hey there YouTube Travis here so tonight I thought I'd talk a little bit about the things that I do to get a bike running want to spend sitting for a very long time I know people buy a bike off of Craigslist and whatnot it's been sitting for years and it's not obvious what you should do first so hopefully that will clear that up I'd like to make a point in saying though that this is not necessarily the things I do before I ride the moped I'm not going to go over safety stuff in this video this is just more on the mechanical side also this isn't really going to apply so much to modified bikes just stock bikes have been sitting for a long time you start getting into things like jetting and timing so this video is just going to be about the things I do to get the moped going because I know the first start videos are really popular and this might you know give you a little bit of an insight to what goes on behind the scenes okay we'll get this bike wheeled out here in the open where we can really take a look at it okay so it's worth mentioning the only thing I've done this place since I picked it up as I had angle grinder just because it was one frozen piece so as I go through I keep a pen and paper next to me and I write down everything that I'm going to have to order for the bike starting with a new chain okay so the first thing we're going to do is check compression this is going to take a leaf out of Fred's guide where we make sure that we have compression spark and our fuel system in good working order so before we can even begin to talk about compression first you got to check and see if the engine is free or not this engine is free I can rotate it by hand and you can hear it turning over now if I was unable to turn this flywheel the motor would be stuck now it could just be stuck from sitting and I have a video called how to uncie's moped engines so you can check that out and then there I feature both a engine that's bent just been stuck from sitting and an engine that's a little bit more involved so if it's not stuck from sitting it's possible it could have been hard seized years ago or my heart seized I mean it was you know the engine got so hot that the cylinder and piston locked up or it could just be that you know water got down in the engine and fouled everything up in there and you're probably in for a rebuild at that point so yep once your motor is free and we can start seeing how much compression it actually has okay so on compression now I don't always check for compression before I start a bike if it's not starting or if it's not running really right I'll check it but this is a really good opportunity to check it so I'm going to show you two ways the first is going to do with the thumb test then we'll go on to looking at using some tools so if you don't have any compression check tools what you can do is take your finger or your thumb and you want to cover the spark plug hole now I'm going to be able to talk you guys through it I'm not going to show you really just because it's only me down here tonight but you want to cover the spark plug hole press firmly against it make sure that's trying to make the best seal that you can then going to get a friend to try and kick over the bike if it blows your finger off then you pass the thumb test okay so here's where it gets a little tricky if you pass the thumb test that's great it doesn't necessarily mean you have enough compression to run though the where the thumb test is useful though is if you fail the thumb test then you know you probably don't have enough compression so what else can we do the check for compression okay that is where this comes in this is one of your generic $20 compression testers you can get from an auto parts store they'll have different fittings on the end you just got to find the one that matches the threads on your mopeds head you're good to go here's the deal on these though I I won't get into the science of it in this video but the short story is that the hose there can sort of act as an extension of the cylinder per se and what that means is that with this gauge it can read slightly lower than the compression you actually have but I think it's a useful tool nevertheless and let's hook it up to this guy and see what we get the important part of this guy is up top here it's got this little Schrader valve up here so we'll go ahead and screw this in okay so now I'm going to kick it over a couple times then after kicking over a few times the needle should stop at what our compression readers saying of course I had to borrow a chain from one of the pooka Maxie's in order to try this out okay so going to our compression tester looking at a little bit maybe 115 ish right there for compression a general rule of thumb is that run well you're supposed to look at about 120 so I'm pretty okay with this reading so release valve right here there we go and out it comes so compression is something that people love to talk about for example with this tester I've never gotten the poukai torque here to read higher than 90 psi and this thing starts up well runs pretty good and does the 25 miles-an-hour that it should as a stock one point 5 horsepower model so anyway let's say you do your tests what can you do if