Tips for Moped Riding in Cooler Temperatures
With Autumn upon us, we have a lot to look forward to! Scenic scooter rides through New England foliage, crisp evenings perfect for sweaters and scarves, and a nice cup of hot cider after a cool midday ride.
A crew of scarf-and-jacket-clad moped riders navigate some classics through a scenic New England roadway.
As the weather changes and temperatures drop, though, the elements can start to work against our scooters, and can make starting and running our little engines a bit more challenging. We’re writing this article to offer some quick tips that can help you make the most of these last few months of riding season, and to help manage some challenges that arise as a result of cooler temperatures.
Each section includes a quick lesson on how and why a certain subsystem of your scooter works, so you can better understand it, and how and why you can assist it. We think we can all be better, more capable people if we try to understand the things around us, even if they’re a little unfamiliar to us or outside of our comfort zones.
For those in a rush, we have included a “too long; didn’t read” (TL;DR) in each section so you can get right down to the facts. Revisit this article and read it in full when you have a chance - you’ll feel proud of yourself after learning something, and will have great dinner table conversation ready come supper time.
Battery Maintenance
TL;DR - buy a Battery Tender and follow the instructions. Plug in and charge your battery overnight or between scooter uses. Install the optional dongle so you don’t have to remove your battery access cover to charge the battery.
Your scooter’s battery has one primary function: provide electricity to your starter motor when starting the engine. When you press your scooter’s electric start button, your starter motor “cranks” your engine through its paces, initiating the engine’s operation and allowing your scooter to start and run. This demands a significant amount of electricity from your battery, so it needs to be in good condition and fully charged for it to be able to do its job!
Batteries are negatively affected by cooler temperatures. If your scooter is stored outdoors the cooler overnight temperatures will start to take a toll on your battery. Perhaps you’ll find, on a cold morning, your engine cranks over with a little less gusto. If your battery is very worn out, you might find it isn’t able to crank your engine over at all!
The best thing you can do to make sure your battery is 100% healthy and ready to go is a battery tender, otherwise known as trickle charger, battery maintainer, or automatic battery charger. These are essentially low-output battery chargers, that help to keep your battery “topped off” in between uses. So, even if the cooler temps tend to sap some juice out of your battery, your handy battery tender will make sure the charge is replenished by the time you go to start your scooter again.
Consider this affordable, industry standard device - the Battery Tender Junior by Delran:
A basic Battery Tender Junior. Cute!
Simply plug your battery tender into a household wall outlet, and hook the other end up to your scooter’s battery. It will automatically sense your battery’s charge level, charge it until it is topped off, then shut off automatically to prevent overcharge.
In many circumstances, your scooter’s battery is accessible in a compartment underneath the floor board, where your feet go. On the popular Honda Ruckus, the battery is located in the front compartment, just beneath the handlebars. Refer to your owner’s manual for your exact make/model for the specific battery location on your scooter.
You can optionally install an easily accessible “dongle” that can be routed to the exterior of your scooter - this would allow you to connect your battery tender directly to your battery, without having to remove the battery access cover every time. Just follow the instructions that come with your battery tender. Nice!
This Honda Ruckus has been equipped with a battery charger “dongle” - see left blinker. We can now charge this battery without removing the battery cover!
Fuel Maintenance
TL;DR - Fuel goes stale VERY quickly. Use high octane fuel and a fuel stabilizer to keep gas fresh and potent, facilitating cold starts. Start and run your engine daily.
With a relatively high ethanol (alcohol) content, fuels these days can depreciate, go “stale”, and lose potency fairly quickly. Over the course of weeks or months, this likely won’t mean the difference between your engine starting or not, but stale fuel can definitely make your engine harder to start, especially as temperatures drop.
We recommend starting by using a high-octane fuel - 93 is typically available at most pumps around NH. This gets you started with the most potent gasoline possible, so even as it depreciates, it will still pack plenty of punch. Given a scooter’s fuel economy, it shouldn’t be a big spend to splurge on high octane fuel.
Otherwise, we recommend a fuel stabilizer to help preserve the condition of your fuel over extended periods of time. Consider the classic and reputable STA-BIL. ½ an ounce ought to treat your whole gas tank, and this can make a big difference when it comes to cold starts. Refer to the instructions on the bottle for exact mixing ratios.
Finally, try to keep that scooter moving! Start it and run it daily, if you can. This helps cycle small quantities of fuel through your engine, so they don’t sit in place too long and start to get stale. Better to burn through it, then let it sit there and go foul.
Industry standard STA-BIL Fuel Stabilizer for Storage
Cold Starts and Advanced Techniques
TL;DR -
1) You can '“prime” your engine by rapidly opening your throttle to wide-open several times in rapid succession (see GIF)
2) You can manually “choke” your scooter, making cold starts easier, by partially obstructing the air intake inlet.
