Kick stand

I was replacing my broken kickstand today. Because my centerstand has broken as well, this was quite an emergency :) I got a used replacement from my dealer.

To get to that area, I had to remove lower left side panel first. This is one of the grey panels that sort of wrap underneath the scoot. It is fixed by a bolt and a bunch of screws, some under the "carpet".

The leg itself is fixed by a special bolt in its bracket. The bolt has a thread in it for the detector which shuts down ignition once you kick it open. The further side of the bracket has a thread in it, so there isn't a nut for this bolt.

The hardest part is the spring. It is tight enough to make it impossible to just stretch it with hands. The trick is to hook both ends of the spring and then work the leg into the bracket sort of pushing it against notches on the frame so that the holes align.

This is what it looks like:



The part hanging is the shutoff switch. It goes over the bolt, and has a groove to hang to the little post above the bolt. Notice there's a little hole under the bolt on the kickstand leg. There's a small pin on the switch that goes in there.

Here's the whole thing mounted. I had to replace the smaller bolt with my own. This is a regular 25mm-long 6M stainless steel bolt with a couple washers. You have to jam it into the thread rather hard. It is not meant to push against the switch as these move separately.


Tools: The large bolt takes a 14mm socket, and the smaller one a 10mm one. You'll also need 10mm socket and a regular Phillips screwdriver to remove the panel.

Related posts:
So my small kickstand just fell off
Broken centerstand

Xenon lights

I am having constant problems with my lights, by here's a guy who seems to have his problems figured out with HID (high-intensity discharge headlights a.k.a. Xenon bulbs):

http://www.scootercommunity.com.au/forums/t/2943.aspx

Broken centerstand

My center stand broke today as I tried to park at a store. Because the kickstand has broken some time ago and wasn't replaced, I have no normal way to leave my scooter anymore. So I have to sit on the whole day. Kidding. I ended up riding back home and jamming the scoot between my house and fire staircase. Fortunately enough the spot is just wide enough to hold the scoot. The odometer is now at 7028 km - that's about 4400 miles.

So my small kickstand just fell off

As I parked at a store today, my small kickstand simply fell off. Good thing I kept the scoot from tipping. What fell off was a fact a piece of it -- the metal simply broke! This is a little scary if only because the frame may be of the same quality and fixing that would be a pain. It also looks like it make have broken along a welded edge because the metal is spongy and has bubbles in it. Or perhaps its just Chinese take on Swiss quality, and the metal is shit.



Anyways, a piece of it is still hanging. I flipped it to the "up" position and rode like that. I am now at 6328km, and that's 3900 miles.

Baron scooter manual

Here's a scan of the original Baron manual that I got with my scooter, a.k.a. "Description Book". I don't think there's a single grammatically and stylistically correct sentence in this thing, providing for some fun reading. Some stuff is also obviously outdated. Enjoy!

Download Baron Scooter Manual
(Have to click on "Click Here To Download" at the bottom of the page that opens.)

I will try to keep this file hosted permanently, but if you find the link broken, please leave a comment.

Front brakes master cylinder leak

So I had to top my (front) brakes twice so far. If finally appeared to me that there's brake fluid sipping slowly from under the handlebar cover. This was going rather slowly but hey these are the brakes and I wanted to prepare the scoot for the winter. So I just had to dig in there. I am now at 4240 km.



The crack was smashed by some morons when parked at a lake, and the liquid is the brake fluid. No I didn't taste it. But it does have a special feeling to it. Just rub some between fingers, then call 911 in panic.

First I took off front handlebar cover. This is now a separate post since this seems to be quite a repeating procedure :(

It looked as though the fluid is leaking from right under the master cylinder somewhere around the place where brake lever pushes it in. So I took on disassembling the thing.

First I removed the brakes button. It is attached with a tiny screw and a full shebang of plain and split lock washers. It also fits into the brake fluid tank with a small pin but that is not fastened to anything:



Taking off the lever only takes undoing one bolt:



It is M6 so it fits 10mm sockets and wrenches.



