Honda Spree and Elite 50 Forums

86 Honda Spree
I picked up a spree recently, it started good, runs, and was in decent shape.
I rode around my neighborhood a bit with no issues, so I took it on a longer ride to see how it would do.
Drove it for about a mile and a half to the gas station to fill it up, made it with no stalls or obvious issues, but it wouldn't start back up.
It starts cold first kick every time.

So here's where it gets interesting. I take it apart and figured it prolly needs some basic maintenance. I put a new spark plug in it and check the air filter, figured it would need a cleaning. Well there's no air filter, that's a problem. So I order a new one and get a new exhaust gasket cuz the old one was toast. I installed both parts and take it for a cruise to my mail box(it's about a 5 minute walk) I leave it running while I get my mail, it stalled out while idling. I've apparently made whatever problem it has worse by installing an air filter and exhaust gasket. It still starts cold no problem. I'm sure the carb may need a tuning and cleaning, but I don't think that will fix the problem. I need some guidance in how to troubleshoot this. Any help would be much appreciated.

Changing all hoses is a good place to start.
Todays gasoline will deteriorate old hoses and reduce the inside diameter, thus creating a fuel starvation issue and introducing debris into the carburetor.
There's literally 100 issues that could be going on.

I'll give that a shot, thanks. It does seem like a lot of things can be the problem, I want to avoid parts swapping as much as I can.

Sounds kind of like a petcock issue. If you are getting gas out of the vacuum side, it will need to be replaced. Could be bystarter not working. Try those. Good luck

Thanks, looks like you can repair pertcocks, and I may just replace the bystarter. Someone else suggested the bystarter and they seem to be kinda cheap.

If the bystarter is not operating properly, and doesn't extend its' needle to shut of the enrichment circuit, the engine will run rich and usually die at idle. This would also make it hard to re-start hot....wide open throttle while starting hot should help a rich condition.
Testing of the bystarter is very simple, and is covered in Wikispreedia.

Sticky petcock gets my vote.