3) It’s ok to engage the electric starter for 10-15 seconds at a time, with some rest in between.
4) You may need to let your engine idle for 1-2 minutes before its ready to go, and easing slowly on the throttle may be important until your engine has come to temperature.
5) Book your scooter in for service if you are having a lot of trouble starting it!
With “cold starts”, we’re referring to the process of starting your engine after a cold night and/or during a cold morning. When your engine is very cold, conditions inside your engine are more averse to providing a trouble-free startup.
Here’s why: when first getting started and while getting warmed-up, engines demand a little more fuel than during normal operating conditions. In cooler temperatures, air becomes more dense and fuel becomes less evaporative. This means your engine is provided more air and less fuel when starting. This is the opposite of what we want, so no wonder a scooter engine might be a bit finicky as things get a little cooler!
If your scooter seems heavily affected by cooler temperatures, there are a couple of tricks you can consider to try to counter this. No doubt, if the scooter is requiring exhaustive effort to get started, you should book a service appointment with Port City Mopeds to get things looked at. If you just need a little help getting a stubborn engine started in between visits to the shop, you can consider these advanced techniques:
Trick #1 - Prime engine with accelerator pump. A really handy, really overlooked trick is the ability for many engines to be “primed” by way using the accelerator pump. Simply put, your carburetor is the core of your fuel delivery system; it mixes fuel with air, so it can be combusted inside your engine. A nifty feature on many carburetors is the accelerator pump. When you open your throttle control (this is the twist grip you use to accelerate your scooter), to the wide-open position, you are actuating a tiny little pump that delivers a spurt of fuel right into your engine! If you want to visualize it, imagine you took took a Windex bottle, filled it with gasoline, and mist mist misted it right into your engine! No doubt, that extra fuel can be really helpful when cold starting your engine.
Here’s how to do it - its quite easy. Prior to using your electric start button to crank over your engine, rapidly open your throttle twist grip to the 100% open position. You can do this 3-4 times, then crank your engine. You might find this greatly expedites the rate at which your scooter starts up in a cold morning! If your scooter is still reluctant to start, repeat as necessary to help get your scooter started.
Nihco demonstrates the engine priming technique; he rapidly opens the throttle to wide-open several times in rapid succesion.
If your engine starts, but still takes a second or two to warm up, you can continue to use the accelerator pump to “prime” the engine, even after its started!
Unfortunately not all scooters have an accelerator pump, so this isn’t always a valid technique (Hondas, Yamahas, do not have accelerator pumps. See Trick #2). A more advanced technique that is applicable to really any scooter is to try to manually choke the air intake assembly.
Like it sounds, choking an engine restricts the air flow - thereby enriching the fuel:air ratio - and can help the engine start. Many older vehicles had manual choke controls handy so the operator could operate the choke manually when needed. Most modern scooters have no such control, since the engine takes care of this for your automatically. Unfortunately, the automatic choke systems aren’t always satisfactory, so sometimes you need to take matters into your own hands.
Trick #2 - Manual Choke - We are going to locate the scooter’s air intake assembly, and manually restrict it while cranking the engine. On most scooters, your air intake assembly is a black plastic box on the lower left hand side of your scooter. Now we know where this device is, we want to find the actual air inlets; a small hole or series of holes that actually draw air into this assembly. On scooters equipped with the QMB-139 engine or similar varaint (Bintelli, ScootStar, Wolf, Lance, Sym, Kymco, Tao Tao, etc) , follow the snorkel on the front of the air intake assembly to the very front, and you’ll find some holes. On a Honda Ruckus, the air inlet is at the lower right hand corner of the air intake.
By partially or entirely obstructing these inlets - you can use a piece of cardboard, or your hand - you will enrich the fuel:air ratio and help the engine start. With an obstruction of choice blocking the air inlet, crank your engine over and start the engine. This very well may help your engine start up and come up to operating temperature. No doubt, this requires a bit of acrobatics, or a partner, to cover the air inlet while you start the engine. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t try it!
The Honda Ruckus air intake assembly is on the lower left hand side; the air inlet itself is at the lower right hand corner, underneath the sort of “spout” shaped plastic piece.
This Schwinn Campus, equipped with standard QMB-139 engine, has a very common air intake assembly. Follow the “snorkel” to the front and you will find the air inlet holes.
Trick #3 - Using Your Pushbutton Starter (electric start)- This is less of a trick, more about us letting you know how robust we’ve found the electric start systems to be on these scooters. The core component of your electric start system is the starter motor itself: a small electrical motor that spins your engine over to get it started. These are stout little devices, and they need to be! Only a fraction of the size of your engine, these mighty gizmos pack enough punch to crank your engine for relatively brief periods of time.
