Stock 1E40QMB : It's been a while.

I worked on a scooter for one of my father's friends yesterday. It's a reto with a 1E40QMB 2 stroke. He's had it for a year or so and it has 112 miles on it (that's 1-2 days for me). It wouldn't start, but would crank over just fine. He told me it sat for a month, but it had Sta-Bil in the fuel.

I learned that I don't really want a retro scooter unless I get a good deal on it. I had to remove every panel after the front fairing to get to the engine and fuel system. 4 bolts to pop the underseat storage out would give me access to all of that on the scoots I'm used to. The frame is so small that a spark plug socket and ratchet have to be wedged in from above, making panel removal necessary for even the simplest task.



I found that the vacuum petcock wasn't pumping fuel and the fuel that was in the scooter was very yellow. I drained the fuel out, replaced the fuel lines, fuel filter, and installed a manual petcock, and then put in a gallon of fresh gas. I adjusted the carb settings and all of the slack out of the cable, then reassembled the panels. I also adjusted his drum brakes (front and rear) and swapped scooter trunks for him (he bought a yellow one from me and I told him I'd trade him a silver one to match his scoot for free) and installed the new one with hardware instead of wire ties.



He wanted me to ride the scooter for a while to be sure it was alright, so I took it for a 10 mile ride. Wow. It really has been a while since I've rode a stock 49cc 2 stroke. It pretty much requires a push start, then it goes from about 10-25 suprisingly quickly, then makes it's way to 30 in reasonable time, then slowly churns up to around 35MPH. I managed to get as fast as 37MPH down a small hill, but it would drop into the upper 20s on any decent incline.

I was also unimpressed with the little 10" tires (I don't think they're even 3"x10"). I actually stopped after the first mile to see if the scooter had square tread (like car tires or something). I did start getting used to it, but if you flinch the scooter wobbles yet it didn't feel like it would wanna be leaned very hard. I'm not even sure it would be a good idea to make this thing faster from the way it feels. At 35MPH it seems like a wreck could happen at any moment. I rode a friends Baja SC50 with 3x10s and it didn't feel nearly this unstable.

I thought to myself, if this were the first Chinese scooter I rode I would never want to buy one. The power is about on par with my Triton stock, although it's setup would allow me to go faster top end if I had enough distance to do it. The handling is way off though, and it takes so much time to get to anything to begin to work. If it had mechanical trouble while on the road you'd be stripping most of the panels off.

I wanted to remove his head gasket and free up his muffler so bad lol. Or maybe a big bore? A pipe? Man I love messing with these things. lol Maybe I can talk him into some extra take off power since the top end feels unstable. Clutch springs, a muffler mod, and a little more compression would probably do wonders for driving it around town.

I got on my scoot after riding that one. It feels like a monster in comparison. Night and day. Anyway, I gotta go load this thing up to meet him this morning and drop it off. I'll check the tire size out of curiousity.

(Sorry I'm rambling, its 5AM and I've had 3hrs of sleep. lol)