I was worried the scooter would be in bad shape after no riding for almost seven months, but the batteries don’t even seem to  be any worse after the long period of neglect. The front tire can use some air and it’s more dirty, but it’s almost like there wasn’t a break in there!

We rode the Giant Dipper on Monday (1907 night). I avoided it before because it can be jarring and I just didn’t want to risk it. Here it is:

My scooter lights: I haven’t been riding the scooter because the headlight hasn’t been working and it’s been dark when I leave work. I spent a couple of afternoons two weekends ago looking for what I figured was a burnt out wire from when smoke started pouring out of the front when I was installing new batteries. I looked at the old parts scooter for how things were wired up and found a few burnt wires there as well (yay for cheap Chinese stuff?). I found the burnt wire and put in a new one, still no headlight. I followed more wires and found two more burnt out. More patches and still no headlight, but now I see the battery level go down when the headlight is on which means there’s a short and it’s definitely not good. I look but I can’t find anything else so I pack it up to look for the problem later. Now thanks to daylight savings time it’s light when I leave work and headlight isn’t an obstacle. So I ride to work today but I notice that when the turn signal blinks there is a major draw on the battery gauge so the short is more serious than I thought but should be easier to locate and now I’m down to hand signals.

They took the old ones and they took my money in exchange for the replacements I desired. I managed to get the scooter re-assembled with only one mishap. The main power was off but half way though I heard a pop and  magic smoke started pouring out of the front end of the scooter. The otehr end of the batter lead I was attaching made momentary contact with the frame and fried something. When I got it all together everything still worked except for the headlight so I’m guessing that’s what got the bonus juice.

The UPS was trivial to re-assemble after that and it’s now happily charging.

Anyway, it was a really easy procedure. Unscrewed where it attaches to the wheel, removed the inner cable and taped the top of the new one to the bottom of the old one. Then I was able to pull the old one out the top and bring the new one up with it without taking off the front panel.

After that I just had to insert the cylinder end on the top in to the lever and feed the cable through the handle. Then attach the new cable end on the bottom to the front wheel. The longest part was walking from the bike cage to the office for some tape and scissors.

The right side I have a hole in my jeans and a scrape on my palm and a blood blister on my thumb. Also a spot scrape/bruise in the back of my right calf.

I didn’t hit my head at all and luckily I was across the street from the fire department so the paramedics were on scene right away. They didn’t find any evidence of internal injury or my spine. They gave me some adhesive bandages and checked my blood pressure which was normal, but a little high for me.

The CHP showed up and wrote up the accident with her at fault and took photos of everything.

My scooter is pretty munched up: torn seat, most of the plastic cracked or broken off, missing a mirror, the storage pucket is no longer mounted, but the core is still good and ridable.

Thanks to the cigarette store guy whoe picked up a lot of the pieces and taped on the ones that wouldn’t stay in place. He also gave me some more adhesive bandages.

Oh yeah. One pair of singing magnets are gone now. I saw one of them but didn’t see the second one and then forgot to get the one I saw before I left.

I talked to Ricky at the Volks Cafe about it and he said he didn’t have any others in stock and explained that it is a hall-effect sensor which basically means it’s a magnet and a magnetic field sensor Not likely to have a problem unless the sensor or the magnet is loose. I took it apart and found the sensor a little loose so I bought some epoxy and really glued it in. I also got it positioned better so the final position will be closer to the sensor than before (slightly but we aren’t talking about major distances in any case and the magnetic field drops off as 1 over r squared so every little bit helps). The power in the throttle starts a little earlier now which is good but still there is the drop-out.

I got it home from the test ride and put it back on the center stand. I got the back wheel off the ground and turned it on. Then for some reason I turned the handle bars. When it was at either side it would work perfectly, but when I turned it through the center position sometimes it would cut out. Finally a concrete way to reproduce it without me having to be riding! I’m guessing that something is getting pinched sometimes in the forward position or something. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for but I with the better reproduction I can play around until I find it better.

After dinner I determined that after I strip and cut the frayed end it would still reach the opening. I stripped the wire with the swiss army knife scissors and then trimmed the frayed ends with the nail clippers. I managed to find the small hole in the larger hole it goes in to and hold it there while I screwed the restraining bolt in place.

Then I turned it on and reset the circuit breaker and it all worked! A tug on the wire showed it in there securely. YAY!

Last night on the way home from Jeanne and Terry’s it went out at the Sears entrance to the Capitola Mall. I walked/ran it for a bit hoping it would come back to life but no luck. Then I walked it to a street light and opened the seat. Turned off the circuit breaker and turned it back on, nothing. Felt for the wires, tugged on the red one, it was good. Bumped the black one and saw an arc. The black wire was loose and coming out. I touched it again and another arc. I turned off the power and tugged slightly and it came right out.

