Well, bad news. After a successful trip to the gas station the day before yesterday, I encountered my first real scooter problem the following morning when I was leaving for work.
Lightning strikes
After putting my helmet and gloves on I inserted the key, turned it to ‘on’, squeezed the brake with my left hand, and pressed the starter switch. I was unpleasantly surprised to hear, after a brief “chug”, a useless and insulting whirring noise. I’ve only had the scooter for 2 months!
Clearly the starter motor was not doing it’s job….I’m not well versed in the names of motor parts, mechanical terminology, etc – so if I come off sounding totally ignorant here it’s only because I am totally ignorant. The initial sound was the normal “I’m about to start” sound. You might call it “turning over”. But after perhaps 1-2 seconds, or 1-2 “chugs”, whatever it is that the starter motor is supposed to turn inside that mysterious black box wasn’t turning and instead you could hear the electric starter motor spinning with no apparent resistance.
What now?
Since I don’t know enough about the mysterious black box that does all the work, I’m at a loss about what do with the scooter. I suppose I’m lucky that the problem can be circumvented by kick-starting. Those mornings(or whenever) when it’s difficult to start are much more annoying now.
I attended a business meeting yesterday morning and after letting it sit for a couple hours it was almost impossible to get started at all. It may have had something to do with it being low on fuel, but I actually had to sulk around a corner with it out of embarrassment after 5 minutes of kick-kick-kicking away at it to no avail. It did finally get it started though.
I’m not really in a position to have it fixed(even if I could find parts), so unless it turns out to be a trivial cost – or someone offers to fix it for free – I’m probably stuck with kick-starting.
The only helpful thing I’ve done – and I’m not totally sure this is even helping – is to crank up the idle a little bit. Kick-starting is difficult in part because the “kick-start-thing” is far to the rear of the scooter and brake and throttle are both needed to get it going. This is a hard reach to make for me. Also – and I can’t confirm this as fact, but – it’s been my impression that full throttle is not better than just a little when it comes to starting, and I’ve had good luck with the increased idle setting during kick-starts.
