Scooter will only start with kick start. New battery?

scootman57 · Post by **scootman57** » Sun Aug 14, 2016 10:13 pm

My 50cc taotao scooter was working fine until about a week ago. One day it just wouldn't start and the engine stopped turning over. I tightened the plus side portion of the battery as that was loose and I think activating the kill switch. After that the engine started to turn over a little but only for a few seconds. Now the engine won't turn over at all and the only way I can start the scooter is by kick start. I charged the battery up and tried to start it using the electrical start and the engine wouldn't turn over. I was thinking about buying a new battery but am not sure if that is truly the problem.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

viney266 · Post by **viney266** » Mon Aug 15, 2016 4:16 am

New battery. Its the easiest way to go, and not too expensive. I would do that first.

cummingsjc · Post by **cummingsjc** » Mon Aug 15, 2016 12:09 pm

Part of the problem is that you have a Tao Tao...

How old is your battery? Before buying a new battery and hoping that fixes the problem, you need to test your current battery with a multimeter. The values it has when the scooter is off, when the scooter is running at idle, and when the scooter is running with throttle will properly help diagnosis the root cause of your issue. Also, you may have a parasitic drain from something on your bike pulling power away from your battery when it is not running. If your bike has a real problem, buying a new battery is not a fix but wasted money.

A couple of things pop into mind about potential causes. It could be a bad stator not creating enough power to recharge your battery, a bad voltage regulator letting go too much power through to your battery causing damage. Or something that we used to see a lot in the past was folks that really only used their scooters for super-short trips where the battery draw from starting the scooter with the electric start was never fully replaced during the half miles trips the scooter was ridden.

ucandoit · Post by **ucandoit** » Mon Aug 15, 2016 4:34 pm

Try simply shining up the neg. and positive connections of the battery and wire leads with a piece of sandpaper. Disconnect the neg. first, then the pos.

cummingsjc · Post by **cummingsjc** » Mon Aug 15, 2016 4:46 pm

ucandoit wrote:Try simply shining up the neg. and positive connections of the battery and wire leads with a piece of sandpaper. Disconnect the neg. first, then the pos.

+1! Sometimes the simplest things are the first place to start.

scootman57 · Post by **scootman57** » Mon Aug 15, 2016 8:34 pm

I neglected to mention this before but I think the + terminal was partially corroded as when I first started having problems I had to spray it with a lot of WD-40 in order to just loosen the connection.

This is why I am assuming the battery may be faulty and not holding a charge. I used an external charger to charge it and still no turn over in the engine. I do only have short rides on my scooter though so it is possible it isn't getting much time to recharge.

However, I have had this battery and scooter for a year and been traveling the same distance all year. The problem just seemed to start after about a year. I'm just thinking this cheap japanese battery in the scooter is not holding up.

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