Honda Spree and Elite 50 Forums

Hello, everybody, new here; I just picked up a Honda Spree which needs a lot of love. I am very mechanical and am finishing off the restoration of a 1978 Honda PA50II Hobbit, but I am not very familiar with the Spree so I hope you can help me; I am loading up a few pics of it, I've decided that it would take too many parts to get it back to stock so I will be turning it into a little rat runner. The immediate question is about the carb: it is missing what I think to be the air/mixture screw, and just when I had told the seller that it would never run without it he got it started (roughly) but it actually ran for a few minutes; also the bystarter is not connected. Now I will be doing a full rebuild on the carb but I would like for somebody to tell me if I am right and that is the mixture screw and whether I need to reconnect the bystarter in order to be able to expect it to start regularly. I haven't looked in depth at the wiring yet so I don't know if this is possible (the wiring is poorly rigged together, especially regarding the ignition, so much that there is no key.) Thank you all in advance.

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Yes that is the air mixture screw that is missing. I have read on here that you can run without the bystarter hooked up, you just need to adjust and assume it will always be in the 'rich' position. Here is a link that shows the disassembly of the carb and all the little parts in there. http://www.hondaspree.net/phpBB3/viewto ... f=5&t=5389

Greetings:

Running without a functional bystarter is possible but you can't "adjust" to make it run well. (Is the bystarter circuit completely clogged with resin? That might be the exception) An overly-rich bystarter condition might just be compensated by a missing Idle Mixture Screw, oddly enough, to run semi-reliably for a while. However the remedy is to install both and adjust correctly.

I see no airbox in your pics. That is a major problem because the thing is not gonna idle or run properly without one. It runs way lean and can destroy the engine.

I know, it sucks; there actually is an air box, but it has no top on it and the filtering element is held in place by wire; the old girl is gonna need a lot of work, and given the state of the whole fuel system I will have to do, from my point of view, one of three things: spend tons money to buy all the parts to have a decent mostly stock fuel system (which was the original intention), turn it into a rat runner doing a lot of adjusting, adapting and fabricating, or part it out. This last one is not too appealing to me cause I'm almost done with a resto on a 1978 PA50II, and have no current project. When I deal with two smokers I like to run rich rather than lean, heavy on oil rather than light, the thinking being that it's usually cheaper to replace a spark plug than a piston. Thank you all for your help.

iggysepia100 wrote:When I deal with two smokers I like to run rich rather than lean, heavy on oil rather than light, the thinking being that it's usually cheaper to replace a spark plug than a piston.

Amen to that. Keep it in the Chocolate!

i was unable to get my scoot to run well with the bystarter unhooked. instead of spending the $60 to get the new bystarter i removed the needle and the part it sits in from the bystarter and stuck it into the carb and put the bystarter back on top of it. runs great. i have no problems starting i just give it a little gas and it starts right up.

jamadi112233 wrote:i was unable to get my scoot to run well with the bystarter unhooked. instead of spending the $60 to get the new bystarter i removed the needle and the part it sits in from the bystarter and stuck it into the carb and put the bystarter back on top of it. runs great. i have no problems starting i just give it a little gas and it starts right up.

If in fact, it actually does run great, then you have other carb issues. It has to be too rich if the carb is working properly.

there is no reason that it would run rich if you bypass the bystarter like i did. it isnt like its running with the choke on. it is running with the choke all the way off. so hard starting should be the only issue

Greetings:

If the brass plunger/needle is fully seated and the o-ring on the bystarter body is intact, you're absolutely right. It should run fine once warm. The starting issue may arise in cooler weather.

Before the bystarter elimination discussion got started I was already toying with the idea of doing just so and that was gonna be my next question. The wiring has been terribly mangled and so the only way to hook up the bystarter is to make the connection from scratch, which I can easily do if I find a wiring diagram. Edit: found the diagram in the Service Manual on this forum. Will post progress; thanks to everybody.