I have a small bit of news that will add spice to this otherwise predictable collection of words. A few weeks ago I came upon an ad in Craigslist that totally caught my eye. In short a young lady in Pennsylvania had a 2010 Kymco scooter for sale at a price that was just too good to pass up. In 2010 this scooter had a list price of over $2000 and she wanted $300 to get rid of it. The ad stated it had an electrical problem and subsequent discussion revealed that she had it looked at and no one seemed to know what the issue was, but. “Give us enough time and enough money and we'll fix it.”

She wasn't so inclined to throw money down what could have been a bottomless pit and decided to unload it. Now it sits in my garage and I have two things to say about it. The first is, despite its exorbitant price off the showroom floor, I'm not impressed. This Kymco comes from a company in Taiwan that has been hailed as building Japanese quality bikes at reduced prices. In but a few moments of investigation I discovered that this pricey scooter was outsourced from Taiwan to China, the same place my cheap Chinese scooters were built at half its price. Yes, the plastic panels all seem to be made of superior materials but GUESS WHAT? It's broken and worth a whole lot less now. I'm pretty deep into it testing for electrical faults and I'm not seeing anything superior inside. It made my Chinese scooter-faithful heart smile.

The second thing is that I have rounded one fault down to the starter motor. It's not functioning and is expensive, in my mind, to replace. My immediate plan is to open up the faulty unit and see if there's anything I can see that can be cleaned or repaired by me. If I can get that unit to function and start spinning the engine then I can work from there. Given the expense of this scooter, and my overall impulsive nature, I work on it when I have a clear head. This scooter will be resold once it's running as it won't fit in my fleet function and I'm just not enamored of it.

Stay tuned for updates. It will be an interesting story.