A really really bad day in Scooterland

So...I tinkered with the engine this morning only to realize that the spark plug wasn't getting a spark (YOu can test this by trying to start the engine while holding the spark plug (still in the coil) against the metal part of the engine and looking for a blue spark).

After first replacing the coil, I then proceeded to replace the CDI unit (Luckily, Brad's Scooters has been extremely kind to me during this adventure and was willing to let me do the work instead of him under warranty just so I could learn.

The end result - Well at first I thought it was the CDI, but it turned out to actually be the leads that go into the CDI. One of the leads in the set of 4 that goes into the CDI unit had popped out of its connector. This ended up being the entire problem for the starting. After getting it all together...It started right up. Started again later...Started a third time.

Sooo...My wife comes home slightly after noon from a meeting and decides to give it her first try. Now...I'm not a teacher as I'm still learning and I probably did a bad job, but when she got to the stop sign at the end of our court, she stopped, then pulled slowly out, only to lose the ability to turn crashing into a truck at the end of the court at about 4-5 miles per hour. It wasn't fast and did little damage to the truck (Luckily I'm insured), but it scared the hell out of all of us and she fell with the scooter on top of her. In addition, the front body sustained some minor damages that are mostly invisible, but at the time it looked like she might have bent the steering column.

So...Off I go to Brad who now knows me by name and no doubt thinks I'm a lunatic.

My son and I viewed a scooter in his 'parts graveyard' that was pretty well taken apart and decided that we needed to take off the front body assembly where the headlights are located and see what we find.

What we found (and I'll try to take a photo tomorrow) was that there was really little damage at all. One part that attaches to the column is a metal part that holds the horn but also kind of helps set the front body assembly into place...along with dozens of other screws, but this little H shaped mechanism was slightly bent - no big deal, we used a pipe and bent it back into place and the steering column was fine.

The reason we thought the steering column was bent was that the ignition switch had popped back and there was a gap in front of the steering controls that looked like it had been bent forward. In reality, the inner black rubber body was just pulled out enough that it made it look like the steering column .

Okay...So that was easy enough to repair...We need to put the body front back on, but we ran into another issue. Chinese scooters are made with notoriously flimsy keys. In the accident it appears that the inner black rubber body caught the key chain awkwardly and broke the key off in the ignition. Now - add to this the fact that sometime today I've misplaced the second set of keys and you get a feel for just how bad this day has been.

So...I do something really stupid and try to get the key out myself...Bad idea and won't know for a few days whether or not I did more damage to the ignition switch, but Brad will let me get one off of an old scooter in his parts area I'm sure. (He was just glad my wife wasn't too badly injured - Me too...her shoulder hurts a lot tonight, but my guess is that she sprained it falling over after she lost her balance after striking the truck).

Well..I can't get to the engine which won't start right now and probably shouldn't be started until I can at least clean the air filter out and check out the engine, so I posted a question on the St. Louis Scooter forum about finding a locksmith. Voila - one of the members of the forum is actually a locksmith himself and he is going to call in the morning.

We aren't in any real hurry because the scooter still needs to be tagged and after today's events, I think we both want to take the local Motorcycle safety course before going too much farther.

Long story short - It was a really bad day in Scooterland, but all is well in the end and we are all glad nobody got hurt too seriously. Luckily I had secured insurance yesterday so the truck's damage which I suspect will be minimal (He had a dent in the area behind the door but it looked like it could be popped out without too much effort. There was a little red paint on it, but the white paint on the scooter rubbed right off with a wet finger, so I think the damage to both was lucky.