new guy, first scooter, just regd today

[workhorse]

hey im mike from newport, ri. i picked up an 88 razz sh50 , not running for 11 years, for a song. new fuel cock, spark plug, disassembled carb, cleaned everything out, bled the oil pump and aired up the tires. got my tags and insurance cards today and took her for a good long burn for the first time. i gotta tell ya, in tight streets and pseudo-gridlock-tourist traffic, its fun as hell. this is my first two wheeled anything. im a 31 year old auto mechanic, with a toolbox the size of my car. but i tore down and refreshed the whole thing in my apartment with two screwdrivers and a few knock around box end metric wrenches. im having a few issues with upping the idle, and low voltage to the turn relay, so if anyone has any ideas, lemme know. btw, im not running a battery right now, low on cash. i rev it at traffic lights til she starts to do a burnout and the signals are fine, as soon as you let off the throttle, the relay buzzes and doesnt have the juice to keep it alive. im figuring a battery will solve this right off the bat. my other issue is it idles a bit low. doesnt bog, full power (all whopping 1.5hp), but shes almost silent when i let off the kickstart. weird.

anyways, ill head over to the tech area for help. just saying hello. weather in newport finally got to 70degrees with no wind or humidity. i totally lucked out today. any other ri/south coast people here?0

[Old School]

Yeah, needs a battery. Battery acts like a voltage stabilizer and keeps bulbs from frying.
Unlike a car alternator, which will recharge a low battery, a scooter typically does not have the output to recharge a low battery. That is why people recommend trickle chargers(maintainers) on their scoots. At idle, the stator barely puts out the needed volts and watts to power everything and recharge the battery. But at high rpms, it can...if ridden long enough...recover the power used.

[harry]

about charging your battery while riding ~;
it seems that if you have a older scooter that you CAN turn
off the lights it will charge the battery faster.
on these newer scoots, the law changed and now its required
that the headlight be on all the time which makes for slower charging if at all.

and your right ,scooters are the way to get around when there
are the tourists in town while they are rubber necking and driving
slow you can just zip around them and the parking thing is a breeze

oilyhans

[JunkyardDog]

The law requiring daytime headlight use on motorcycles/scooters took effect in 1981. I have a couple of small motorcycles that do not have enough electrical output to run my electric gloves in the winter with the headlight on. So I wired a hidden switch into the headlight high beam, so I could turn off the headlight and use the power for my gloves. I have never been stopped, but if I ever am, there is no way they won't know the headlight high beam isn't just burned out, and I can switch to the low beam.

I would definitely get a battery in there. Things won't work right until you do, and doing any kind of troubleshooting would be pointless. BTW, I am also an auto/truck/equipment mechanic for the City of Chandler fleet services department, been there for 35 years. Unfortunately, for the past 6 years, I have been relegated to working on vehicle electronics, which is not my thing at all.