The nut has wings in the thread that cut into the bolt. This is apparently a version of a stop nut, but it will not survive being tightened too many times.

Once the lever is off, I could simply slide off a rubber gasket that protects the piston from dust and whatnot. Mine was super badly cracked from what life had for it. This is also similar to other rubber pieces that I discovered are quite cracked. Perhaps they weren't stored right before assembly.



Picture doesn't do it much justice, that thing pretty much fell apart. I now feel attached to it.

Behind the gasket was a retaining ring holding the piston in place. Or so it seemed it should be doing, but it certainly didn't as the ring had jumped off it's socket. Or maybe it never was in place. This seems to have been my only problem.

Once I got the washer out, the whole piston came out.



The thing is surprisingly long



and full of grime, too.

Didn't have my ruler handy, so in case I have to replace it, I took this picture. Apparently they cut them out of pennies, which would explain the quality. Also, appreciate my close photography skill.



This is to show where the ring fits on the piston. The front groove is for the rubber gasket.



It seemed that all I had to do was to fit the ring back in. There's a small groove on the inside of the tank where the ring fits to hold the cylinder in place. The problem was it is just damn too far from the front of this channel, and I just couldn't find retaining ring pliers with pins long enough. Neither would it reach from the side. I replaced those with something makeshift, but the long pins just weren't sturdy enough to bend the the ring.

The whole project took over a week, scoot parked dead with a rubber stopper firm in the brake fluid tank. Which was a crime in progress as these were the last good weather days we've had this season.

I ended up cutting my own pieces for my Channellock retaining ring pliers. It's advantage is in that it has interchangeable pieces that are held in place by a simple stop screw. The pieces themselves are quite apparently made of something suspiciously reminiscent of 3/32" Allen wrenches. At least they are hexagonal and the right size.

I got a few 3/32" hex keys from Ace Hardware for refreshing quarter a piece. Cut the bent part, and ground the other end on a tool sharpening disk. Well, I guess this is a tool, isn't it :) A touch of dremel would have probably worked fine, too. Just rotate the key to grind it down evenly.



This was enough to get the ring just next to thew groove. I had to take the throttle rocker off to get better access. There's a single nut holding the sleeve together and tightening it to the handlebar, right where the cable comes in. Loosen the nut and the throttle slides off. In fact, mine was pretty loose. Messing with the throttle will be like another post.

To get the ring in place, I just slid in a long flat screwdriver and gave it a few blows around the piston. And in it went!



Now that I think about it, a piece of pipe fitting around the piston may have done the whole job, if only the ring wouldn't get stuck dead in the channel (it is covered has a kind of very small groves on it, almost like for extra friction).

Well, that was it, the brakes worked in fact. Added extra fluid and bubbled it with the piston like I wrote in topping the brake fluid post.

I was all ready for that last Sunday ride of the season, and hey I didn't break anything in the process. To finalize such an awesome event, I decided to flush the fluid completely. In fact, you are supposed to change the brake fluid once a year or so as it seeps up moisture, and the winter was around the corner. To make the long story short, I managed to drain it through the bleed screw on the caliper, top it up and bubble it from the tank. This wasn't the whole deal as one is supposed to bleed the brakes when changing the brake fluid. And in that process I threaded the bleeding screw. Sure enough, screw is done of harder metal.

So to hell with the ride, I am stuck next week looking for and replacing the front brake caliper. Which is like, another post.

Removing the front handlebar cover

This is a post on how to remove the top front cover, the thing with the silvery "windshield" on it. This is a way easier job than removing the dashboard panel, and it gives you access to all sort of things including brakes, throttle rocker, front fork and electronics. Since I had to do this so many times I'll make it into a separate post.

