How to Fix the Starter switch on a Sunny Scooterby Michael J. RanckCopyright © February 11, 2011 The craze of inexpensive poorly made Chinese Scooters seems to be sweeping America due to the rising fuel prices and concerns about the environmental impact of increased fossil fuel consumption. Like so many I have fallen prey to the impulse to go out and buy a scooter without doing the proper product investigation and so have been the victim of numerous headaches. Included among those headaches has been a broken starter switch. The starter switch popped off one day as I was getting the scooter out of its home in the shed. Because the tiny spring inside the switch was lost, when I popped the switch back in it would not longer disengage the starter automatically. This of course burned my starter up very quickly. Since it is technically my fault for running the scooter in disrepair and for clumsily knocking off the switch during storage, it would not have been right for me to expect it to be covered under the warranty. So from a combination of my own carelessness and the shabby design, I am stuck with kick starting my scooter from now on unless I purchase and install a new starter. All of this could have been remedied if I had thought of my idea sooner. Eventually, and too late for my starter, I discovered a means of replacing the spring. To do this: I simply popped the switch back off, removed the spring from a ballpoint pen, cut the spring to size, inserted the spring while being careful not to short the switch, and pushed the plastic switch back into position. It has worked very well and if I had known about this sooner, as you do now, I could could have saved myself a starter. |