You Start with What You Have

Like I said yesterday, I did not initially know this was going to be a project. I thought I was just going to get a new battery, drain and refill the oil and the gas tank, and be ready to ride. Well.... I quickly learned it was not going to be quite that easy.

As I started tearing into it, I found some of the wiring was damaged from the lay down; mirrors with embedded turn signals were missing; other wires were broken or disconnected. Wanting to see more and more, I kept removing more and more body panels. And not understanding any of the electrical system on scooters, I ended up removing the entire body so I could see exactly what I had to work with.

This, of course, means that, now that I am making it an official project (with blog), I don't have any "Before" pictures of the entire scooter. I did, however, start taking a few shots of the frame and engine and some of the scraped up and broken individual body parts. That's what today's article is about - showing what I have to start with.

[Remember to click on any of the images to get a closeup look.]

Bare Frame (with wiring harness)

The frame is better than I thought it was before removing the fairings. It is dirty, but not bent or rusted.

One front shock is leaking.

I'll be deciding whether it is better to try to rebuild it or to simply buy a replacement. I hope to rebuild whatever I can on the scooter for two reasons:

Front Fork (with leaking shock)

1. I want to keep the cost to a point where I can eventually sell the scooter and at least get out of it what I will have invested.
2. I want to develop a deep level of understanding that you can only get from actually building (or rebuilding) something. 

I have a friend, Bart Dring, in Chicago who is a very talented engineer. I have openly stolen lots of ideas from him. The idea I most cherish is his favorite saying and now it is mine as well:

"If you did not build it, you can never own it."

 The point is that, even though you may possess something, unless you were intimately involved with it construction, you can never true "own" it - you cannot own the deepest knowledge of it. With that knowledge, you will always be able to maintain it and assess and fix whatever may go wrong with it in the future. And that's where I am headed with this project.

The front lower fairing is a good example of the damage the body has sustained. No major pieces missing, but certainly will need some attention to repair the cracks, breaks, and scrapes. My intent is to repair all the fairing myself. New pieces are expensive and I want to learn the process of ABS plastic repair.

The rear wheel and brake drum are dirty, but should clean up pretty well.


Most of the rubber on the scooter (front brake line, vacuum and gas lines, etc) is badly weather checked/cracked. I will definitely be replacing all the rubber parts.

And finally, there is the Gy6 150cc Long Case engine. I don't know what shape it is in on the inside, but our first major task is going to be getting it into near-new shape. We'll start down that path in the next article.

 

So, there you have it - the pieces I have to start with.

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Next time, I'll dive into the engine and determine what needs to be done to get it up and running.

Hope to see you then.