you have low compression so one thing you can do is take a look inside your cylinder look for intensive scoring big thing though I think is to look for the cross hatches that should be in there if you don't or if there's a little bit of mild scouring in there might be time for a cylinder honing also in that respect take a look at your piston rings sometimes you can just have plain old wore-out piston rings especially so the Pugh service manual says every five thousand miles the rings need be changed of course I've seen plenty of eggs with higher mileage they're still rocking they're untouched top ends but something to consider for your top-end new rings in a home could also potentially have air leaks coming from your engine seals on the bottom end of your case or your top end gaskets could be no good honestly in my experience these are usually okay until you take them apart and try to put your top end back together I would either cut new gaskets based on your existing ones or you can be lazy and buy them in a set that combined with using a torque wrench even simple $20 one like this from Harbor Freight which is inch pound is a lot lot better than nothing you definitely don't want to just crank it till it's tight now for this pookie 50 here I have a video on my channel how to rebuild a Fuji 50 which says disassembly and reassembly process in that I talked about cylinder honing towards the end as well as ring installation if you're new to that but that's one walkthrough available to you up several okay so next we're going to check for spark and talk a little bit about it too okay so your spark plug put it inside the spark plug boot like this then you're going to want to go ahead and touch it to the head or the cylinder you're going to want to get it like that you want to have really a friend should be grabbing it by the rubber part and holding it there but I'm just one person here tonight so we'll see if we can get this on camera for you go ahead and turn the light on the camera off so you can see it you want to see a big fat blue spark when we kick this guy over like that okay so what can you do if you have no spark well first things to check are the ignition points so you guys see here see how they're opening and closing make sure they're opening and closing you can also clean the ignition points okay so for a brief explanation of cleaning your points basically you want to use a screwdriver pry them open that then you want to stick a piece of fine grit sandpaper in there let them close and pull it out do that four or five times maybe then pry it open blow some compressed air in there hopefully that'll get out any debris I should mention if you tell any old-timers you do that a little upset with you ideally use something called a points file or even a metal fingernail file that'll do a better job I don't own one of those assuming you don't either then you hit it with some sort of cleaner so on the topic of that you can use carb cleaner think about it difference between carb cleaner and brake cleaner for the most part carb cleaner on the right there it might contain a little bit of an oil that might leave a small oily residue on your points which is not ideal the brake parts cleaner is not allowed to have any kind of oily residue left over think about it's going on brake parts so either can work but I use brake you know when I clean my points then after you do the cleaner you want to follow through with a very thin strip of paper pulling it out a few times and then maybe hitting it once more the compressed air just to be safe then you can also try cleaning up the outside of the stator and the inside of the flywheel you can have spark and still not run if you have weak spark or intermittent spark the fat blue spark is what you want to see here your timing is off that can cause it not to run also depending on your bike you might have to deal with some weird quirks or example on a lot of wiring sometimes the horn is grounded into the ignition circuit so you might have to take the horn wires out of the horn and cross them together if you have a bad horn also on some three wire setups like the three wires set up on the Sachs g3 the brake light is grounded into the ignition circuit symptom on this bike right now is when we grab the brake levers they kill the engine that can also interfere with your starting also never underestimate the power swapping in a new spark plug and testing for spark this is a Bosch plug so there's a good chance that this might actually be the original spark plug you have no idea if it's good or not so go ahead and grab an NGK or something and test with that as well just be sure now of course we could talk about spark all day there's so many more things it could be you could have a bad condenser inside your flywheel you can have some bad wiring somewhere honestly in the solution for that is to wire up just for spark and there's wiring guides on the PUC wiring page on the moped army wiki how to do that just to get it to run okay so we have spark we have compression I should also mention that we have spark but it's good enough spark with good enough timing what next okay so next I'm going to talk a little bit about fuel system and go over the gas tank as well as the