Reply To: 501 "finished" but with issues

Hi Douglas

Nice vid mate, and great looking scoot!  Nice one.

Oh god, yes the fettling to get these old girls going right… have spent many an hour on this, very frustrating at times huh.

As Mike suggested I’d be checking engine timing, and cleanliness of the carb’s innards, as you have.

502’s have a different gear lever to the 501.  502 has a tab protruding through the floor board, whereas the 501 has a spline on the end of the shaft.  Depending how you configure the rest of the levers off the splines and gear change rod, it will affect how you use your foot.  My 501 and 502 changed gears the opposite way around, very confusing when swapping from one to another.  They do have different gear shafts inside the engine too, so not interchangeable, not that I tried.

My 502 is stripped down, but I remember it was 1 down, 3 up (if using my toe).    The 501 was 1 up 3 down.

You may be kicking it straight into 2nd if you it feels like you only have 3 gears.  Have play around and do some adjusting and see how you go, I found it a bit of a balancing act to get right and affect gear changing smoothly.

I agree about the battery needing to be at optimum charge to dynastart the scoot.  I had a 12 amp hr battery on my 501, but got a 14amp hour for the 502 as 12 I felt was not strong enough.  I use a 12 volt battery, not 2 x 6 volts as they were originally, what are you using?

Dynastarting from cold could be a cow, and I think the manual recommends kicking it over a few times before doing it electronically.  You should be able to kick start it reasonably easily once run in, think about 2 – 3 kicks was the most when running well.

Here is the 502 carb setting from the manual:

2429 S 13 Carburettor on the 502/00 to 01 models
Main Jet 109 to Solex
Idling Jet 40 to Solex
Needle position 2nd notch from the top
Pilot air screw slacken by ½ to 1 turn from tight /anticlockwise/