RIP Breezy

Breezy bit the dust! And she was so pretty and so cool-looking too. But she bit the dust and now she is gone on to a new home where she will be used for parts.

What happened is that she sat too long unused before I bought her last year, fourteen years, more or less.

She had been used by her previous owner as a “camping scooter”. She had mostly traveled on the back of an RV and then was ridden around a campground. Off and on with years of idleness in between.

When I bought her at the dealer they said they had cleaned her carburetor, swapped out her gas tank. She ran fine all summer.

Then end of summer she stalled out on me while pulling away from a light. It was a scary experience, but I was able to roll her out of traffic and onto the side of the road where I walked her home two miles.

Such fun!

She would not throttle from idling on the center stand. I consulted every scooter shop in town and spent a lot of time investigating her issues on-line and with experts on scooter forums.

The theory was that once she was ridden, all that internal gunk that had coated her innards started sloughing off. So with that I ran Sea Foam through her in an effort to clean her out. This took up most of the time from the date of my last ride until I put her up on the tender for winter.

As I went through this process I was able to gun the throttle and blow off lots of exhaust smoke. I was told that this was an indication that the gunk was burning off and was a good sign. Yippee!

It got to where I could eventually throttle her and I began to ride her around the storage unit weekly throughout the winter. It became start up, clean, idle, throttle, ride, idle. I figured by the end of winter she would be good to go.

It didn’t happen. In fact, she went back to no throttle at all. Stall, stall, stall.

When I added up the cost of having her picked up and transported to the dealer, plus having her worked on, it came to about half her value. Not worth it.

I thought about buying a service manual and tackling the job myself, but lacked confidence and feared that worse would happen. So I put her up on Craigslist and sold her at a discount and got a buyer within 24 hours.

He knew how to fix and service Honda’s GY6 engine. I did not and could not justify that big money to do so.

I’m not sad, just scooter less again. I will be ok.

I have learned my lesson about buying that old of a used scooter, even if from a dealer. Even though she was kept indoors and was serviced by a Honda power sports dealership, old is old and crap builds up after that long.

Moral of the story: my next scooter will be new, under warranty and I am saving up for a new Ruckus.

Yes, going back to my roots. It may take me all summer to get one, but so be it.

I’ve got the patience of Job.

And in the meantime I am going to ride my bike to the grocery, hike, and get my fitness level back up.

Then one day I will take a taxi over and pick up my black Ruckus and ride her home.

A girl can dream…

Moral of the story: don't buy used, even from a dealership, if it's an older scooter with low mileage.