As this season wears on certain tasks must be performed as part of routine maintenance of the machines. I finally got up the nerve to take care of one this week and the results were quite gratifying. A year ago or so I returned Lazarus, the 150cc scooter, to life by replacing the cylinder head with an inexpensive replacement. That made the engine brand new in that area which requires a periodic check of the arms that open the valves in the engine. Since this was a bargain part I was expecting to have to do a lot of adjustments to return the parts to proper specifications. Now without getting too technical the parts have a tendency normally to get tighter in the first thousand miles. When I finally dug into the scooter to get to them I was pleasantly surprised to discover that only one of the two had gotten marginally tighter while the other side had stayed where I set it a year ago. Not too shabby for a bargain priced cylinder head.
I used all three of the Chinese bikes this past week for commuting, errands and grocery procurement. The high mileage winner was Galileo, the big scooter, with 188 miles over the week. The other two members of the fleet made shorter trips but added another 40 miles or thereabouts to the mileage total.
A two hundred mile week is pretty good and, as always, the savings in fuel is quite remarkable. I am also happy to have Cheap Chinese Scooters (CCS) that are always available for duty. It feels like I'm riding for free sometimes with such splendid fuel mileage from such inexpensive vehicles. By the way. I know it's a little long but I wanted to video my vehicles for anyone out there who wondered what they look like. I think it's always better to see the characters in a story so one has an image of the bikes in mind when I ramble on about something the bikes did.