Resurrecting a 1971 Suzuki F50 Scooter
Revisiting the past & a 2 stroke Love Affair
This old scooter has been in one of our sheds for a couple of years... it was running prior to that, but got parked and slipped off the "to-fix" list...
Last weekend, it fell over and blocked the somewhat congested walkway to the lawnmower, so I decided to wheel it out and tinker rather than cut the grass.
I don't particularly care for the side access to the carb, but as I'm not employed by Suzuki Corp, nor about to cast a new engine (to rectify the intake manifold placement) I'll live with it.
This is my third and most complete tear-down of the tiny Mikuni Carburetor.
On each successive dis-assembly even more varnish like grunge is exposed and cleaned.
Finally the bike starts on the first kick (once warmed-up) and has ample power to lift the front wheel.
At 41 I still have that child like fascination with noisy mechanical modes of transport...
Much like the Kyoto accord, what ever carbon savings from the conversion of the our fishing boat to electric will now be off-set by an equal or even possibly greater output from this unit to take it's place,,,
Just doing my part to keep the universe in balance.
Obviously my penchant for losing skin goes back quite a way as the kids dug out this picture of me at age 14 with my most prized 1974 Honda 125 MT Elsinore trail bike.
That set of wheels lasted me right through to the end of high school but had to be sold as I ran short of funds my second year of college.
Once done school I resolved to replace the MT125 with a set of wheels that could really take me places...
And here I'm on the Blue Ridge Parkway aside my 78 Honda 750 CB Custom... I would have to guess that I'm no more than 22 on that trip as the bike was sold to pay for my wife's engagement ring...
As it turns out I still have that wife today, and doubt that the bike is still running.
Again the 750 but now by a beach on Cape Hatteras NC.
Though I didn't know it at the time, but a tropical storm warning was just being issued and the Cape was busy digging in for a major blast of weather... I was just heading out to try surfing...
72 hours later I was still riding back to Canada in the rain that started that night...
Note to Canadians, a tropical storm is not a gentle warm rain...
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