I even rode it around for a couple of errands. As usual, just riding this bike around a little bit made me want to ride it a whole lot more.

Rain and storms coming tomorrow, but my new battery for the !Vespa should arrive and then Sat after whatever storms and rain, with any luck, I can get it running again. We'll see.
 
I got the new battery for the !Vespa and it still behaved exactly the same way... starter spins freely, as if the bendix is not engaging the ring gear.

So, I pulled the CVT cover off again just like I had the other day. Guess what I found? This:

j-9QO-xW0YS1YjnuCZDy-w=w1524-h2032-s-no?authuser=0.jpg


Notice anything missing? Yeah, the starter ring gear is no longer attached to the variator pulley. See all the broken ends of those cooling fins? Yeah, those are supposed to overlap the ring gear, and two of them have an extended little tab with a roll pin that affixes the ring gear. See the broken tabs in the pic below of the ring gear?

5ZGo0Dsdzwm8uPkfY5FzaQ=w1524-h2032-s-no?authuser=0.jpg


So, that explains why it won't turn over!

And if any of you paid attention to my past experience with the first 2014 Stella Automatic, it was this same part failure that led to me ditching that scooter and replacing it with this one. Because that part is not available anywhere in the world, and there is no suitable replacement.

That ring gear is pressed on, the normal way people put them on is to heat the gear and slip it on. The two little broken off tabs with roll pin are there for who knows what reason, but they certainly are not strong enough to hold it if it were to ever slip. My guess is the bendix knocked into the back end of the ring gear and knocked it outward a little bit and cracked one of these, then it just spiraled out of control. But who knows.

So, for the time being, I cleaned everything with rubbing alcohol and put some red Loctite on the variator pulley and then tapped the ring gear back on with a wood block and ball peen hammer. Then for good measure I JB-welded the crud out of the spots where the roll pins attach, and even put extra JB all over for good measure. I let it sit up to cure yesterday and I'll reassemble it today and see if it will work. I fully expect if it ever starts again, it will leave me stranded almost guaranteed.

Truth is, the red Loctite alone should be sufficient to hold a ring gear that's a press fit like this, right? If not, Loctite purple should do the trick, right? Definitely some adhesive should get the job done.

Yeah, and before you ask, sure this thing has a kick starter. I weigh probably 210 lb and I can stand straight on the kick starter and jump on it before it'll turn, nearly knocking the scooter off its center stand. I have never ever been able to get it to start with the kick starter alone. My guess is if I were to e-start it and ride it until it was warmed up, it might be possible to kick start a hot motor. But it's pretty much useless for a cold engine. This scooter should be considered electric start only.

I'm going back to my sleuthing for a replacement variator pulley. The problem is that LML made an update to this engine and eventually made 150 and 200cc versions and the variator parts for the '15+ model do not fit. The '13-14 version parts have not been in production for nearly a decade and NOS supply are completely gone.
 
Iron and aluminum do not play well together , they expand and contract at different rates when heated and cooled , I figured that out about 50 years ago , not much has changed in that time , I don’t keep track of locktite numbers but stud and bearing mount is perminate .
 
My glued together starter ring gear / pulley works great. Thank goodness. Scooter still won't start. Carb is primed, smells of fuel when turning over. I'm getting tired of this.
 
Thank goodness you don't have a gas powered riding lawn mower. Or maybe I shouldn't have brought that up.
 
I have a gas push mower. It started perfectly after winter nap, it's probably 10 years old or so and on it's 2nd carburetor. I even left treated ethanol free fuel in it over the winter. Same with my power washer, worked fine after winter. And my wife's scooter, until I tried to fish a leaf out of the fuel tank and suddenly bunch of unrelated stuff quit working. Even my troublesome gs500 fired right up after the new battery. This scooter is just being a unique pain.
 
Just giving you a hard time :-) i toasted a weedwhacker with the wrong oil mix this year. Pure genious...
 
mr72 said:
I have a gas push mower. It started perfectly after winter nap, it's probably 10 years old or so and on it's 2nd carburetor. I even left treated ethanol free fuel in it over the winter. Same with my power washer, worked fine after winter. And my wife's scooter, until I tried to fish a leaf out of the fuel tank and suddenly bunch of unrelated stuff quit working. Even my troublesome gs500 fired right up after the new battery. This scooter is just being a unique pain.
Click to expand...
Its Italian,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,could it be more plain? :lol2:
 
Well, the red scooter still won't start. For those who are interested and who have not read the history, the scooter wouldn't run right after coming off winter storage. It was a clogged pilot jet. But just in case, I replaced the entire carb since a new one was available and not prohibitively expensive. Then it ran ok but I couldn't get it to idle correctly, it would variably idle real fast or nearly stall. I cleaned the old carb and put it back on and it behaved exactly the same way, then finally one day quit running at high revs, would stall when you try to accelerate. I had to push it up the driveway. I decided maybe it was the fuel pump so I replaced that, and then when trying to get the carb primed again to run the starter ring gear imploded. So I fixed that and now I'm back to it just plain won't start with the brand new carb on it and a new fuel pump. I did verify the ignition is working, spark plug sparking, and there's fuel in the fuel filter by the carb inlet.

I have a business trip this week, and it's just as well since it's going to be raining. But when I get home, I think I'm going to try blasting it with starting fluid and see if it'll just start and maybe kick it out of this funk.

In other news, I broke my recently imposed rule and bought another carbureted motorbike: a 2006 Triumph Scrambler. So now I have FOUR carbureted motorbikes to hassle with. But, I am likely to try to get the old GS500 to a new home, or at least a new storage location. I doubt I'll sell it, mostly because it's worth more to me to keep than for anyone else. But it would be great if someone could use it.

IDK if it's just wear and tear or really an effect of those few years of age difference, but the Scrambler feels like a less refined, rough and ready version of my Bonneville. Which I kind of like. It does have some of those cold start carburetor oddities, and a half dozen other little issues I need to sort out, being kind of a project. But it's 10x better than the old Suzuki and serves the same purpose for me while fitting better and being something I'm much more interested in keeping working.
 
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