Esta has had a rough month. Tuesday morning on the way to work I was nearly blindsided by a delivery truck. This forced me to brake hard. I hit a pothole (there are far too many of those in this city) and lost my balance. The scooter went down on its right side (although gently this time, so no body damage). The truck did stop and they came to ask if I was okay. I was fine, but my scooter was having troubles starting.
I've been reading that it's a common problem with ET4s and LXs (same engine) that when someone overfills the gas tank or, in my case, lays the scooter on its side, gas can get into the emissions system, air filter, and even flood the carburetor. Symptoms include difficult starting, the scooter running rough, and a mixture of gas and oil coming out of the air intake and spilling on to the engine case.
My scooter had all these problems. I managed to start it up and I got a few blocks down, but at a stop my engine stalled. I pushed it onto a sidewalk and tried to start it up again with great difficulty. Luckily, I managed to get it going well enough to get me to work. I had read
a helpful article about this very problem and had disconnected my EVAP hose which might have been what helped my scooter to eventually run.
I parked the scooter in my work's parking lot and proceeded with my work day, hoping that the excess gas would evaporate throughout the day. After work I tried to get my scooter running again and had the same issues with starting.
While using the electric start, I opened the throttle up, but still got nothing. If this happens to you, DO NOT OPEN THE THROTTLE. After a series of failures, I called up my friend Sean, the mechanic at Vespa Santa Monica and he told me a couple of other things I could try but warned against opening the throttle. Oops. The reason being that this could potentially flood the carburetor.
After talking to Sean, I tried some of the things he suggested, but nothing worked. My scooter was quite flooded and soon I was standing in a puddle of gas and oil that had streamed out of the air intake. To compound the problem, my battery was finally dying from running the starter repeatedly. (Let me also add here that the kickstand is pretty much worthless.) Called up Sean again and he said to just bring it in the next day and he'd take a look at it. I left the scooter chained to a bike rack and had a roommate come pick me up.
The next day, I took the day off of work to take care of this problem. I took the bus to work since that's where my scooter was, which was a hellish ordeal in itself (waited an hour for a bus that never came before I decided to try a different route). In the parking lot, I called up Vespa's 24 hour roadside assistance and they sent over a tow truck (which came an hour later than expected - a two and a half hour wait total, argh). The trip in the truck lasted nearly another hour (ah, Los Angeles traffic - how I DO NOT miss you), until finally we arrived at Vespa Santa Monica.
Once there, it was a total relief. I can't express how grateful I am to Sean for helping me out. He had a list of scheduled appointments and was pretty busy, but he was still willing to see my bike. The first thing he did was switch out the battery to see if the starter motor could get the thing working now - no go. He performed a number of other tests to see what the problem was and found that the issue was with the carburetor. He took it apart and cleaned it out, although he noticed the floats weren't functioning correctly. Otherwise, everything looked good. He reinstalled the carb, but still no go. Rather than tinker with that faulty carb, in the end he just switched it out with one off of a new LX that had faulty seals and was going to be warrantied anyways. Problem solved.
I rode Esta home with no problems and she's been starting up as usual since. Hopefully this'll be the last scooter headache for a while.
I have to thank Sean again for his awesome help. He knows his shit and it's clear that he's all about supporting fellow scooterist. I owe him a beer on Sunday, when everyone's meeting up for the Westside Scooter Club ride - though if we weren't going to be operating motor vehicles I'd probably bring him a twelve pack.
