Modern Vespa

Backstory:
[NSR] What's Pissing you off Today? III (Post 2732398)B
The odometer on my 2011 Yamaha Zuma 125cc scooter has stopped working at 45,000 miles. (The speedometer works okay so the problem must be in the hard-to-access odometer unit.)

That sounds like a lot of miles for a scooter, but I'm confident, to myself, that it could go another 40K miles -- though with a broken odo that would only be a guess. My head tells me to sell it for what I could get which wouldn't be much at all. I would free up space in my garage. My heart tells me to keep it, though I won't be riding it until possibly late in the summer (due to shoulder replacement surgery). It's always been the perfect scooter for group rides and running errands. It's fun to ride, but it's not like I don't have the Primavera 150 and BV400 that are also fun.

Just weighing a decision here on MV, whether to sell it for nothing or keep it for fun. Opinions?

If you don't mind a little extra expense for registration/insurance and oil changes, keep it. If you find yourself on the Primavera more often than not though....

Or keep it and hotrod it! Race Concepts sells BBK's and transmission upgrades for them. My old Zuma 125 was pretty quick when done (forget displacement) but it had an electrical issue and I ended up trading it. The Zuma 125 is a good scooter, it just never wowed me enough to fix the electrical issue.

Incase you're curious. If your Zuma gets hard to start when cold, even harder to start when it's cold outside, and you end up holding the throttle open when starting it to get it running I know what happened. There is a wire loom under the floorboard and on my Zuma it wasn't wrapped in a loom, then the bare wires passed over a sharp weld/corner. The wire to the choke circuit was the first to get cut and shorted causing cold start troubles.

The choke being disconnected won't cause cold start problems. It won't run well though, remaining far too rich for normal running. The electrical connection turns it OFF, not ON.

All I remember was it being a bear to start when or cold out, and even worse when both factors were at play. The dealership wanted $200 just to hook it up to the diagnostic computer but by that point I figured out I could just hold the throttle wide open at start up, and I was kinda over it. The new owner figured it out. He sent me the pictures of the loomless ball of wires and one wire was ground thru. The service manual had it listed as "enricher circuit". Right after the new owner fixed it the Zuma got stolen. Lock it or loose it!

The kicker to this whole saga was the Zuma was not even a week out of warranty. I no longer buy Yamaha or shop at the dealer who wanted $200 just to plug it in.

Finally, I saw the motor from said stolen Zuma resurface in a Ruckus build about 5 months after the theft happened. I tried to contact the guy I traded the Zuma to but he was MIA. I heard he got locked up or deported.

Snerk!

sell it.