Scooter won't start up, any ideas?
 

Hey,

Back in 2001, my dad bought a Derbi Atlantis scooter. He drove it home and parked it in the garage. That was the last time it was ever used. The thing only has 12 miles on it.

This week, I tried to fix it up and it won't start at all. I flushed the brake fluid, got a new battery, drained and filled the oil, pumped some fresh gasoline in, and changed out the spark plug. When I pulled the old plug out, it was covered in carbon :confused: The oil (yellowish gear oil) I drained had a little weird black stuff in it.

When I try the electric starter, I hear nothing. The kick starter yeilds nothing. I check the spark plug after my attempts and there is gasoline on it so I'm assuming gas is getting into the cylinder. I try to kick start it with the plug out and I see no spark from the spark plug. The one fuse on the bike is fine and all the electronics work fine too.
What could it be? I'm kinda lost as to what is wrong. I'm use to a fuel injected car giving me an error code as to what's wrong. This is a 2-stroke carburated motor.

Thanks,
Robert

If the gas was not all burned, or drained, when it was parked you have old, sticky, gasoline residue somewhere in the system. You need to get that cleaned out first. It took me a whole day to get my SeaDoo to start after I let it sit for two years with old gas in it.

I'm not much of a two stroke guy but the SeaDoo is two stroke. A gas covered plug will generally not fire, and it's even harder to fire it under compression in the bike. I put some carb cleaner in the tank with the gas, then turned it over a few times, took the plug out, dried it, put it back in, turned it over a few times, took the plug out and dried it, put it back in, turned it over a few times, again and again until it finally fired up.

You'll probably get better help from some of the two stroke guys on here but this, eventually, worked for me.

Dry the plug off well, or better yet, get a couple of new plugs, and see if you have spark with the plug out and grounded well. If you have spark you will eventually get it to fire in the bike.

Try replacing your spark plug. Drain all gas and put in fresh gas. Add about 1 capfull of gas treatment (stp, etc. ) to the fresh gas. Spray the air filter with a shot of starting fluid. The starting fluid should help it fire and the gas treatment will help clean the gunk out as it runs.

Obviously not having spark is going to be the big issue, I assume the electric starter worked when you dad brought it home as did the ignition so I'd start looking for electrical troubles that would affect either or both the starter and ignition.

Here is a place where you might find some answers very easily:

http://www.scooterbbs.com/

All things scooter, classic and new.

thanks for the tips guys.
I've fixed everything up, but I'm still not getting any spark.
I used my volt-meter to check the cable that connects to the spark plug and used the battery ground. When I use the kick start to crank the engine, electricity is coming out of the wire, but only about 12volts I think. Is this normal? I thought alot of electricity is needed to to start a spark plug? Is there anyways to test that enough electricity is getting to the plug? Should I buy another plug to try it too? This is a new plug though.

-Robert

Hmm. By "cable" do you mean the wire that actually connects to the plug? You should just check it for continuity, and it should have some resistance. If there is no resistance at all you may need a new plug wire. A mouse or something may have gotten to the cable.

What you want to check is that 12 volts are getting to the coil, the thing that the other end of the cable connects to. Wires should be going from the coil to the points or an ignition box of some kind.

You also need to find either the points, or the electronic ignition box. Either one will need 12 volts to operate correctly. If you have an electronic ignition box and 12 volts are getting to it you may need to have the electronics of the box tested. That part is beyond me. If you have points it should be a simple matter of checking for 12 volts across the points when they are open.

Almost any old plug will fire if it is out of the engine and you have the part with the threads grounded well. Some folks think that the plug will fire just hanging out in the air, but the metal outside of the plug needs to be grounded to the engine or it will not spark.

By the way, the minimum voltage to fire a plug is around 20,000 volts or so. Let us know what you find and we can go from there.

I was on scooterbbs and somethine else came to my attention. There is a switch on the right handle bar which might be the kill switch. I always thought it was the headlamp switch, but I'll give it a try when I get home tonight. I think I've just been owned by a little switch. :lol:

-Robert

Wouldn't be the first time I've seen something like that...Also NEVER connect a standard volt-meter to a spark plug wire to check for voltage, if voltage does come out you can kiss the meter good-bye and possibly get treated to some of that 20kV or more (which would not be a good thing--read possible serious/fatal injury)

It ending up being the kill switch. I feel really dumb for not trying it at all. The scooter works great and is much more convienient then driving my car 1 mile to the train station then finding a local parking spot.

Thanks
Robert

Sweet! Welcome to the world of scooters!

Cool! Glad it worked out for you.