:popcorn: :popcorn:
Everyone grab some popcorn and settle in for my saga of the scoot, as you all may or may not know my present scoot (a 2006 united motors powermaxx 150 slightly modified) has been currently dead in the water since i needed a whole new exhaust and since the head had a heli coil (long story) and the exhuast bolts broken off (even longer story) she was running LOUD AND PROUD but needed some love.
Today i got up and cancelled my contracts for the day and waited, and waited for fedex, they showed up at 1 pm, let me bring you all up to date, i ordered parts from scrappydawgscooters.com on august 8th, that day i was told by beth "we will process and ship this out today) 4 days later i got a notice they shipped my order, and another 7 later it arrived by fedex (this btw was the WORST shipping and wait tim i have ever experienced) i will get into the details later on that. After having a terse convo with the fedex guy i hauled the cardboard box into the house, inside was my brand spanking new stock muffler, a carb rebuild kit, my exhaust bolts, my donut gasket, and my non egr cylinder head, they had forgot to ship my exhaust nuts, i got on the phone and spoke with neil, it was during this time that i learned my nuts were backordered and were not even sent, they never bothered to email me or anything.
According to neil who understood my frustrations this is what happened. they get everything direct from china, which comes by freighter, when it gets in the usa customs goes through it, thats a time that scrappydawg cannot control, normally they keep a large amount of stock in their warehouse in Las vegas, so when beth told me it was supposed to go out that day apparently she meant it, however when the shipmints arrive at the docks a trucking company picks it up and take it to scrappydawg (another timeline they have little control over) and what supposedly happened is someone unwrapped all the shrink wrap from a large container on the dock, so the trucking company was like "Screw this we arent moving that mess" so the folks at scrappydawg kept looking out the window every day wondering where their container was, when it finally was all settled out they shipped my shipment to me. According to neil anything large like what i ordered has to go fedex, but if its small stuff it always goes USPS priority (so i know NOT to order LARGE items from them unless i order them 10 days BEFORE my part breaks and i need it) LOL
He swore it was an anomaly at scrappydawg and he was sincerely sorry for the trouble it had caused me, scrappydawg said that my nuts were going to be shipped priority as soon as they could, i would probably get them friday.
So now we are all caught up, i have most of what i needed to do the job, so i enlisted my trusty neighbors kid travis to go out and cut the zip ties (if you know my scoot you know she is held together by zip ties) off scoot, once she was naked i went through the motions of a cyl head replacement, no sense typing it all since you all know what that entails, i will point out that today i USED NOTHING but my brand new husky tool set, i wanted to put it through some tests before using it on the road, i will say a few things that dissapointed me was that NONE of the sockets or extensions snap on the ratchet they all fit loosely and fall off if you have the ratchet hanging down, also noticed this with the screwdriver, that also changes locking settings on its own sometimes, the tool set was a good set but it def has its defective nature, that and you always have to have that stupid downsizer because the sockets are all tiny and the ratchet head is large,
So good to put that and my new grease monkey gloves through their paces, i was able to pretty much do all the repairs with the little tool set , i think in a pich it would work, even though they are all greasy i am tempted to return it to HOME DEPOT, there is no reason why those tools should not snap together properly, the adjustable slips as well and wont hold its setting
so i got the repair done, the hardest part was pulling the old bolts that hold the air intake from the old head, a blow torch softened the work considerably, once the old bolts were on and the new exhaust bolts were in it was time to change out the head, that went pretty good, got it back together and tried to do a quick test start NOT HAPPENING, i knew what it was i had screwed up the timing, took it back apart and fixed the flywheel and cam setting
FYI i should not forget to mention the saga of the new exhaust, it seemed to fit perfectly but there was a problem, the sway bar hooking to the back wheel still had the weld mounts for the old carbon fiber muffler, this stock wasnt going on till i removed them, we unbolted the sway bar from the wheel and a trip to the shed and the use of a hacksaw and a jigsaw with a hack saw blade saw the end of those welds, not the trouble was it would fit flush with the sway bar bolts but the header pipe under the exhaust wouldnt line up, and to top that off the donut gasket kept falling out, so i used toothpaste to get it to stick in the head (it worked!) and was finally able to wrench the exhaust in, yaaay now here comes the fun part, long exhaust bolts and no exhaust nuts, well i used some 10mm lock nuts with teflon but of course the ratchet couldnt turn up the whole bolt, finally with the help of a deep well they were all snug on the head
the next issue was although the header pipe was snug the bolts to the sway bar were now NOT long enough to go back through the exhaust mounts and the bike frame, so i managed to get ONE in so right now the new exhaust is mounted on the bike by ONE sway bar bolt, tomorrow ill go get a longer bolt for the other one
after all this was done we fired the bike up, a minty fresh burning smell filled the air and she was purring along, the paint on the header was also smoking, i guess since it is new it will take a few miles for that to stop smelling like that.
So after the test me and travis cleaned up the tools as the sun set and after about 50 new zip ties the bike was reassembled, i decided it was time to take it for a quick run (dont go to far since the sway bolts are not all back in yet)
I AM GOING TO STOP HERE, the next piece is info to ask you guys for your knowledge for some help with troubleshooting
the two things i noticed right away on my short put around the trailer park were,
THE SCOOT HAS NO BALLS AT ALL, even when the muffler was completely off she had gumption, when i goosed her she took 500 feet to reach 10 mph, maybe thats the way its supposed to be, or maybe i need to adjust somethingthe other thing that stands out real clear is
the motor is making a loud tapping sound now, my neighbor says i couldnt hear it before since i had no exhaust, that may be true but that SOUND WAS NOT there when i had the old exhaust on, that sound only showed up when i put the new head on, since i have no real super mechanic skills other then what i have learned hard knocks with this scoot, i cant tell you what it is, but it gets quicker the faster i go, i put the scoot away shortly after, i know that sound was not there before, and at first i thought it was something rattling after all the new stuff was assembled but no its coming from directly below the seat, (from the engine) the scoot didnt seem to care about it and no bad things happened, but there is def a LOUD tapping coming from the front of the enginethats all here are a few pics from today, thanks for reading
OH and any help in this issue would be great
See i have a cooling shroud guys! :tongue:
The patient at the start of the long day!
Im guessing we start here ....
Out with the old... In with the new (FYI this head could still be used in a pinch, im thinking of packing it on my trip!!!!! ;D
Im not fully attached yet.. and i stink badly, but someday ill be the muffler i always knew i could be ....
