$40 150c,... you haven't picked it up yet?

It's missing the carb, and it's in Smithville, over an hour away. But it's now $$25. Gonna be pretty hard to pass up, even if I just scavenge variator parts. I have an entire spare brand new gy6 carburetor!

Then what happened??

A ton has happened!!

#1, I've had this variator pulley on and off about five times trying to carefully get it to work at least most of the time. I ended up putting roll pins through the kickstart drive plate into the pulley and doing it that way, which actually works well. But due to wear on the teeth on the pulley, the starter still fails to engage about 25% of the time so I have to kickstart it a little bit to get the pulley aligned so that good teeth are facing the bendix.

The thing is super hard to kickstart, but at least I fixed the kickstart lever (also with a roll pin... I'm on a roll-pin roll). So if I do get stuck somewhere and the e-start simply won't engage, at least I can spend an hour trying to kickstart it before I give up and walk.

I have a line on a parts bike that might have a good variator I could rob, but odds are it is going to be sold to a higher bidder today. Once I know for sure I'm not getting the parts bike, I will pull the trigger on a Vespa ET4 "pre-leader" pulley from Aliexpress, which I will have to reengineer to make it work, but at least it has the right starter ring gear. That'll take until January to get here, so if I'm gonna ride the evil Vespa, I'm going to have to suffer through the dodgy starting situation. Life would be a lot easier if you could push start a scooter, I'm telling you.

"roll-pin roll"


Need roll pin pics

So.

Out of nowhere, on a different forum I am on, I got a message from a guy up in Oklahoma offering me a free 2014 Stella Auto just like mine, only it has only 8 original miles on it!! He was given the scooter from a friend, and he was looking on the internet for info on how to get it going, saw my posts on it on the TWT forum, then decided my home was a good enough home for this scooter. Who says posting on the internet doesn't pay off?

So I think, as much fun as it has been, I may wind up almost completely abandoning my current Stellauto project, replacing it with a new one, which likely just needs the carb cleaned and fresh gas to be basically a brand new scooter.

I mean, eventually I will fix this one up enough to sell it, primarily to get it out of my garage, provided I can get the new one running and registered.

dang just give it to the next guy (err me), you know less fortunate (cough, me),..

That's an idea. You would know how to fix it, because I'd tell you

The new Stella made it home Saturday after a pretty crazy drive up and down ii-35 through state wide rainstorm that lasted all 14.5 hours we were in it.

So far I verified it is not seized, drained the 7 year old gas and ordered a battery and new fuel filters. Did some inspection, making a list. It will eventually need tires and a seat, but other than that I don't think there really is anything to be done besides waxing the oxidized paint and replacing fluids.

  where pics???

If this forum would get into the 21st century, I'd post more pics.

ATM I am only posting them here when they are also on my blog, so I'll have a public link to them.

It runs! But the ECU was bad, Genuine recalled them, so I am checking on whether a replacement is available via recall. Otherwise, I have the ECU from the other one on it and it runs fine.

New tires inbound, then ride!

awww yea!  that's the best feeling!

,..when it starts

So, Genuine was nice enough to send me a new ECU, even though the recall had already been done. But the new one didn't work straight off. However, I did get the tires swapped this morning, and with the old Stella's ECU, the thing runs like a brand spanking new scooter. It's got the rough character you'd expect from a vintage scooter repro, but not like the old one, it doesn't rattle and feel like it might fall apart in a minute.

Anyway, I need to do a few small cosmetic things and get it registered, but it's solid.

awwww yea!

Been riding the new scoot a lot over the past week. Up to almost 100 miles on it now!

Being that winter is close at hand, even here in Central TX we have had a slightly cold morning once or twice. I tried to start it up and ride it in the morning the other day when it was about 50F, and it straight up wouldn't start. I ran the battery all the way down trying, then eventually later in the afternoon I had it recharged and got it to start, running poorly. Surging idle, wanted to stall if you gave it any gas, etc. Once I let it warm up this rough way on the side stand, I managed to get it out for a longish ride (for a scooter...) enough to fully warm the engine, then got it home and did a carb adjustment. Wound up taking a whole turn or more out of the pilot screw and now it runs like a top.

It's still not broken in and not quite as quick as the other one. The other one will kind of pop wheelies but this one won't, not even close. But I did have it up to over 50mph (indicated) the other day. I think it could likely wind up going 60mph once it's fully broken in.

I don't yet have another replacement ECU or an answer from Genuine about whether they will replace this bad one again. These scooters are a kind of odd transitory carburetor design. They have little solenoid/valve thingy to open up and let extra air into the carb, kind of like a computer controlled vacuum leak. They have an oxygen sensor and a cylinder head temperature sensor along with TPS which are used by the ECU as inputs to decide how and when to open this air leak valve to lean the mixture. The ECU also includes the CDI functionality, and I suspect it is controlling ignition timing. What's broken in my "new" ECU is the ignition function. I am beginning to think I can probably unhook all of the sensors and run an off the shelf/generic GY6 CDI and get the 2nd scooter going with little expense. I might experiment on the new one with plugging the carb air hose to see if it will make it run too rich in open loop. Maybe there's some free hp somewhere in this thing.

"The other one will kind of pop wheelies,.."

Oh oh I have a great idea for the old one,..



Seriously though that's good stuff reading about how it's going.  The transitory carburetor design is interesting!

Well, the truth is, I am totally happy that after investing ~$1000 I now have a nearly mint condition, runs-as-new Stella Automatic. With the new speedo lens and eventually if I make a seat cover, it will be basically concours type condition, with patina of age. So I would love to give this scooter to someone who can continue the project and get on with it. Plus, I would not have to actually fix it anymore at all if I plan to give it away.

But. mrs72 is going to basically demand that I sell it and get some money back. I think it's unlikely she will let me just give it away. I might be able to pull off a trade for another project of some kind. I would like totally trade it straight up for one of a long list of like-value motorbikes.

At present, the "old" Stella Auto needs just a couple of things to be usable as a daily:

1. I need to put its ECU back. I borrowed the ECU for my new Stella, and once I can get Genuine to get me a working ECU, I'll return the ECU back to the old one. I would just order my own new ECU but I need Genuine to confirm they are not going to get me another good one before I drop a C-note on a new one.
2. after riding the new Stella, it's clear the auto choke is not working on the old one. A new auto choke is under $20 and easy to replace. With a new auto choke, it would be easy to kickstart and then the starter ring gear wear would not be a big issue.

Long term of course it needs that pulley to be sorted.

I would like to get those to items sorted before selling it or trading it. You could skip the ECU and fit a regular $10 GY6 CDI with a little bit of wire splicing and it'd probably work. In fact, if Genuine disses me on the replacement ECU, this is probably what I'll do. Then the carb would operate in open loop and full enrichment all the time, which would probably make it run better.

Anyway, this scooter really needs to go to someone with some mechanical curiosity and ingenuity, who likes tinkering and nearly impossible projects.

"someone with some mechanical curiosity and ingenuity, who likes tinkering and nearly impossible projects"

oh me,. pick me,..me!

FYI the old Stella is for sale now, super low price. But I can't just give it away cbrfxr, sorry friend.

$500. Y'all know the story. It's core is straight and usable, starts and runs fine provided you mind the ring gear wear, needs some kind of service to the auto choke, like whole replacement ($20 part) or cleaning, but I don't think it's working right. Other than that, it's fashionable, ultra cheap transportation.