Buddy 50 trouble starting

[COBuddy]

My Buddy 50 is a few years old, about 10k miles, garaged, I ride it a few times a week 18 miles round trip to and from work.

I had left it for a long duration over last winter, forgot to throw it on the trickle charger, and when I went to fire it up...nothing. Learned my lesson, replaced the battery and the spark plug, and now I keep it on a trickle charger, and it fires up fine when I leave for work in the morning and it's been garaged. BUT when I ride it to work and leave it on the sidewalk all day, I have trouble starting it back up when I want to head home.

The battery seems fine, as the tail light is bright, no flickering, but it won't catch when I hit the ignition button. It's trying, but it just won't start. Even if I try and kick start it has issues. At first, it would just take a few times of regular ignition to get it going, but now that won't work. Now, for about the past week, I've been able to eventually get it going but only after extensive kick starting. Today it really seemed like it wouldn't start at all, but after about 5 minutes, it finally did. What's going on here? When it finally does start, it's as bit rough and seems sluggish to take off.

Anything else I should replace/rebuild? Carburetor? Thanks in advance!!

[RickyDragon]

When was the last time you changed the air filter?
I would put a little bit of seafoam with your next fill up.

[cummingsjc]

How many miles is your average trip to work? Oftentimes, if you are only riding a short distance the battery doesn't have time to fully recharge (if you keep it on a trickle charger this should be less of an issue; however).

You may have a bad battery or a parasitic drain. Do you have a multimeter that you can use to test the battery voltage at idle and while under load? That should tell you if you have a bad cell in your battery or if something in your electrical system (stator (not charging enough) or voltage regulator (over-charging) has gone bad.

[COBuddy]

Thanks for the suggestions. I did also replace the air filter a day after posting, it seems to have helped, but only marginally. One start-up was sluggish, it took about 3 minutes to get it to start (not on the trickle charger and it was about 45 degrees out), but the other start-up took only two tries (not on the charger, but it was sitting in the sun). I think I'll have to wait another week to find out if the air filter made a real difference.

My one-way trip is 8 miles. Regarding your suggestion about the battery, I always park it on trickle charger when I get home, and I just replaced the battery a month or two ago (it's been on the trickle charger consistently since purchase).

I'll check the charge in the battery with a meter this weekend. Thanks again!

[Mikestib1]

If you didn't use fuel stabilizer when you stored it, my guess is the lousy fuel we get these days has partly clogged the pilot jet. May be time to clean the carburetor

[Mikestib1]

You need a reading of 12.8 or higher DC volts.

[COBuddy]

Ok, so it looks like it's not a battery issue but a fuel issue. I had no issues on the voltage, and no parasitic drain. I'm going to clean out the carburetor this weekend and see how things look next week. Thanks!

[COBuddy]

*sigh*
So it was at a point where it wasn't starting at all. The ignition clicked on just fine, plenty of juice, but it wouldn't take.

I cleaned out the carb and jets, replaced the oil (I ran out of the good stuff and used the el-cheapo oil an pinch, I think that was a bad idea).

Now, it's starting up (relatively) well and I can ride it just fine so long as I don't have to stop, because it dies when idling. I'm about to give up and call the mechanic.

Any last words of wisdom?

[cummingsjc]

Do you know how to adjust the idle screw so that the scooter might idle a bit faster?

[COBuddy]

Hah, I was going to try and post here before anyone wasted their virtual breath to respond, because the same dawned on me soon after I posted. I had messed with the idle screw when I cleaned the carburetor, and so I had a smack to the forehead moment.

Played around with set screw and it seems fine now, we'll see this week if cleaning the carb and changing the oil did the trick. Thank you all!

[cummingsjc]

Hah, I was going to try and post here before anyone wasted their virtual breath to respond, because the same dawned on me soon after I posted. I had messed with the idle screw when I cleaned the carburetor, and so I had a smack to the forehead moment.

Played around with set screw and it seems fine now, we'll see this week if cleaning the carb and changing the oil did the trick. Thank you all!

Lots of times setting the idle properly is a bit of fine tuning it over the course of a ride or two. My Black Cat is a bit finicky and sometimes seems like it is set properly and then will die at a stop sign (and I have to tweak it). This seems to be the issue after it has been carried on the carrier on the back of my Suburban (the topic was covered in a recent post about carrying scooters on a hitch carrier).

Best thing you can probably do for your Buddy would be to set the idle correctly and then take it on a long ride to help burn any bad gas or oil out of the engine. Just make sure you have a backup plan in case the scooter decides to stop working miles from home.

[COBuddy]

Thanks cummingsjc! I think we have lift off! I had messed with the idle screw so that it seemed fine and rode it around a local park a few times (I'm sure the people in the park thought I was lost). I had been having some pretty heavy smoke as well, and I think that was due to the cheapo 2 stroke oil I had put in there.

After swapping the oil with better stuff, cleaning the carb, and messing with the idle screw, the scooter is purring like a kitten and starting up without hesitation. So far so good!

Thanks again to everyone for all of your time, tips, and insight, this is a great forum with great people!