Woohoo! Sorry for the delayed update, I'm sure you were all holding your breath.
Anyway, good news, I got the thing running! I transported the scooter to my dad's house (all 240 lbs of it, by myself, ugh), and we were planning on working on it last saturday. Well, long story short, I spent a lot of the day working on an equally cool and equally strange vehicle, some of you may know as a 'weinermobile'.
Yep, Wienermobile #7, which is actually one of the first modern wienermobiles, was in the shop being restored before it was going to be trucked to Milwaukee to be put in a museum. Oscar Meyer didn't pay a lot for the restoration, so it didn't get much work done to it.... it got a shiney new coat of paint, and I helped my dad install the brown vinyl interior, but other than that, the sucker is beat. I guess in 1997 they rebuilt the engine (which is a pain in the ass to take in an out of the thing), and after a test run it came back with a really bad knock. So, Oscar Meyer shelved it, and it's never going to be driven again. Pity. Also, the taillights are cracked, the radiator 'grille' is held in place with wood screws, and over all, the thing is just...eh.. sub par. >shrug< Anyway, since it was never going to be driven again, I figured it didn't need it's jumper cables, so now I'm the proud owner of some massive jumpers with some interesting history which currently reside in the SVX trunk. Heh.
Back to the scooter: I GOT IT RUNNING! At my dad's house, after much furrowing of brows and multimeter testing, we decided that since we don't have the exact wiring schematic for my model year, and the ignition switch with a total of EIGHT positions, we decided to hell with it, and started rewiring it (to the funky ass ignition switch) as we saw fit. So basically, we made the EIGHT position switch have two positions... ON... and OFF.... and you flip it to the ON button.... and hit the START button.. and it starts. Brilliant eh?!
I had to adjust the points on it to factory specs, and adjust the carb to close to factory specs, but it runs! It was cool as hell hearing something so close to death being started again! It actually smoked a LOT less than I thought it would as well. So, now that it runs, I'm going to tear it into pieces, sand blast it, repaint it, polish the engine (its aluminum! RAWR!), redo some of hte wiring, and get the body painted white and a light creme color. It'll be PURTY. Anyone know how much it'd cost to rechrome a headlight trim ring??
Anyway, this project is cool. Heh.
- Rob