The story goes like this. I'm in Bloomington, IN for a month, doing archival work for my dissertation at the Lilly Library. I'm renting a room in a house of Indiana grad students. I notice this moped in the garage and ask my house mate Sarah what the story is. "Oh, it doesn't run," she says. Soon we've made a pact to tinker with the thing and get it going. And the next day I'm up at the crack of noon forming a game plan.
We started by disconnecting the battery (safety first) and then used my ratchet set to remove the spark plug. We cleaned the plug and the area around the socket, removing dirt and scarring. We tried to start the moped at that time and got signs of life but no turnover.
Next we removed the plug completely and brought it to an auto parts store. We matched the plug, no problem, and replaced it in about ten minutes. We tried the startup sequence again and got something much closer to what we were looking for.
Feeling like we were getting close, we fiddled with the choke lever and finally found the sweet spot. The motor came to life after a few tries. We played with the throttle, babying it at first because the moped had been sedentary for so long. Within five minutes, we felt the pull of the moped moving forward...
We took a break at this point to reattach the foot rests, which we had to remove to get to the spark plug. We pumped up the tires and did some minor detailing, de-greasing, etc. We also observed a moment of appreciation for the miracle of WD-40.
Then the real fun began. Sarah and I took the moped out on the street and took turns opening up the throttle. One of us would take it down to the end of the street, turn around, and come back at max speed. At first, the beast had almost no power, but the simple act of running it for the next twenty minutes helped a lot. By the end of the day, the moped was hitting 25 mph without any problems.
