Vintage Tanaka Bike Bug Woes, looking for help, other Bike Bug Owners ;-)

[Bikebugged]

Picked up a vintage Bike Bug motor, got 'er off the donor bike, all cleaned up, haven't wrecked anything yet ;-)

Trying to start it with my Dewalt drill, but the nut keeps coming off, LH threaded...

Loctited the crap out of it yesterday, will see if it holds well enough to spin the motor to a start today, it's got a pretty fair amount of compression (makes the nut come loose) and good spark.

Fuel system stuff all dried out, as usual.

Not sure what to do about all of the funky fittings on the original plastic gas tank. Wouldn't mind finding a different tank. Not crazy about the original "covered wagon" style of the Free Spirit motors, probably going to ditch the cover for a more "mechanical" look.

I'd really like to hear from anyone who has some experience tinkering with these, or especially running one right now.

Gorgeous little motor!

 

[Bikebugged]

Need to know things like;

What is the correct spark plug/gap?

What compression readings are you supposed to see from these little two stroke engines, this one has 7.2:1 compression, pretty low.

Are there any source of Tanaka small engine parts in the US besides Mike Schneider in TX?

Does anyone here have extra parts, PDF of an original manual, etc?

 

[Bikebugged]

Wrong place?

 

[crassius]

they sent their updated kit to a friend of mine to evaluate about 6 or 7 years ago - never saw the older models

you might try a google for tanaka images and see if a page matches yours

 

[Bikebugged]

There's a little bit of info out there, mostly a guy's page from 2002, he sells parts, but that's all he wants to do, as far as being helpful with any questions, or showing any interest in your project, forget it, you may as well be talking to a computer...