You can start by removing the mirrors. These are mounted with a single bolt each, and the nut is welded to the handlebar. Undo the bolts with a 6mm Allen wrench, then carefully lift the mirrors. There's a spacer and an offset washer on each bolt. Don't lose the spacers! The wires that power the turn blinkers should have some sort of Disconnect connectors so you can just unplug them. Or, if your luck is like mine, some wires will have some crappy connection slapped into the place - then this is a good time to replace those!



The bolts will probably be quite rusty. This is because they are plain steel (not even plated), and because water tends to collect on them. I have long replaced mine with stainless steel bolts.

Next, remove the side panes. These are small plastic pieces that go around the levers. There are two screws for each:

.

Undo all four screws on the dashboard:
Correction - there's a mistake on the picture below. All four screws must be undone!



And one extra bolt in front. This connects to the fork:



Now it's all undone. The panel mates with the dashboard panel with two pins. You will be able to see those since the side panes are out. Lift the corners slightly to release these pins.



Voila it's out now. Disconnect the connectors that power the small lights on the panel. These have small hooks on them that you have to press to undo the connector. The whole job only takes a Phillips screwdriver and a 6 mm Allen wrench.

Something in the air

I helped some girls to jump start their car this morning. With a smirk as of course this would never happen to me. Well, in the evening I headed to get my scoot from were I left it Saturday morning, only to discover that it takes me just under an hour to walk two miles and that my scooter wouldn't start. The starter would actually crank or at least it sounded like it tries to, but perhaps it couldn't run the spark or reach the compression. All the lights were dim, and the dashboard barely visible. You could literally see the lights go down in sync with starter cranking.

I had some problems with my battery and generator before as I changed the headlight sockets and headlights to higher wattage (there simply weren't such dim bulbs available; will post these pics later), and this was putting a strain on my battery. It always managed to start however. I disconnected the bulbs (now I can do this by reaching from behind the front wheel), but that didn't help.

Crank kick didn't work either, but then again it never did. I also happen to have my large kickstand taken off the bike as it scratched in the surface on turns, so I couldn't get the full range on the crank.

The battery is located right in front of the seat, under the "carpet" cover. My cover was a little loose when I was getting my Baron, so I had the dealer run a few screws through it to hold it down. The battery compartment itself is closed with Phillips #2 (the most common) screws, and the terminals are attached with Phillips head bolts. So all you'd need to get the battery out is a regular Phillips screwdriver. (Correction - the terminals are Phillips #3; you can still get it out with #2; see below)

Too bad I didn't happen to walk around with a screwdriver, and I didn't have one under the seat. Neither did I ever see what's below that cover. So I headed back for some tools.

Good news I've a got a charger that I won with all the raffle goodies at Rattle My Bones. The thing looked really puny, as it is sized more like a common household charger and nothing like huge boxes of car charging stations. Anyways I have it and today is the day for it to prove itself :-)

Getting the battery out was a piece of cake, except I had to use something to pry up the battery compartment cover. Of course the terminals didn't have any grease or whatever protection on them. Also the battery is smaller then the compartment and it looks like it continuously slides in that box, because of all the wear on the sides and the bottom. Good news it's easy to carry! Additionally, it has some seriously lame translation on the side, only the manual beats that. Some pictures when I'm through with this.

The charger turns out to be a serious little beast. You could tell it's made to be useful. The cord itself is 12 feet long. There are two interchangeable types of terminals, copper clamps and usual ring connector. Each is fused at the end of positive wire. Changeable terminals have special slip covers at the point they connect to the charger wire, apparently to prevent any shorts. The box only does 750mA = 0.75A which corresponds to overnight charging according to what it says on the battery (.7A for 5 to 10 hours or 3A for 1 hour). It also appears to be made with maintenance in mind. The instructions quite seriously describe what to do if you want to leave a battery plugged for more than a month. This is of course very useful for recreational vehicles, if only a little risky. The charger is made by Deltran and is called "Battery Tender Junior".

