The scooter motor

I think I was about fourteen when dad brought home an old scooter motor. He said it had been sitting around for some years and had no idea if it could be made to run again. It was a little heavy, about thirty pounds or so. It had a single cylinder, and dad showed me, as the flywheel turns it would engage an impulse magneto that would go "CLACK" every other revolution and thirty thousand volts would go to the single spark plug. Really cool old motor.

I carried the motor over to the picnic table and set it on some old cardboard and went about taking it apart to clean and service it. I pulled the spark plug out, took all the sheet metal off, put some oil down into the cylinder and turned the motor over a couple of times. Dad said that it was a good sign that the motor turned over freely.

Dad went off to do something else and left me to keep cleaning the motor up. I chased all the spiders off and started wire brushing the years of paint and rust. I was wire brushing the flywheel, turning it a little, wire brushing it some more, and turning it some more. You know how Levis have those brass buttons on the front fly? The spark plug wire was off the spark plug and hanging down loose. As I turned the flywheel and the impulse magneto went "CLACK" thirty thousand volts went from the spark plug wire, to the brass button on the front of my Levis. My life flashed before me. It was a short life, and so far had been filled with fun. I think I saw God that day.

Dad heard me yell, as did the rest of 8th street. He came running and found me standing there holding the wire brush and wondering, what just happened! And am I going to live. How do you tell your dad that you just electrocuted your privates. It took dad some time to stop laughing. He was almost crying he was laughing so hard. He explained something about low amps and high volts or something like that. I did recover and learned the term (walk it off).

I had the old scooter motor running in a few days, and started gathering parts and pieces for the building of a go cart. On a very limited budget I had to make do with what I could gather. Old pieces of tubing from the rail yard scrap pile, an old mercury car steering box from the machine shop around the corner, and dad found some wheels, sprockets and chain. I could do all the welding at the shop at my high school.

When it was all together and running I was ready to try it out. I pushed it to the huge open paved lot alongside the Webster street that goes through the Posey tube. I think it was Bob Perata that was with me, pushing to get the motor fired up. Once it started I found out that it was geared a little to high. The motor started going chug, chug, chug, trying to gain R.P.M. As the speed increased the motor started smoothing out and off I went. The pavement was un-even and a little rough. The seat I was sitting on was just sheet metal welded to the underside of the tubing. This was the first weld that failed. Just the back part of the seat dropped to the pavement. I had a quick lesson about metal scrapping on pavement. It produces heat. Lots of heat!

I let off the throttle and started slowing down, but I wasn't slowing down quick enough. By the way I hadn't put any brakes on this thing yet. I thought I would add them some time later. I held myself up off the seat until I came to a stop. We found a piece of plywood to sit on and ran around until we ran out of gas. Another good day. No one got hurt, and with a little welding and a gear change, and just maybe a brake of some kind, we would be back at it again soon. Boy do I love building stuff and making things run. I know now that learning these things as a young boy set my course in life. I have been fixing stuff for as long as I can remember. "Thanks Dad for taking that time with me when I needed it most".