The Honda PCX / Forza / ADV150 / SH Forums

Anyone who read my thread on the other forum will know I managed to secure a 2004 plate Sym Jet 100 Euro X for £150. It shall be known from today as Project "Ratty"

Specifications:
Engine and transmission: 100cc 2 stroke CVT
Brakes: Disc front, Drum Rear
Suspension: Sort of!
Wheels: 12" (tyres 120/70 f & r)
Condition: Considering it's been sat for 4 years in a damp shed - what would you expect?
Needs a lot of TLC to pass an MOT. Todays itinerary was: remove dead battery, remove rear wheel to take knackered tyre (1 inch screw through centre tread! ) remove smashed number plate, remove faded torn dead "L" plates. After this I decided a trip to the local bike salvage (grave)yard was called for. After spending a good hour wandering between row upon row of dead or dying scooters and bikes I found what I was after. A brand new tyre still with part of the manufacturers sticker on http://www.bits4motorbikes.co.uk/Tyres/ ... ?TryeID=43, best bit was I got it for £15!, plus got a new battery(£25) while I was there. Going to my local motor factors for the new plate tomorrow, that'll cost me a further £11. so all in all it should be on the road for £201.

Oh and it's only got 5000km on the clock from new.

All I then need to do is strip it down and clean it up properly as I go.

I'll post some pictures up once I take som decent ones and will update as I go.

(Maddie if this is in wrong place feel free to place in it's correct spot. )

looking forward to seeing some pictures!

I can move it to the other bikes forum or the gallery forum if you want, but I'm not going to be a neonazi about what goes where.

Looking forward to the pics too, you got a killer deal on the bike. £201 is the cheapest I've ever heard someone getting a decent, working scooter for... It does work, right?

Before messing my shoulder up on monday I managed to get her up and running - complete with vast white cloud for 15 minutes!
It still had 2 stroke in it when it was stored - it had all run into the carb and engine and had accumulated over the 4 years it was sat. So when she fired into life it dumped the whole lot out of the exhaust. made a very effective smokescreen
All I needed to do was connect the new charged battery up and fire her up, she spluttered twice and then started cleanly, both from the electric and kick start.

Turns out I need a new front tyre as well, it only holds air for a few minutes and then is flat - on closer inspection it looked like it had a puncture repaired a while back. Only other faults i've found so far are a broken light switch - running lights work but the main lights only work on dipped beams - new switch will only cost me £3 so I'm on target to get it on the road, taxed, tested and insured for less than £300 .

So as I soon as I feel up to it I'll be taking a trip to the salvage yard for another Tyre, get them both fitted and then strip the Carb out, clean it up and get it running properly.

Really cool that you can fix it up so quickly. Post pictures when you can, and that goes for Maddiedog too! I want to see what his Buddy 125 looks like all fixed up.

Now my shoulder is a bit better I've been able to sort "ratty" out properly.

Me and my best mate decided to strip it down completely for a proper rebuild. Off came the plastics (7 screws missing) seat came off along with storage unit. Exhaust off next, shock absorber off, Back wheel off, front wheel off. then we lifted the whole thing onto my work bench, then we took the carb off and airbox - what a complete mess, the bowl of the carb was full of black crap!, the jets were clogged up with resin and muck, the petrol tank even had bits of grass in it!
we dropped the bar set off and pulled the forks off. I've been really lucky as nothing major is wrong with it at all, it just needed a damn good clean up. We've been putting it back together over the last couple of days and it doesn't look cosmetically any different apart from the £8 Scooter screen I fitted and being much cleaner. It does however run a hell of a lot smoother and revs cleanly.

While the wheels were off the had a damn good clean up and the winter tyres I got were slapped on.
It is now booked in for it's MOT on Saturday and after that should be on the road by Monday or Tuesday next week. Grand total for everything on the road including MOt, Tax and insurance - £350

I'll post some pictures at the weekend if the weather holds up.

I still am in disbelief how good of a deal you got on this...

How is the scooter cosmetically? any major damage?

Cosmetically it's had a home respray - badly with cans on the blue sections, but it's plastic and won't rust so it's being left until the spring then I'll get the compressor out and do it properly.
There was one lug on the seat side panel that had cracked off but some Plastic welding rod, a blow torch and a paper clip sorted it out pretty easily.

The original owner had hidden the scratches on the plastics by applying "tasteful" checquered flag vinyl .
Half an hour with a stanley knife blade and some WD40 removed them.

The panels have about half a dozen deep scratches and the bottom running board panel on the left side has been replaced(hence the respray), some T-cut and elbow grease removed most of the other scratches and I'm considering getting silver paint and carefully flooding the deep scratches on the silver to hide them.
Apart from that she's a runner and should pass an MOT with ease. I even fitted a Pirelli SL60 on the back and a Sava Monsun on the front for the winter weather.