I ran/walked it the rest of the way home, got some asthma but nothing too bad, and started looking for tools. It turns out I don’t have a long philips-head screwdriver or a long narrow flat-head screwdriver. It’s a screw slotted for either of those and it’s right alongside the bucket wall under the seat so I need it long to work the driver. No luck last night.

On the way home tonight I will get an appropriate screwdriver and we’ll try round two. I’ll also see about getting some protective covering for the wires (maybe even some rubbery globs of glue) to secure everything.

Then I check the front tire for the first time (it doesn’t take much abuse since there isn’t much weight on it, it just hits the bumps first. It was down to 25 so I pumped it back up to 36. It rides much better now.

Maybe I just need to see if lithium ion batteries are feasible for a scooter application.

Anyway, a 1000W motor is probably enough for extra batteries right?

I popped up the panel in front of the seat where most of the wires are and move some around trying to look for a loose connection. The motor starts working again. I continue to check and it stops. I push everything back and it works.

So a connector might not be so great, or the wire running in to the controller is loose just inside the controller. In either case it shouldn’t be so hard to fix. This does explain the occasional moment on a bump when it would feel like it lost power.

I still need to drill a new hole on either side so I can bolt down the guides for a little extra security. Right now the back wheel could potentially fall off the back, but I’ll have plenty of notice if that’s going to happen in the form of a wobbly tire. Mostly it’ll make it easy to line up the wheel faster.

I came back from OSH and after realizing I needed more hardware, hopeed back on the scooter to realize that the tire was low. I saw some EZ-Seal bubbling a little and decided to see if it would take airing it back up. While I was fillin git I noticed a bulge in the tire wall. I guess since the tire can’t really take the load of me + scooter + bumps and the sealant is fixing holes, it put extra pressure on the side wall. Anyway, I aired it back up and decided to take it around the block (0.9 miles) since it wouldn’t be that far to walk it home if I needed to. It made it two-thirds of the way around before it died fully.

I went to We All Ride because I saw that they had the 3.5×10 tire that I wanted to try next. It has a rated capacity of 430lbs vs. the 330lbs for the 3.0×10 that is the standard.

Last night I pulled off the wheel and I’ll take it to Volks Cafe to have them put the new tire on. I’m getting better and it only took 20-25 minutes to take off the wheel.

Under the front panel is a mess of wires behind the headlight area. These are for engaging the ignition, controlling the signals, and running the lights. However it isn’t where your problems are going to come in. The area you really want it behind the plastic that is under the front of the seat. There is one long screw holding it in place in addition to 2 under the seat that hold the bucket (under the seat) to it. Here is where you find the main controller for the motor and another mess of wires.

On a previous visit to behind the headlights I wrote the function of the various wires on teh wire connectors and I should have done it on the seat panel too but I neglected to do it. Anyway, 3 of the wires lead to a connector that connects to the light controller that lives under/in the floor board. In my case, these wires were run behind and under the main controller and the jostling from riding eventually cut one of those wires.

I stripped the teo ends and twisted and soldered them together and covered it in electrical tape. Then I packed everything away and now I’m back as good as new!

I also drilled two 1/4″ holes and installed my license plate. Note to anyone doing this, don’t get the security pack for license attachment, the nute are limited in how much they can screw on. I suppose you can use regular nuts with the security bolts (it’s probably what I’m going to do). Right now it’s on and flaps a bit which makes a noise similar to the uncovering an artifact noise in Jewel Quest on Yahoo Games.

The first guy was confused and took all the paper work into the back office then came out 5 minutes later saying to have a seat while they called Sacramento. Then a woman came out and asked how many CCs it was. I told her it was an electric 750W motor and that she could see it in the parking lot. She came out and looked at it, thought it was neat, and we went back in where she told the guy how to deal with it.

The guy finished with his current customer and came back to me and managed to get my $17 for lifetime registration. I even have a license plate to show for it and everything but the plate doesn’t fit the bracket.

I also asked them to look and make sure I assembeled everything correctly since there was a bolt left over when I was done. I have no idea where it goes. It’s small and hopefully, not critical.

The problem is that the tire is rated for 330lbs. I’m about 200 and the back part of the scooter is about 70-80 lbs. That’s all fine until you hit a dip or somethign and the instantaneous pressure is higher and you get pinch flats.

I tried EZ-Seal from Monkey Grip to help seal and prevent future problems, but I think the tire was too far gone. I’ll try it on a fresh tire instead of on an already flat tire like the last one and see how that goes. If it still doesn’t work then I’m going to try a foam sealed tire.

EZ-Seal is similar in concept to tire slime and fix-a-flat except it washes away with water so no nasty mess, it uses kevlar to help seal, and it stays liquid. I think it might work on a new tube.