Lintex 50cc restore
January 2022
I went and bought myself another project, and this one was far different from my usual stuff. This is a Lintex 50cc Chinese scooter. These scoots are generally copied from Japanese and European bikes. The engine in this bike has been copied, probably from a copy of a Honda engine. The good news is the parts are plentiful and cheap.
The first thing to notice is that the plastic bodywork has has a rattle can respray and not a very good one, that will be changed. Also there are a few areas of cracked broken and missing plastic that needs attention. But generally it is all there. The main thing is that it is a none runner, it is missing a kick start and when I removed the spark plug it looked like this...........
This plug has either been bashed with a hammer or the piston, investigations will tell all. Time to start the strip down.
There is a large amount of surface rust on this scoot, but it is only that.
Engine out and lets have a look in there. Rocker cover and rockers look good. But now I can tell why the spark plug is busted. There is a large hole in the piston and, hence no compression and no starting. So what caused this?
Here we go, there is a valve missing, which was embedded in the piston, and the exhaust thankfully sucked the majority of the debris out.
Some nice new shiny engine parts, (72cc).
A few engine flushes and a brand new 80cc cylinder, piston, cylinder head and rockers fitted and the engine rebuilt.
The chassis has been stripped and the rust treated before the chassis was repainted, The electrics were looked at, at this point as they were questionable to say the least.
It looks brand new at this point in the rebuild. Now to prepare the bodywork for another respray but this time without the runs and thin areas.
Very smart in grey, just some work on the exhaust to do and add some decals, and the wheels and forks will be looked at. At this point I have ridden it up and down the street and it pulls well although I will be up-jetting the carb to take account of the larger engine bore size. It needed a new battery as the one that came with it was dead and lots of other little detail bits have been replaced.
Very nice but with obvious age related marks and scuffs.