Aero broke down

[Aero Fifty]

Well my girlfriends 85 Aero 50 broke down yesterday. She said it made a loud noise and lost all power and eventually shut off. I was out of town and took it home in a truck this morning. I did manage to get it started but it definitely wasn't running right and had no power. I'm gonna tear it down tonight and hope for the best.

It the piston/bore is trashed I might giving her my Aero's top end and get myself a polini.

If its damaged any more than that I may be looking for a replacement engine. Anyone got a running aero/elite engine for sale?

[monkeywrench]

reminds me of my friends chinese 2 stroke bike. the pump went and the cylinder was trashed.

[Wheelman-111]

Greetings:

This behavior could be the result of a reed valve failure. Hope that's all it is.

I'd recommend you start with pulling and examining the spark plug. While it's out, perform a compression test with the $8.00 Harbor Freight gauge and look for numbers north of 100. If you have compression, put in a new plug on principle and try it out. If it runs well, stop rat thay-yer. You'll have spent about an hour and ~$15.

Otherwise, check the reed block next. If that's OK, hunt for an electrical Gremlin. MouseWheels' your man for that advice.

PS: This is a Technical Help post...

[Aero Fifty]

Thanks Wheelman I was thinking it might be bad reeds too. I'm gonna pick up a compression tester tonight and a new plug and see where that gets me.

[Aero Fifty]

So last night I went out to the garage and took the Aero's side covers off expecting to get my hands dirty... Turns out the spark plug wire worked its way off the plug so I just pressed it back on.

Wow what a relief! But I did notice the plug wire doesn't grip the spark plug it just kinda sits on top. So I think I need a new wire or at least a new cap.

I actually enjoy working on these old 2-strokes and in the back of my mind a little upset that within 5 mins I had it up and running again

[Fishman43]

Well at least you can put in that new SP and check the old one for mixture ring color

[adark248]

take this as a opportunity to get one of those "high performace" spark cables because they're all yellow and red and they look purty

[DandyDan]

And those aftermarket ones provide 400x the electrical juice....which strangely corresponds to a 0% increase in power.

[808BMW]

You can replace the cap, it screws right off.