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 think I would check your spark plug next. With the carb problems you had at first you may have fouled it.
 
a new plug wire made all the difference in the world on my motorized bicycle for starting. you may want to change out the stock one if you haven't already. i was like you and had to go aways for the bicycle motor to start. now it pretty much fires up the minute i release the clutch if choke is on
 
Im going to come down with joe. If it ran at all with that much fuel being dumped into the carb had to be mixing with a heck of a lot of air.

Air leaks makes them hard to impossible to start. At least it did mine. But the most likely spot is the manifold tube. If you sealed that and haven't removed the engine manifold bolts you should have it taken care of. It might be a spark problem, but my feeling is air leak.
 
Check your gasket (or better yet, make a new one). If you can get some "Seal-All" or RTV gasket sealer, coat a LIGHT coating on both sides of your present gasket and see what happens.
 
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.
 
you are going to have a lot of fun and now you can help someone else who has the same kind of problems. Welcome to the world of motorbikes
 
The clutch can't determine the engines state of tune. Either you Chinese plug(s) were not very good, or you sealed an air leak when you RTV'ed the intake.

When you tighten the star nut, you essentially tighten the pressure on the clutch. This allows it to grab better, that's all.

Bottom line is you got it going.

Go ride.
 
55555555555555 thats a high five. time for you to enjoy your motorized bicycle. these things are a blast (^)
 
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.
 
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yep that will do it. The motor has to have a solid turn to start. I am dealing with that now in a weed eater I'm trying to use on a bike.
 
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?
 
What do the kits on ebay come with for hardware to mount them? Or are they upgrade kits for bike that presently have disc brakes?
 
James Sparks said:
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?
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they can only be mounted to a fork that is already set up for disk brakes. if you want disk brakes you will also need to change your forks. i have researched this and could find no other way
 
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.
 
Maybe it's just me and the little back wheel and low speed but the brakes that are on my front came off a bike that was worn out when I got it. I don't think the brake pads have changed much at all. But then I have the coaster rear brakes that do most of the real work.

Are you sure that you aren't adjusting them too tight and they are dragging.
 
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.
 
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