Honda Spree and Elite 50 Forums

Arrrgh !!

Mr.McCormic,

You were right. I took it for a test run (twice around the sub) with the original #68 jet back in it and the piston seized in the cylinder.

Do they sell oversized pistons and rings to repair this or is the engine now junk ?

honda made .010 and .020 over pistons and rings but they are very very rare. take off the head and have a look in there you may be able to get away with just a cylinder hone

I'll have to take it all apart and look at it. We have a spare parts scooter so what I may end up doing is just taking the engine out of that one and installing it in the Iowa.

whats the cylinder and piston look like?

I finally had some time over the weekend to disassemble my spree and get a look at the inside of the engine. Both the piston and the cylinder look fine !! Also, I could spin the fan by hand and everything seemed to work properly.

So if the engine is not locked up, what would cause the thing to stop running like it did ? It ran fine for two laps of my subdivision but then just quite when I was pulling into the garage. When I disengaged the drive belt from the engine, the engine would not turn over so I know it was not in the rear gearbox or brakes.

Is there possibly something electical which could be working here ?

you overheated it from running lean and it seized up until it cooled down which allowed the alluminum piston to contract freeing it from the cylinder. one of my mothers friends had a 4stroke tiller that would run for a minute then lock up until it cooled down turned out it had no oil in it.

Basically, you got lucky. I've heard of bikes doing that as well. Replace the rings and get that thing properly jetted.

I think I'm going to ditch the fancy air filter and just put the stock airbox/air filter back on it for now. That way I can just leave the jet stock.

Thanks for the help on this !!

well DB. how dose it work?

I don't know yet, I haven't had time to put it back together. Plus I figured, while it's apart, I might as well clean everything. As soon as it's back together, I'll let you guys know how it's running.

The thing I don't understand is that the fancy air filter was on it for the past two years with no probelms. The only thing I can think of is that cleaning and drilling out the Iowa pipe must have allowed it to inhale more air causing it to go lean.

dont bother with higher flowing air filters the little spree engine is so picky that most people dont even get any performance out of a higher flowing air filter.

Ok, I finally got back to rebuilding this spree today. It starts and runs fine when it's up on the centerstand. I installed a stock air box and filter and an '85 pipe. It' sure sounds better !! Anyway, I got it running and let it warm up and everything is cool with the cylinder.

However, when I dropped it down off the centerstand it immediately quit running just like it did before. I played around with it some more and I think what is happening is that the starter pinion is not retracting after the engine starts. I noticed this when I took the outer cover off and watched what was going on inside.

I'm assuming that it's supposed to retract based on playing around with it out of the scooter. It seems to get locked up and not spin back down to it's home position. This pinion is supposed to get out of the way after the scooter is started, correct ?

If you take the sidecover off the pinion won't work properly anyway, so it's hard to say.

Actually, scooter's quitting after dropping off the sidestand is somewhat common. Mine does this if dropped hard enough too. Won't it start with the rear wheel down? If not, why not?

That's why I'm aking the question. It started when on the ground previously, but now it will only start and run when it's up on the centerstand. I'm not dropping it down on the wheel hard or anything, I'm just setting it down like normal.

I'm going to try getting a new starter pinion and see if that fixes it.

Well, the new starter pinion didn't work.

So, that's it, I'm throwing in the towel and selling my spree. I'm in Novi, MI.

Here's the eBay item number is: 290138130710