WE bought a fully furnished house on the Big Island of Hawaii mid last year. We had been renting tio vacationers and planning to mover there. So, last Nov. I bought a new, leftover People 150 and rode it for a week until it was time to go home. So I filled the tank to the top and used Stabil in both it ad a riding lawn mower that came with the house.
So we finally moved here on Sept. 5th.
The lawn mower finally started and I started mowing. Suddenly it started dumping fuel eveywhere. Filled the crankcase, filled the combustion chamber and dumped gas to the outside. Parked it. Started the People 150 and it wouild sit there and idle but would then die after 30 seconds or so, and would not take any throttle.
Decided I'd better look at the mower first. I figuerd a stuck needle and/or seat problem. This would inable the carb to stop the gas flow from the tank, and indeed, it emptied the tank. Drained the contaminated oil; pulled the spark plug and turned the engine over blowing ras gas out the hole; pulled the carb. When I rtemoved the floet bowl abd the float and removed the needle valve the tapered tip came off. So I figured the broken tip had lodged against the seat causing the problem. Had to order the new needle from the mainland. Picked up a new spark plug, oil filter and oil. The needle arrived. Assembled everything and put new oil in. Put just a little gas in it (in case I hadn't fixed the problem) and it fired right up. Ran it for a bit and saw no sign of excessive gas, so added a bunch of fuel and mowed our one acre. Seems fine now.
This morning it was on to the Kymco. I'm no scooter mechanic, but look at these problems through the eyes of an old motorcycle rider. On the Kymco I figured plugged pilot jet. But thjis is complicated by the fact that I no nothing about the automatic choke the use. Pulled the seat and storage pan and had a look see. Dissconected enough stuff to pull the carb from both rubber boots. Didn't want to remove the choke mechanism since I'm not familiar with them, so left it on and left the wiring on it. Drained the float bowl and pulled it. Saw a little bit of crud in the bottom of the bowl and cleaned it. Used the high "E" and "B" guitar strings as cleaners on the pilot jet after removing it. Blew air through the carb chambers the best I could with a little compressor and blow gun. Decided not to drain all the gas in the tank at this time, so assembled evrything and she fired right up. Right away it was able to take throttle. Took it for a nice ride up to 60 mph, and it ran great.
I can't say the broken tip on the mower was related to ethanol, but the problem with the People 150 was certainly. Stabil used to be good for storage of gasoline for quite some time-at least six months, but with this dam etahnol it isn't doing the job anymore. We live here now, so both the mower and my Kymco will be ridden often so we shouldn't have this problem again hopefully. The scooter went from unrideable to running GREAT. Feels good to have diagnosed and fixed these things myself. I was rather disgruntled when it seemed like everything was going to hell on me there for a while, so I just took one thing at a time.
My People 150 is a fine scooter. Maybe not quite as fast as my wife's SYM HD200, but not far off the mark.
Not much action here in the People 150 part of the forum, so I figured I'd write about this.
So, what are you using for fuel system cleaner or stabilizer that can jsut be added to the gas tank? I'm familiar with Seafaom--anything else?
Jon
