Saturday

We went back over to the mechanic, and when we got there, the scooter was running. We still had the side body pieces we had to put back on, but that was just screws and a half an hour. The mechanic, whose name was Beau said that he had to make a “improvisation” on the carburetor. There was a piece missing inside the bowl of the carburetor. He had it all back together so he showed me on a motorcycle carb he had in his shop. He took the bowl off and pointed out this pipe that is an overflow for the fuel. With it missing, the gas was just pouring straight out the bottom.

He adjusted the hose coming out to be above the level of the carb. He explained this would allow the fuel to still vent if necessary, but would keep it from simply running out. He said the dealer should be able to get me the bowl or a whole new carb, and this would hold me for a while (probably a good while) until I get the part. So I got the rest of the Tupperware back on the scoot and it was time to ride it from the shop to my friend Chuck’s house. The plan was to use his truck (Ford F250) and his car dolly to bring the scooter back to Louisville. It sort of sucked because he did not want to follow me, so I was going to drive his truck with my scooter back to Louisville (about 3-4 hour drive) and then return the truck and trailer. Then pick up my car and drive back to Louisville again. That’s 10-12 hours of driving—easy. Well, the car dolly was not going to work due to the long wheel base of the MC-54B. So we went to Uhaul and rented a trailer. I put $60 worth of gas in his truck and a spare 5 gallon can.

We got the scooter loaded and I headed out. This was about 6pm. Well, I got about 15 miles down the road and a hose blew. I called Chuck and he brought coolant and we cut the blown piece of the hose off and re-attached it. This put me at about 7pm leaving. I got another 15-20 miles down the road—carefully monitoring the heat gauge and then *boom* smoke starts rolling out from under the hood again. I pull over to the breakdown lane, but before I can get stopped, a very nasty metal-against metal banging noise was happening. Chuck gets there about half and hour later with hoses and when we fill the radiator with a couple gallons of water—just to see where the leak is, he hears the noise and says the engine is blown. That’s sort of what I figured, but I was hoping for better. So now it’s around 8pm, the truck is broke down, and the trailer hauling the scooter is attached. I was worried about his truck and the scooter and trailer—what if it got stolen. It would be easy because all you would have to do was hook it up and run with it. Chuck fortunately had triple A.