carburetor down there let's take a look at this gas tank here so probably the biggest enemy you're going to face looking at these gas tanks is rust now this one if you've watched the intro video you'll know it was pretty bad first up I always move these oil mixing cups I've had to fish way too many of them out of the gas tank I always premix an a red gas cans somewhere as you can see and I wish YouTube had smell-a-vision here not only is there corrosive rust built up there but they're still actually some liquid down there oh yeah some vintage gas so let me put this on just to get rid of this awful odor now I've got an old video up here from I think 2011 at least where I D rusted a gas tank on a puka maxi I use the sealer product on it after I D rusted it my favorite from what I've seen is por-15 cycle treatment kit however I'd like to make a quick point here and that point is this so I feel like my philosophy with dealing with gas tanks has evolved a little bit I'll only reach for the sealer if the gas tank has a little pinhole leaks or if it's really really really bad and I just want it done with realistically a lot of gas tanks you can get away with just doing a treatment then running a good fuel filter like one with a paper element and regularly running gas through it that really is okay so I'll go ahead and put a table on the screen like I said I'll go into this in another video more in depth later but general rule of thumb I've been doing is the least abrasive method necessary you'd be surprised with what you can do with salt and vinegar or something like a babe of rust which is fantastic as a green safe product before you reach for the acids and the tank liners and sealers and that stuff I'd like to mention though if you choose to just do a treatment and a filter go on the moped army wiki and read the full extent of the tank D rusting article something not to overlook for example if you choose to treat vinegar is flushing with 90% rubbing alcohol reasons for this dries really quick it's the water out of the tank if you don't do this you'll run through your first thing of premix and it might run for a couple minutes then we'll quit on you and you'll drain some of the gas and you'll see it's got these like splotches and it lots of water you didn't get out so if you're choosing just treat with a treatment method and then running a filter make sure you rinse that with alcohol so just to get it running I've got a lawnmower gas tank on the back here and this comes down here this is thicker line I didn't make this I think this is a quarter inch a three sixteenths inline stop thing here now before I can plug this into the carb we need to take a look at that carburetor itself all right let's talk carbs okay so on this moped it's got a great 12 millimeter Bing which we find on a lot of pooks this also kind of applies to a DeLauro 14:12 just because it's a single jet carb three things I want to check well I shouldn't give it a number there's a couple of things you want to check here I want to make sure the main jets clear the bowl is clean and the float actually works beyond that this should be just enough to get it running so let's go ahead and take a look I'd like to mention I do have a brand new throttle cable here to replace this improper one Wow got lucky and we're able to pull that fuel line off most likely this is going to get replaced the stuff is hard not flexible brittle and will also take the air filter off in this case so a quick note on air filters if your moped was supposed to have one from the factory and using factory jetting it's probably under run best with an air filter you can upgrade to a high flow filter if you're looking to upgrade these ones found on pintos magnums and stuff like that are kind of nice because they break apart and sort of give them a little cleaning that's kind of nice you've got one of a poop max you like this you're a little bit less out of luck you can try spraying stuff down there get cleaned out as best you can you can buy reproductions of these but you'll have to hack them a little bit to fit I have yet to get one that fits right out of the box but then again we're dealing with moped parts here so that's kind of the norm or you can go to a high flow filter but you might be surprised depending where your moped is stored this might actually be in pretty good shape ok so on these Bing's once again the biggest two sources of overflowing problems are the float itself being a 30 year old piece of wood but could still be okay as well as the float needle in here that's got a rubber tip on the end which you need to make sure is intact as well as the place where it seats there's brass in there well that's in taxable I'll be careful you're cleaning all this you'd like to see a detailed exploration of this carb I have a how to clean a big video which I'll link I won't go too too in-depth with it here but I will say you also need to make sure your actuator the throttle is moving the slide up and down all the way and if this wasn't completely frozen up push this down and pull on the throttle it should come up that'll verify that's all working I mentioned before inside here here's your atomizer with main jet still in it I can't see through that can you so