New here.

I do use the choke and the tickler. I put the choke lever about 3/4 of the way up, and push the tickler about 5 times I guess. The hill I live on is about 150 yards from where my apartment is to the bottom of the hill and I pedal up to speed and let go of the clutch about 8-10 times before I get to the bottom of the hill. Sometimes it doesn't even start by then and I have to go even farther down another road to get it to fire up. It doesn't seem right to me.

I spent about two hours tweakin the thing today. I replaced the plug with a champion L86C, I used RTV to seal the intake tube, and(what I think made the biggest difference) took the clutch plate cover off and tightened the star nut about three revolutions. It made a HUGE difference in how the thing runs. Starts right away, doesn't die when I pull the clutch lever in, and slows down when I let off the gas. When I come to a stop sign or intersection I need to stop at, I don't have to kill the engine and pedal a bunch to restart it every block I go. This thing is going to be ten times more fun to cruise around on. I appreciate everybody's tips and things to check so much. I am going too put so many more miles on this thing since it is easier and more manageable on the road. Again, Thanks.

I sealed the intake and replaced the plug, tried to start it, and it was still very hard to start. The reason I said the clutch adjustment made the biggest difference is once it was adjusted it started grabbing better it started right up.

Now I have a new question... What is normal break wear on pads for V-brakes? Every couple days I have to tighten the cable that pulls them together onto the rim because they are wearing out. I'm thinking it's just that they were pads that came on a cheap bike so they wear quick, but I'm not sure. It could be something more.

I've been on ebay looking for parts. I found some disc brake kits I can afford. What will I have to do to mount them? Is there a mounting kit similiar to the one we use to put the drive sprocket on the rear wheel available?

It is gonna be expensive. One thing I was thinkin about doing is having my buddy weld me a bracket on the fork I have. I was looking at forks an ebay and there are some cheap ones, but I love the color of my moon dog and I don't want to get another color fork on it. Another thing thing I was planning on doing before I got this brake idea was to put a springer front fork on it, but I don't think a springer can support disc brakes. Which sucks cause those springers are sweet, and I need some suspension on this thing. A fork isn't all I would need either, I would have to get a new front wheel that has a disc mount on it, I couldn't find an adapter of sort on ebay, then I would have to buy the disc brake kit. So if I buy all this stuff I'm probably going to end up spending about 300 bucks. I'll probably just buy a set of V-brake pads every couple weeks. It just gets annoying having to keep adjusting those things. Something I thought of this morning was that I might not have to adjust them as much any more because before I got this thing runnin like a champ the other day I had to ride my brakes a lot because the throttle was stuck halfway open and the thing was always screamin around when I was riding it. Maybe now it will just putt around and the brakes will last longer. Theres a real nice bike shop down the street, I'll stop in and see what they have to say brake upgrades. They already know I motorized my bike and they give me that disappointed parent look every time I go in there to ask them somethin... I love it.

Now I have a much bigger problem. I just got back from a little ride and could not peddle my bike at all. Makes startin out kinda sucky. My rear derailleur is continually popping my chain off. It keeps shifting to a gear even lower than 1. And the chain gets caught in between the gears on the rear wheel and the spokes of the rim. (IF you haven't noticed, I don't know a lot of the "technical" terms of bikes, so bare with me and I'll describe it best I can.) I stopped and took a look at the derailleur arm and adjusted it all the way and when I got to where the screw wouldn't go in any more I noticed that the top of the arm where the chain goes onto the little gears in the derilleur was bent. A lot. I don't remeber running into anything that would have bent the arm like that, so I'm really not sure how it happened. The best Idea I have to take care of this is to get rid of the derailleur arm, shorten the chain, and just have a 1 speed bike that I can at least peddle to get started.