A Honda Elite motor scooter bought new

I’m trading in on a KYMCO (sp?) motor scooter made IN Taiwan. Any caveats about THAT line? My honda isn’t even made in Japan nor the US! I found out this particular one (all models of it) are made in Mexico! No wonder it’s bad.

And exactly why do you believe that products made in Mexico are bad?
You’re on a slippery slope at this point.

Why won’t you have the 2 valves on your motor checked?
That is A LOT LESS EXPENSIVE than trading your non-functional scooter in on another one.
It might cost you $200, tops.

BC.

Yeah, you can’t really blame them. Mostly, what’s done in Mexico is “assembly”. My 2001 Jetta was assembled there, and we’ve had no assembly problems.

There are some issues with either the engineering of some parts, or their actual manufacturing, but you can’t blame the assemblers for putting together something that’s going to fail anyway.

This scooter has a carburetor and a thing called a starter valve or a bystarter. It’s an electric gizmo that opens and closes and allows an extra rich mixture to help start and run a cold engine. After 5-10 minutes of the engine running it will close off the enrichment circuit. It is made to fail in the open, rich position, which usually results in easy starting and poor running, but it can become stuck in the closed position, potentially causing really hard starting but good running later. You should have the dealer check the bystarter.

The other thought is that the vacuum operated petcock, or the vacuum hose leading to it, that allows gas to flow to the carburetor, is leaking vacuum. If the petcock doesn’t open, or only opens a little, when cranking the starter, it will be very hard to start, but once running there is probably enough vacuum to keep it going. The vacuum system on these scooters is very simple, but if it leaks they really don’t run well, or at all.

Your problem is you bought this from a dealer whose mechanics do not understand scooters.

I need a scooter that will run 65 mph rather than struggle to run 50. It ran best at 45.

If you live near Minneapolis, MN I’ll either fix it for you or buy it from you.

Wish I could take you up on your offer. However, I live near Austin, Texas. Too far for me to ride it up to you. Thanks for the offer.

What you really need is a motorcycle.
You want to run highway speeds, buy a motorcycle.

Or a bigger, more expensive scooter, like a Suzuki Burgman.

BC.

No motorcycles for me. I don’t want to shift gears and all that. Sorry but thanks for the thought.
Danielle

I can’t believe it but when I picked the scooter up (they left it outside the fenced area at the dealership because I was going to be late) the little thing that shows it needs oil was red instead of green. And today I called and the guy who did the oil change was not there and was SUPPOSED to call me when he got in. He never called!!!

I am so angry!

Danielle