Downtime

I realize that I haven't posted in a while and I apologize. My ribs still hurt pretty bad and only this week have I gotten back to riding. The weather has been so perfect for riding it has been driving me nuts. Getting to and from work has been a real pain since I hurt myself and so at least I can ride in now. Im not really up for any casual/fun riding yet though until I heal some more. Hopefully the scooter will be back by the time I am feeling better. Although I really think I could have been riding the scooter much earlier since it is automatic which probably wouldn't hurt as much as clutching the bike in the city traffic. The scooter should be at PSF now although I have not heard from them in a while. Until then I may be a little slow on the blog but do hope to be back up and running again soon. Next weekend (assuming I am up for it) I plan to ride out with the SBN riders to the Clutch Control 2007 'stunt' show at the Valley Forge Convention Center. I know that there will probably be few if any scooters there but I will post up if I do make it with some pictures anyways. This event will host the first ever amateur womens stunt competition so should be pretty sexy and exciting. More to come....

Today was the day to be riding a scooter

Unfortunately I am unable to ride at the moment. I slipped and fell on some stairs and cracked my ribs. It is extremely uncomfortable but is ok as long as I don't move around too much. I think right now the bike would just be too much for me to handle and could get away from me. Hopefully though I may have my scooter back this weekend as I finally heard from the dealer after three weeks hiatus.

It was however such a beautiful day. As I sat outside this morning I saw a whole lot of scooters passing by. I had to catch a ride into work though. Today happened to be the first day of classes for many schools and traffic was really bad. To add to this there is a taxi strike in New York and Philadelphia. Although not having as many crazy cabby's on the road was nice.

In addition to above mentioned reasons for it being such a great day to scoot was all the action going around in the neighborhood. I had one neighbor moving out with two large trucks at one end of the street. On the other end was a work crew with three trucks blocking the road as well. Then after finally maneuvering out I discover they are filming a movie just around the corner. Rumor has it is Happenings by starring Mark Walberg.

Here are a couple of not so great pictures of the action:

Bad News about bad scooters

This was recently posted online. It appears that Power Sports Factory has lost one of their first and best dealers in the US. Paul aka Sporty at MotoVento has called it quits. He has decided to no longer sell the Strada or Vento brand scooters. Also in jeopardy is the Chinese Scooter board on Yahoo which he has maintained for the past several years. Sporty is a long time scooter mechanic and has been around since the beginning with Chinese scooters sharing helpful information online. This is certainly discouraging news but I hope that he will stay around on some of the other forums at least. I know he's still got a garage full of scoots and a lot of valuable knowledge.

Repost:

"I just found out my 2003 Vento Phantom with 5000 miles dropped a valve, I did the motoman break-in and sold it with 2000 miles on it, The belt lasted longer than the motor with all oils Mobil 1 synthetic. I'm forming a opinion that the Chinese 4 stroke motors have a long way to go before I will buy another. With all the other people that have had valve train failures I can not sell scooters that last such a short time. Rubber that falls apart in months is another issue. Intake hoses, Fuel lines are easy to deal with, Fork seals, Engine mount bushings and brake seals are the stuff that scares the crap out of me now that I have been around these scooter for 4 years.

On the other hand my 2001 Malaguti F-12 Phantom water cooled Foggy 50cc 2 stroke replica all the rubber is fine with over 5000 miles on it. With that said I will no longer be selling scooters from China for THE lowest price on the internet until the quality meets my standards, I like to sleep with a clear conscience and selling a scooter for over a $1000 last last for less than 5000 miles is just ripping people off. I'm still going to try to help people on the group but I'm surly not
going to tell anyone to buy one.

Paul aka Sporty"