OUT OF THE BLUE

16th March 2011

I had been thinking that it was about time I gave Patrick at Scooter Surgery a call.  It occurred to me that he might have won the lottery and runaway to a tropical island.  So it was pure coincidence that he phoned me yesterday.

We talked for about forty minutes during which he brought me up to speed with his progress on my engine.  He now has the rear casting attached to the gearbox casting and the bevel gears set up.  This had proved to be no easy matter because every time he tried to tighten the two parts together the cover at the end popped off ( I assume this is at the rear end of the casting and is fitted into the cover plate.).  After numerous attempts to find the reason he discovered that the transmission shaft was from a French built machine and not an Italian machine.  Apparently the french version is longer with extensions at each end thus even with the shaft fully driven into the gear box it is still too long.  This is the reason that the cover pops off as you try to assemble the two castings.  Patrick had a spare Italian shaft which he fitted without any problems.


When Patrick came to assemble the flywheel he found that the coil on the stator fouled the centre cam on the flywheel.  When I bought the scooter the flywheel was loosely in place and the centre retaining nut was hand tight only so I didn't notice any problem.  I guess that I may not have even tried to turn the engine over as it was out of the frame and there was no piston or barrel fitted.  It was only later that I decided to have this "spare" engine rebuilt when I found it was the original unit for the scooter. Patrick is looking into the best solution to this problem, change the stator or the flywheel.  Apparently there is a further problem  with a missing stop which restricts the advance and retard mechanism.  I'm not sure if this is on the flywheel or the stator.  Patrick talks about drilling out a rivet and replacing the missing stop with an Alan screw to provide a stop and restrict movement.


It all sounds as though it's getting rather expensive.  I asked Patrick if he had any idea of what he had spent so far.  He said he had the hours but didn't keep a running total.  I have no alternative but to carry on, I need an engine and this one will at least tie up with the paper work.  In any case the one that was fitted in the scooter when I bought it need a lot of repair work on the crank case mounting lugs.  We talked about the problems of buying a scooter which was not complete or had suffered extensive amateur work.  I always knew that it's not a good idea buying a "basket case" where you don't know what you are missing or what it should look like.  Knowing this I still went ahead and bought the scooter caught up in the general excitement of the chase (make cautionary note for next time).  I still think the one on the Isle of White would have been a better bet even if the engine was seized, at least it had all the bits there.  Never mind, that's water under the bridge and I'm committed to this path.  It's obvious that the person to make the gain will be the guy that I sell the scooter to.  He will get a complete scooter (assuming that I eventually do finish it) for fraction of what it cost me but he won't have had the challenge and fun that I will have had along the way.

Patrick hopes to have the engine running next week so that will prove interesting.   That is unless he finds more problems!