Honda Spree and Elite 50 Forums

I’m a greenhorn as far as these scooters go. I purchased this 1988 Elite 50es for my daughter to enjoy.
I took it to a shop to have the carb cleaned as well as the have the damaged side cover replaced.

I picked the scooter up and it runs just fine, but the cover wasn’t replaced. I decided to pull the cover and attempt to swap out the kickstart gear, spring, etc. Well, I’m not the most patient when it comes to stuff like this. I’m struggling to figure out how the parts fit inside the cover.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
PS: I’ve attached a pic of how it looked prior to removal!

Yea those are tough to tackle even if you've done 'em a few times. There is a lock ring, or circlip, and thick washer, that goes over the main shaft on the outside of the cover to hold it all together so you may need to obtain the proper tool to install that circlip but if you can get it opened around the thickest part of the shaft, then slide it down to just before the groove it goes into and just tap it into place when you have everything held in place - this is where you need 5 hands but have room for only 1 or 2. lol Leave the small "mushroom" gear out for now and the thin washer that goes under it as that will be last item to install, and easiest too.
The trick is to concentrate on the spring and the main shaft/gear, and keeping the spring in place, down around that "hub" area inside so you can get that circlip slid all the way down into that groove and thereby locking the whole spring/gear/shaft, into the correct place.
When you get that done, then you want place some thick grease (just a little bit as you do not want grease flying around in there and coating the belt/pulley surfaces) down into the hole that the mushroom gear goes into but first, place that thin washer down on the flat surface around that small hole and finesse the mushroom gear shaft into that hole without knocking the washer out of place so you may have to turn the large gear around a little to get the mushroom gear to fall into that small hole it goes in. Then just minimally grease the "teeth" of those gears just where they mesh. Minimal grease. Only. No spray lube or oil.
Also, there is NO NEED to grease either of those other pulley shafts inside the belt cavity. That is a dry area. If you run your scooter and ever see oil or a lot of lubricant-type stuff inside of that belt cavity, then there needs to be an inspection to discover the source asap. Here is the KEY to success: You will want to use all the patience you can conjure up, and believe me, it has had me a few times losing my cool Good luck and let us know if I have missed something or things are not as I have described. I have never done this on an SB50 scooter. Oh, what was it that you needed to replace the cover for in the first place? You said it was damaged?

@bonesv
I can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your evening to reply to my post.
I’m very grateful.

As far as why the cover needed replacing, it was more cosmetic than anything. The previous owner repaired the bottom side with JB Weld or similar. The scooter was a surprise gift to my daughter, so my goal was to clean it up as much as possible.

I’ll give the installation a shot later in the week!