I'm gonna get this cleaned out I'm not with this float height either this should be a little bit more parallel with the bottom of the bowl but at least this seems to work so that's good you can also clean out this banjo fitting right here okay so the carbs about to go back on the bike looks still pretty dirty on the outside but it's pretty clean on the inside that's where really what I focused on got my new throttle cable up there and I just want to point out if you're trying to start the bike over and the plug the spark plug isn't wet you're not getting fuel on this carb everything was clogged up Banjo inlet was clogged up so you saw the main jet was completely clogged up dirt and all that other stuff so got all those passages cleaned up now we're ready to put the carb on connect our fuel line saw on the subject of fuel line even though I'm running an external tank I'd like to talk real quick I have not been able to find this locally I buy it off treats still to buy one of the few generic items I buy from them even though the price has gone up I still buy it this is tigon fuel line honestly this stuff even 2-3 years later into the game still remains flexible and workable unlike clear fuel line and some other stuff work it's really hard and you can't reuse it if you have to take it off I spend the extra money and get the nice stuff ok so next is a pretty obvious one we're gonna go ahead and check on the transmission fluid here so go ahead and get yourself something there's a little frisbee something to catch all the fluid when it comes out if it's red it's probably the original type F that was used on Pookie 50s if it's black probably some motor oil somebody put in but let's see what this one's got ok well there there isn't any fluid in this one so whenever I get to a moped like this I always like to open up and take a look and see what the clutch and all the other parts look like ok so if there is fluid in there and it looks good you can go ahead and just fill with fresh fluid and go from there and see what happens I'm going to tear into this clutch just because I'm cute you can follow me along with the journey or if you don't want to just feel free you can skip ahead a couple minutes to where I start adding the fluid the tutorial will pick up there okay now it's time for our clutch puller got all sorts of weird residue in there I wonder wonder if that's friction material off of this clutch this one still doesn't look awful all things considered it'll clean up at least I can do as of right now let's just get this all cleaned up and put back together real quick I also went ahead disassembled this clutch little further take a look at this bushing mmm this thing got really hot want to think it's because somebody was writing doubles on this way too often or all the time based on the foot pegs on the back maybe if that's all the friction material in there plus the fact that rear axle was extremely bent so much so I could even get some of the nuts off we wouldn't have to cut it off eventually though well just thought I'd share and I think hot well that's a little better there's only so much I could do I tried to sand down some of those grooves in there we'll see if I need to get a new clutch bail or not probably about the most I can do for now one more thing about the clutch stuff when you're putting it back together more likely than not this 30 year old piece of paper is no longer good whenever I've reused these red ones it just leaks right out the bottom go ahead and grab yourself some gasket paper and cut yourself a new gasket or if you're lazy like me just go ahead and grab a pre-made one okay so now that all that's back together we can go ahead and put a notch mission fluid as of right now this bike is destined to be stock so it's getting type F but in my kitted bikes I run ten thirty synthetic probably the only time I'll ever buy super tech oil do you remember to replace that drain plug underneath so we're getting the end of our journey here realistically on a moped like this simple two-stroke your two biggest sources of problems are going to be your carburetor it's going to be dirty there's gonna be a passage block or you've got dirty ignition points those are the two most common problems working from there you can go through the tests outlined in this video and hopefully get somewhere now of course this isn't an all-inclusive guide you can have things like a clogged exhaust the original pipe of this bike is on the bottom and it is significantly heavier than all my other stock pipes lying around so I've got this one just a little bit nice to throw on here so of course you can always decarbonize the exhaust but just because it's a stock pookie 50 pipe and i've got so many of them lying around I'll just put the nicer one on okay you tube there you have it those are some of the things I look at and some of the troubleshooting I do whenever I get a bike that's been sitting for a long time like this one now if you've got a keen eye you've probably noticed that as I've been going through this I've been replacing and fixing certain things something like more obvious than others but I'll go over everything in a first start video which should be quite shortly alright YouTube catch you then