About a month ago, my 2009 People 150 had its battery stolen by someone who cut off the wires to get the battery out. Last week I got the scooter going with a new battery, replaced positive wire and patched negative wire, and a new solenoid. (I stripped a screw off the old
solenoid getting the old positive wire off.)
With the new battery, the scooter started up fine right away. But accelerating was jumpy--it bogged down, coughed, faltered, whatever the right word is--when applying throttle at 10 mph or so. The throttle was smooth below that 10 mph point. Keeping the throttle open got it past the balkiness, and once I got it up to about 25 mph the scooter was fine. And, driving it for 5+ miles reduced the balkiness, almost to the point of the scooter driving normally.
On Friday I drove the scooter three times. Still no problems starting it, there was just the continued balkiness problem when accelerating. About 10 minutes after the last trip, I tried to start it again, and nothing happened. No cranking, no sound at all.
The past couple days, I've been trying to figure out the problem. I checked on the negative wire that goes from the battery to the engine ground, saw the wire had fallen off its screw at the engine ground point, and put it back on, hoping that was the fix. It wasn't: the electric starter still did nothing. I also tried out the kick start to see if that changed things, but again, the engine did not respond to that at all.
The brake light and turn lights on the People 150 still work when the key's in the ignition position, as does the fuel gauge, and flicking the high beam switch on gets the headlight working. So, the battery and the new/patched wires from it are not the problem. My situation sounds almost exactly like what was described in this thread,
https://www.kymcoforum.com/index.php?topic=11198.msg113055#msg113055, back in 2014, except that my kick starting doesn't help things.
Is this a CDI failure?
The scooter has had occasional starting and running problems since I bought it in May 2019. It has about 7,000 miles, and I'm the third owner. Have put about 2,200 miles on it. I'd rather sell it now, as is, as a parts scooter or to someone who'll fix it, and buy another vehicle than spend another couple hundred dollars getting the current problem fixed, then have another problem come up in a few months. I've already been told it needs a new rear tire. I'm in a city that has a Kymco dealership and a couple nearby scooter repair shops, but would have to get the People 150 towed to the dealership for them to work on it.