I can't locate my tester, so I am just plugging this thing in overnight. It says it's charging, but nothing is warming up even a little. Then again it's under one amp.

Day 2

In just under four hours, the charger was done charging the battery, changed its little light to flashing green and sent me a text message. So I took the battery to the scoot Sunday morning, and put it in and started the scoot and it wouldn't start just like the previous night. Turns out the killer switch was flipped. I must have not noticed it in the dark. I only had to use it twice so far, so it didn't even occur to me to check the thing. When the switch is flipped, the scoot behaves similarly to when the kick stand is out: the power is on but really weak, the starter cranks but the engine wouldn't start. Well, I'll keep it in mind, and yes, people do mess with parked scooters. So charging the battery probably wasn't needed after all. Heck, at least I got to take a look at it.

It started well and drove great. I only connected back one of the headlights. You'll often see this especially on motorcycles. The idea is not to tax the generator too much. The headlights I have now take twice as much power as the old ones (35W vs old 18W) , so having one on is just right. It certainly appears to be brighter now then before with two bulbs on - they just never got enough current to heat up to full brightness.

Pictures

I took it to place the battery properly, and finished this past weekend. Below are some images.

Battery compartment location:



Battery lid view. This is already when I am putting it back in, hence all the grease. There are two screw holes and two notches on the other side of the lid. The lid may be stuck a little. So there are two holes next to the screws. You can use a pick or a small screwdriver in these slits to lift the lid up. Didn't see them in the dark though :)



Here's a close-up on the pickup slit:



Battery close up:



The terminals are made of lead. There is a small square nut inside the terminal cage, and it actually slides out. So watch out for it when the terminal is undone. The screws turned out to be Phillips #3, which is one size larger the usual Phillips #2. You can still do it with #2 but just won't get them as tight. The screws are also quite soft as this is all made of lead.



Battery warnings aka "Method and Attention". Do not read this if you are still in coma after the manual. (Click for high resolution.)



That brick was certainly an overkill.



The charger



My positive terminal wasn't crimped right. So I crimped it a little extra to hold the wire. Since it isn't properly holding on the insulation, I've put plenty of electrical tape on it, just to give it some rigidity.



Putting it back in. To prevent the battery from rattling in the compartment, I've padded it with a piece of foam on the side. This is window lining foam for air conditioners, so it does not retain too much moisture.



The wire arrangement. There are two positive terminal wires. The electrical tape on the battery is simply to keep the wires in place.



There are various fancy things one can put on battery terminals to prevent them from corroding. The preferred one is still ol-good petroleum jelly. It wins for it's valuable combination of being extremely sticky, extremely water-repellent and extremely available. So piled plenty of it on each terminal after connecting all the wires etc.

There's extra grease on the rims. I didn't want any water to seep into the compartment from the top, so I've put some silicon grease around the edge. This is K&N silicon grease for sealing air filter compartments. Yes, they do all sorts of things. Even though there is no rubber gasket, I still think this is better then nothing. Compartment isn't sealed, there's a large hole on the side where the wires enter.



That's it, folks.

Topping brake fluid

I had to top my front brake this weekend, which is now the second time that this happens. In whatever magic way, the fluid disappears from the system. Didn't take any pictures this time, but I have some from the first one. Lesson number one - don't ever work on your scoot in the dark :0

Diagnosis

As the time went, my front brake (or is it still brakes?) got ever more soft, all the way in till I would clamp my finger when braking. Not a good thing. And just as I learned the hard way the skill of keeping my fingers away, I had to push it all the way till it would touch the handle. Even then it would be too spongy to lock the ABS valve. So I prepared to bleed my brakes, though it turned out all that was needed was to add some brake fluid.

Getting there

The braking fluid reservoirs are under the square removable pieces next to the mirrors. Front brake's on the right, and the back brake is on the left.