We’ve found that a lot of our customers are particularly averse to engaging their pushbutton starter for any more than 1-2 seconds at a time. This is fine, but during cooler temps, might not be enough to get your engine started. While we understand the aversion to extensive engine cranking, to a degree, we say this to alleviate some of your concerns: in our experience, we have found it acceptable to engage the starter motor for as long as 10-15 seconds consecutively at a time, repeatedly, spaced 5-10 seconds apart.
No doubt, your engine ought to start without having to use the starter motor so heavily, but sometimes inclement conditions can put a bit more demand on your engine, making us rely on longer-than-usual use of the starter motor. We’ve never burnt out a starter motor, “flooded” and engine, or otherwise using this technique. The typical worst case scenario would be depleting your battery, at which point you’d simply recharge it. If you drain your battery before your engine even starts, chances are you’re in need of more direct, focused service/repair.
Our point is this - when temps get cooler, or its been a while since a tune-up, your scooter might not “fire right up” with a quick tap of the electric start button. You might need to keep it engaged just a little longer than usual, and that can be ok. Don’t feel that you’re doing harm if sometimes you’re cranking the engine just a little longer than usual.
Trick #4 - Ease on the throttle - It seems worth mentioning - “what will my scooter run like if its cold and it hasn’t fully warmed up?”. Good question! It can be characterized by a few things: the scooter may not idle (engine will stall) shortly after starting, and you’ll need to restart. The idle speed may “hunt” fluctuating up and down as the engine comes up to temp. Probably most notably, the engine may not respond to throttle in the way you are used to:
During the summer, when everything’s great, you can start your engine, and it will be a lot closer to operating temperature than in the fall or winter. Accordingly, you can pretty much get right on that throttle and open it up wide open as fast as you can - the engine will perk up, RPMs increase, and you’ll take off.
During the fall or winter, if the engine isn’t warmed up and you open that throttle too quickly, you may find the engine actually makes a '“bogggg” noise, engine RPMs decrease (the opposite of what we want), and the engine could even stall out! Whats happening is that the fuel:air ratio is too air-heavy, like we talked about earlier: too much air, not enough fuel. Going wide-open-throttle too abruptly will provide a fuel/air charge that your engine just can’t handle yet. Instead of this fuel/air charge being exploded and turned into power, it sort of just gets pumped through your engine and out the other side.
Depending how severe, the only thing that will help is simply allowing the engine to idle. As it burns fuel, the engine will heat itself up. This heat helps to evaporate the fuel, which makes it more useful and burnable when it is delivered to the engine! Typically, even if you are completely passive and just let the engine idle, it would only take 60-120 seconds at worst to get the engine up to temp.
You can sort of help things out, though, by trying to add some fuel (to make some heat), in a way the engine can manage before being warmed-up. For one, try Trick #1 and Trick #2 priming your engine, and manually choking, if applicable. Otherwise, instead of ripping your throttle wide open, try to sloooooowly rotate the twist grip open. This provides liiiittle bits of rich fuel/air mix, that your engine can burn. Engine speed will increase slightly, meaning combustion is happening effectively, and the heat will help evaporate your fuel. As the heat evaporates the fuel, you’ll be able to open the throttle even more, bit by bit at a time! In short order (generally 30 seconds or less), the engine should be warm enough that it responds more readily to throttle. That should be suitable to get you out on the road, despite the reality that your engine is still probably warming up (and running better and better), for the first 3-5 minutes of run time, at which point things will have stabilized. Once you’re up to temp, the engine should run just about exactly the same as you’re used to during the summer (except that you’ll be crying because the wind chill is so severe! Wah!). Until full operating temp, expect that your engine may be a bit throttle-shy, may not idle perfectly, and could even stall at times. Plan your starts, stops, and accelerations accordingly.
It may sound complicated, but this stuff really becomes muscle memory quite quickly. Its just a matter of thinking a little bit about how your engine works, and using your senses to understand how your particular scooter responds to changing atmospheric conditions. Pay attention, use your gut, try a little, and you’ll be a pro in no time - sipping coffee with one hand and working throttle with the other (just kidding, don’t do that!).
Wrap-Up
No doubt, changing temperature and ambient conditions can have a significant, and frequently unfavorable, impact on your engine’s performance and ability to start up. We hope that you’ve learned a few things, maybe a few handy tricks that can get your engine started a little faster in a jam. Finally, we want to state the obvious - go with your gut: if you feel like something just isn’t right with your engine - not starting, lacking power, funny noises, whatever - please do not hesitate to schedule an appointment with us to check things out!