scooter

I pulled this Razr clone from next to the dumpster. It had a loose front wheel that required tightening one bolt to fix. After I got it working I took it out for a spin. Wow, am I bad at riding it. To avoid an inevitable and grisly crash I left it on the deck and ignored it for a few months.

After spending the winter in the snow the scooter had developed a nice layer of rust.
I decided to give it to a friend’s kid who didn’t have a scooter. When I looked at it I realized that there was way too much rust on it for any kid to want it. Time for some rust removal.
The firs step was to disassemble the scooter. I took pictures of each area so that I would be able to put it back together later, and so I could share the experience with you.
As you can see the rust even made it inside of the handles. I found it interesting that the caps were held on with a simple knot. That was good for me, it was easy to reassemble.
These ball bearings were the worst part of the project. There was one on top and one at the bottom of the fork. Both had loose bearings. I lost one through my deck, fortunately it didn’t seem to effect the performance. I had to look back at this picture twice to get it back in right. Here are all the parts disassembled and ready to be cleaned. Apart from removing rust I wanted to take off all of the cheesy stickers. They were beat up and proof that it was a generic scooter, not good things when you are a kid.
Here are all of the small parts soaking in a bath of acetone. This did a fairly good job of cleaning off all of the dirt and grease. I used an old toothbrush to give each piece a good scrubbing.

To be continued in another exciting episode…

Dun, dun duuuuuuun.