Weekend Ramblings

This weekend was pretty eventful on the scooter front. I made a tiny upgrade that added peace of mind, worked in the shop again and also finally got my performance exhaust fixed over the weekend as well.

One of the problems I have had over the past few months with my scooter is forgetting to check the tire pressure. Tire pressure on the scooter is very important because if you let it get too low it will cause you to lose stability, lose speed and adds excess wear to your tires. As you can imagine stability is very important on a little scooter. I do try and check my pressure as often as I think about it but I will be the first to admit that I don’t do it enough. I know there are some people out there that check the tire pressure every time they mount the scooter and go out for a ride and that is probably a great idea… I’m not good at that. I ended up getting a handy little gadget that makes it very easy at a glance to see if you have enough tire pressure. The handy little device is a cap to go on the valve stem that turns red if the tire pressure is too low. This way all I have to do is take a look down at my wheel, locate the valve stem and I know if my pressure is okay… so much easier and a bargain at 5 bucks from Walmart.

The theme of the day at the scooter shop this weekend was body panels… I am not a big fan of body panels. On my style of scooter I have pretty much learned how to take them on and off without much hassle, but there are some crazy body panel designs out there that are extremely confusing. I’m sure the more I work on these the better I am going to get at doing so but I could do without learning how to fit body panels on retro style scooters please.

On Saturday morning I took my performance exhaust to a local muffler shop and had it welded back on as well as getting a new support made for it to keep if from snapping off again as well. I’m not sure if I had forgotten how loud it was or if somehow it became louder but you can hear me coming now. When I first put it back on I thought I had lost some acceleration which is no fun when you put on a “performance part” and loose performance. After adjusting the needle on the carburetor to have it run a bit richer the power band change was very noticeable and I am happy with the improvements on the stock exhaust. I think I still need to adjust the air fuel mixture a bit to fine tune it but that shouldn’t be too hard.

I find it hard to believe how much I have learned about these scooters over the last 7 months and can’t wait to learn even more. Be safe out there friends and don’t forget to look twice to save a life.