Topic: Re building of a mobility scooter

[piersdad]

after many years a friends scooter finally gave up with stripped gears.
I had maintained this scooter for him over the years and the design and the engineering of it can only be described as atrocious rubbish.
the king pins were unsupported and regularly broke leaving him stranded and parts that should never break or deterioate were found to be of such inferior metal that the life was in the months not years.
  the steering  as in all mobility scooters was of the tiller type. this was discarded by motor cars in 1904

so when my friend got a brand new scooter it was donated to me.

the front suspension was completely redesigned and the transmision was dismantled.
the gears were all stripped so a redesign was in order.
the final drive gears were stripped so i put thenm i the lathe and to my surprise the metal was no better than good quality mild steel.
I then removed the gear teeth and with a bit of turning welded a motor mower chain sprocket in the gear teeth place.
next i made a new 3 mm metal casing and put a smaller sprocket next to the main drive.
after this i got a honda nifty 50 final drive of 7 to 1 gear ratio and with some cuting and welding od 3 mm steel plate was able to make a new gear box for the scooter.
the honda scooters gear in comparison had to be lathed with my best diamond cutters to re build them onto their new axels.
the end result was a gear box the same spacing as the original and more efficient and almost bullet proof in strength.
A  the chain drive and available gear set  was sort of fixed the final speed of the scooter was 15 km per hour instead of the official 12 km/h
some sheet metal alloy and a few pop rivets i made a really nice scooter with fixed steering collum and a large frontal bib come boot  for the groceries..

my local super market was just 6 minutes away by scooter via a local park  and 8 minutes via the road in a car.


 the gear box during rebuild  th gear set and the chain sprocket shown

 

the scooter modified