The reason I got a good deal on it is I bought it from my brother in laws younger brother - who also happens to be my parents next door neighbour. He off on a 4 week holiday to India at the beginning of December and wanted some extra cash, as the SYM had been sitting for 4 years when I offered him £150 he nearly snapped my hand off

The first scooter I ever bought was a Honda Metropolitan, and the previous owner had used similar tactics to cover scratches. They had coated the scooter with glue-coated newspaper. The whole thing looked like paper mache. As if that was bad enough, elmer's glue (water-based, cheap elementary school glue) was used, which is not waterproof at all. Every time it rained, the whole bike was sticky. It was nasty.

What color are you planning on painting it in the spring?

I'm thinking of updating the colour scheme to the latest SYM jet Colours - Pearl White with solid Royal Blue and then making some graphics up by hand to make it look like this one.

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=sym+je ... x=42&ty=63

Hopefully shouldn't be too much work? (fingers crossed)

There's only one colour for an old ratter... matt black.

Matt Black - I am no Chav thank you very much

I think I'm just going to leave it as it is and when the respray happens paint it back the colours it should be so it looks original.

Anyways it went in for its MOT this morning at 9am. One advisory - on the way there we stuck in the back of my mates van and strapped it up, it shifted slightly and pressed the exhaust against the van side - in the process it snapped an exhaust bracket bolt and as there are 3 on the bracket it was okay.

By 11.30 it was Insured and Taxed. Took it out for a quick run after lunch once I had pumped the tyres up to pressure it was running fine.

It is managing a comfortable 40mph which is perfectly fine for me to get to and from work during the winter months and keeping the PCX mileage down in the process.

I'm going to take some photos tomorrow, so I'll post them up as soon as I can.

Well,

A couple of small developments with Ratty.

The front tyre isn't holding air properly overnight it drops from 36psi to 8

There isn't a puncture in the tyre and the valve is fine so the only conclusion I can think of is the rim and tyre aren't perfectly sealed and air is bleeding out slowly from there. I'm going to try some sealant in the tyre tomorrow to ride it in to work and if that doesn't work I'm carrying some Emergency tyre repair/inflator foam to get me home.

The other more worrying development happened when I took the silencer off to check how badly coked up it was. The original owner had fitted a Technigas exhaust and had used liberal amounts of exhaust paste to make it seal properly - the result of this was it had pushed inside the silencer when tightened and had effectively restricted the pipe from 24mm diameter down to 6mm .
The overall effect of this "restrictor" had dropped the top speed to 35-40mph. Knocking all the crud out with a screwdriver and file now allows it reach 45mph easily.
Also the exhaust is quite badly coked up so will need some oxy/acetyline to heat it up and then the blow gun to purge it out - it should produce a nice big cloud of Black smoke when I do it

(Maddie - do you think this needs to be in the other bikes section?)

Sure, I'll move it.

I am going to try and post some photos of Ratty today as it isn't raining or horribly cold today.

Also going to try and remove the exhaust and see if it is as badly coked as it seems. It may also need de-restricting as apparently Technigas exhausts are usually "washered up" to passed Euro regs. If it is I'll also need to sort out an upjet to get it to run properly again.

As you can see from the photos it's not in the best shape cosmetically wise but from a mechanical and mileage point of view it's spot on.

I had the exhaust to bits just before the photos - someone had packed in loads of rockwool far too tightly making the silencer more like a through pipe - That hasn't been helping with the noise or proper gas flow. Took over half of it out and repacked the remaining loosely so it actually works. Now all I need to do is clean it up properly and give it a few coats of VHT paint (matt black).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/62993831@N06/6659332207/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62993831@N06/6659342499/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62993831@N06/6659339737/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62993831@N06/6659335069/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62993831@N06/6659328635/

Rustolem makes a really good truck bedliner paint that looks great and is flat black.

Glad to finally see pictures.

I would love to paint the plastics with Bed Liner but it's pretty much a specialist coating and impossible to find in the UK for less than £25 for a small aerosol.

^ That's the stuff I used, it's about $7 a can over here from the hardware store. Give the bike a good wash, making sure to rinse an extra time to get all the soap off. Then, mask off anything you don't want painted and paint with the stuff. Two cans should give you more than enough coverage for ratty.

Well Ratty is going up for sale as soon as possible, going to be cheeky and ask £550 for her as she has had some work been tidied up and serviced and will sell with 10 months Tax and Test on, especially with only 3056 miles on her!