by Ian Mackenzie http://www.creative-satire.com
To
fix... or not to fix. That is the question. Whether 'tis
nobler to drag one's scooter to a repair shop so that 'the pros' (supposedly)
can repair it, or suffer the slings and arrows of lost parts and spare
doodads left over after reassembly...
Okay, so it doesn't make for a Shakespearean tragedy. But like death and taxes, if you want to ride a scooter the time will eventually come when the beast needs a little attention. Then what do you do? Scooter repair is not something that most people are comfortable undertaking. If you're a gear-head then sure - rip it apart... a frame-off restoration. It'll be immaculate when you're done. But if your idea of 'fixing the bike' is adding oil when it runs strangely, actually taking major parts off the thing is a scary proposition. So a lot of bikes end up getting parked. Permanently.
Such was the case with my brother-in-law's Honda Gyro Up. A musician by trade, he bought it because the little load bed on the back meant he could shuttle his drums around Tokyo. But when it started giving him problems he was up against the three horsemen of the scooter apocalypse: no money for a professional repair, no ability to repair it himself, and the Japanese cultural propensity to just ditch things that don't work and buy a new one (impossible: see earlier in sentence). So he parked it beside his apartment and that was that. For months.
Then my wife and I visited his parents for Christmas.
I fancy myself a bit of a handyman so I set about fixing various things
around my in-laws' house: I fixed the gate, I wallpapered a room, I revived
my sister-in-law's bike which had laid idle for months with a flat front
tire. So I guess word got out that I had 'the touch'. That's
when my brother-in-law rented a van, hauled his scooter 2 hours across
Tokyo and presented it at my feet. "It doesn't work, Great Fixer."
Jeez... I'm a handyman, not a mechanic. What I know about scooters/ small
engines could be comfortably printed on the head of a pin and still have
enough room for the Lord's Prayer, The Declaration of Independence, and
the first three chapters of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. But if
I couldn't fix it my rep would be toast. It was time to source out
some info.
That's
where The Japanese
Scooter Page and Doug's home page came into play. I had asked around
at various repair shops in Tokyo but no one would tell me anything about
how to fix the scooter. All I got was "bring it in and we'll look
at it". I'd searched for information on the Internet - again, a bunch
of ads for repair shops in Des Moines. Even the Honda web site offered
zip in the way of repair advise - not even a schematic diagram. I
was lost until I stumbled across Doug's page. Finally a guy with
information about what to expect as you start dismantling things!
I read quite a bit of the site and came up with a possible diagnosis: Toyo's
bike ran decently at first, then died after it got warm. Any throttle
after that would cause it to bog down. Doug's carb page suggested
that the carb's main jet must be clogged - hence the proper operation when
the choke was open. That sounded like a decent answer to me.
But where's the carb and where's the main jet on the carb? I emailed
Doug to see if he could elaborate on things.
Not only did he elaborate - he sent me exploded diagrams of what my carburetor looked like. I now felt comfortable, if not up to, the task. Now all I needed was tools. A quick survey of immediate family members yielded me a multi-tipped screwdriver, a car jack, a car lug wrench with a spark plug wrench on one end (?!) and six pruning saws. This is NOT a D.I.Y. culture. I took a train to Yokohama and went to Tokyu Hands - the Japanese version of Canadian Tire that's more a giant hobby shop than a place to buy tools - and scored a great 23 piece 1/4" drive Junior Mechanic Socket Set that only set me back $20 Cdn. Newly armed with exploded diagrams and kiddie tools I started dismantling the Gyro.
It took me about three hours to get at the carburetor of the Gyro. On a motorcycle the carb is right there - hanging out the side. But on the Gyro there's a load floor at the back. The mechanicals are all mashed underneath it. And since I didn't know how anything was attached, I had to take off a lot of things just to see how other things were attached. If I had to do it all again, I could get the carb off in 20 minutes. But that first time is a little like your first sexual experience: it's clumsy, you're not sure what you're doing, but you do end up with a certain feeling of accomplishment when you're finished! Houston, the carb is off...
I
cleaned the carb off with kerosene, put it in a clean white box, took it
to a well lit area and started taking it apart. There are quite a
few jets on the carb and I was afraid of all of them - they're set at a
certain twist of the screw and if I were to take them apart I'd have no
idea how to reset them. What I was after was the main jet and it
is somewhat easier to tamper with since it's setting doesn't change when
you remove it for cleaning. I took the carb apart and there it all
was - just like Doug said it would be. The float, the main jet, and
lots of chunky bits floating around where they shouldn't be. I cleaned
the inside with a cleaning product I bought at the scooter shop, blew out
all the jet with a straw, and carefully reassembled the carb.
The family was in awe.
I was feeling pretty cocky when I went back out into the yard to reassemble the Gyro. I wasn't sure if I'd fixed the problem or not but I'd dug deep into he belly of the beast, removed a vital organ, and operated on that organ. It still might not work roperly but hey, it wouldn't have chunks of grit in it anymore so it had to be better off! That's when I realized that I wasn't as smart as I thought I was. I had ignored a crucial piece of Doug's advise and hadn't taken profuse notes/ diagrams about what went where. I wasn't completely sure which pieces went on with which bolts. I sat down and started making some sense of the hardware. It wasn't long before I had it all sorted out and within the hour the Gyro was reassembled and ready for a test run.
I turned the key, kicked the engine a few times (the battery had died during the scooter's stay on Death Row), and once the carb filled up with gas it sputtered to life and purred like a kitten with a slight cough. So far so good - it ran. But it ran before I started all this, too. The question was: will it die when the engine warms up. I am pleased to report that the answer to that question is NO. The Gyro runs fine now: you give it throttle and the scooter scoots. I don't know if it runs perfectly. I don't know how it's supposed to sound or what kind of performance it's supposed to be capable of. But my brother-in-law is poopin' around Tokyo on it again and that's all I care about. My reputation is intact. I have brought the scooter life. By the look on my in-laws' faces you'd swear I invented the damn thing.....
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