The plastic screw that holds the cover in place is of the same kind that hold the "windshield". It has tiny thread that screws into and spreads out a plastic socket and therefore locks it in place. Any amount of force pushing the screw in will make the thread slip and the screw will simply stay in place. Also, if the socket is not compressed as it happens when it is all the way in, the screw has nothing to turn on and so will stay in place. To get this thing out, unscrew it with a regular Phillips #2 screwdriver, but try to apply minimum down force. Prying the whole thing out a little bit also helps to lock the screw and give it enough leverage so that it actually comes out.

Once the screw is out, you have to pry open the cover. It has two notches on the sides:


so you have to lift it up at the corner where the screw was and away from those notches to get the lid out. I used a pick and the second time just an Allan wrench stuck through the hole to pry it up a little.

Brake fluid

There are two things one needs to know about brake fluid. It is caustic and it's hygroscopic. Caustic means it will make the metal to rust, the paint to peel off and something in between those two if it gets on your skin or worse yet into thy eyes. This is also one thing that you want to read the label.

Hygroscopic means it will absorb moisture from the air in mad quantities. This is bad because the whole point of using this nasty shit is in that it doesn't boil up to very high temperatures. Water will degrade this property, and if it gets boiling, the vapor bubbles in the system will make the brakes spongy and pretty much useless. What this means is that you shouldn't leave the braking system open for any extended amount of time and same thing goes for the stuff in the bottle that you'll be using. It may also be a good idea to get a new bottle if the old one was lying around unsealed for too long.

Luckily, the stuff is under four bucks in AutoZone. Any automotive DOT3 or DOT4 brake fluid will do.


Topping up

Opening the tank was easy. There are two aluminum screws that hold the lid down. Then there's what looks like a rubber and then a silicone gasket, and both just lift up.



And there it was - an almost empty tank with some rusty stuff in it. Which meant that possible that's the end of the problem. Overfilled with enthusiasm, I poured some brake fluid down - just to overfill it immediately. The damn thing is just really small.


To figure out just how much I overfilled, I pressed down the brake lever. This produced a wonderfully upright stream of brake fluid washing off my forehead. In some sort that was a good thing - getting this into my eye would probably mean a trip to ER. It did mean some very long shower for me and a hose down for the scoot afterwards, though.

So be warned - anything other than slime-near-to-nothing speed when pressing the lever will squirt the fluid out of the tank. Remember the part about it being caustic?

Since I was preparing to bleed the brakes, I bought some clear vinyl tubing beforehand. This turned out extremely useful to get some of the fluid out:


Blocking the other end with my thumb would nicely hold some fluid in the tube that I could transfer to a glass jar.

When I was topping up this weekend, this was the method that I used for filling in. I cut a fresh piece of tubing and then would dip it into the canister, press the other end with my thumb, then transfer the stuff into the tank. Worked great and there was no overfill.

This time I was also way more careful with pressing the lever. I still wanted to do this as the level was next to nothing, so I wanted to see if there's air in the system. There were some bubbles popping up as I pumped it super slow, and after a few times I could see it's just circulating the fluid. Dunno if this was anyhow important tho.

The correct level of the brake fluid is such that it crosses the view window on the side of the tank. Filling to the top will mean your brakes may lock, grind on the disk and overheat, or you simply will not have enough range in the lever to control the effort.

Closing the container is no big deal. Put back the gaskets, close the lid and put in the screws. Both the screws and the tank are aluminum, which means they super easy to thread, so be gentle. Back goes the plastic cover and there it was all ready and working. The brakes come to full power after you've pumped them a few times.

So far it looks like I have to do this every 2000 km.

Trying to remove the exhaust stud

Tried to remove my broken exhaust stud this past weekend.

I first removed the lower side panels to get a little better access. Then I figured I had to remove a plastic shield that covers bottom part of the engine if I am ever to get a hold of that stud. This turned out to be somewhat notorious as the screws that hold it to the top part of the cover are hard to reach. Had to use a fine step offset ratchet screwdriver and it's was like $16.

The engine is made of aluminum, and the stud of steel. Steel expands less then aluminum and therefore the whole thing must be heated up before you can take the screw out. I ran for about five minutes on idle without my exhaust pipe. Figured the damage has already been done because I drove on this thing home with the exhaust pretty much disattached. There's soot on the inside of the engine exhaust, and I have no clue whether this is normal. Will see.

Anyways, as the thing wormed up a little, I just grabbed it with pliers and turned and failed miserably. It just wouldn't turn.

So this weekend I am all stocked up with vice grips, torch and fine set of drill bits just in case if I have to go nuclear on this thing. Wish me good like.

Grounded - broken exhaust stud

I was pulling my thoughts together to write about this weekend's Rattle My Bones rally, and the party and the tiny Harley Davidson and my second crash but hey that wasn't meant to happen, at least not tonight.

As I started my scoot this afternoon, I heard a rather loud noise, coming right from under the engine. Luckily enough, the engine itself is OK, but one of the nuts that attaches the muffler to the engine exhaust port went loose.

There are two long screws sticking out of the engine, and the muffler is held in place on these by special long cap nuts. One of these nuts was gone. Well, I was stupid enough to go for a coffee and later to ride home on this. That last part of the trip was most special, as the engine rocked and rumbled like some sort of Harley. Scared off a pack of freshman that are being herded around the campus for the orientation these days.

Well as I got home it turned out the other nut was gone too, and the muffler was just hanging down there, completely off the screws.

Here's a short video just to show what is sounded like on the idle. The flash inside the engine is probably some kind of misfire. I could clearly see fire coming out.

So I loosened the muffler sleve nuts just to be able to move it around, and put the muffler onto the engine port. The screw protruding from the engine are standard M6 thread. I tried to tie it down with M6 screw, washer and a block washer:
Too bad I tried too hard - and broke one of these screws! Now the muffler is sort of in place, still making the noise, but not as much. It appears that as the nuts came off during the ride, a gasket that must have been b/n the muffler and the engine fell off. Now I'll be on the lookout for this piece. The broken screw may be just a stud, a sort of screw without head that can screw both ways in. I really hope to be able to extract and replace it.

So if you hear any weird noise from your exhaust, or simply for maintenance, check those nuts. I I am now at 2800km. And for Pete's sake, just don't drive it if it's loose! Gently fasten it up. It takes 10mm wrench or hex socket to operate a standard M6 nut, and so may be the same for those long nuts that fell off.

Loose Rear Wheel

Soon after I got my Baron, the back wheel got wobbly. I could sense something was wrong with it from the weird feeling at the turns, and squeaky sound from the rear breaks at low speeds. Pun it on the stand, and there it was - the back wheel would wobble by almost an inch from side to side! My guess is the wheels are something they put together at the dealership, and it just wasn't done quite right.

Turned out tightening the rear wheal axle lug nut was all there was to it. The size of the nut I recall is 21 or 20 mm. The size matches typical sized for car wheel lug nut - the ring of nuts that you have to take off to replace your tire. So go dig in your car's spare tire compartment, and pull out the lug nut wrench. These are made as either single-size long bent socket wrenches or as two metal bars welded together forming a cross, each bar ending with a socket thus giving you four different sizes.

Mine got loose before I hit my first thousand kilometers. So if you just got your scoot, it might be a good idea to check yours. Here's how to do this:


Put your Baron on a stand. Check if the wheal wobbles horizontally. Press the rear brake (left handlebar), then try tightening the nut with your lug nut wrench. If it was lose, then you might have just saved yourself from some serious trouble! With the kind of wrench that I had, there wasn't much room because the muffler was in the way. So I'd turn the wrench a little, let lose the breaks, turn the wheel a little so there's room for the wrench movement again, and repeat. Here's a wider view: