Scooter clubs, spring, and Chinascoots

Spring is finally here, and while the weather is not what I would call, "fantastic," it sure beats Winter, hands down. With the end of winter, I've started going back to the informal scooter club in Lancaster. I did not attend this week, but last Wednesday, I successfully removed and cleaned my sparkplug. The Silver Streak was chugging a little, but after cleaning the plug thoroughly, all is well again.

Simple mechanical tasks on a scooter are turning out to be very easy and satisfying. It even got me in the mood to work on my lawnmower myself this year.

My flowers are starting to come up and It will soon be time to once again start planting some annuals. I also need to do some mulching. This is one of the reasons I've decided to sell my car and use some of the proceeds to buy an older pickup truck instead. I put an add up on Craig's list and got one little nibble, but the guy never followed up with me once I responded to his original e-mail. Oh well, perhaps it will sell eventually.

My best friend pulled his Wildfire scooter out of his shed about three weeks ago. Amazingly, his little Wildfire R8 started right up this spring without any troubles. He was riding it around up until last week when it suddenly started leaking gas all over his back patio. From what he has told me, the idle screw popped out. He called the dealer and will be getting a replacement screw in a day or two. He'll also have the dealer look it over to make sure all other bolts and such are properly torqued down and that the hoses are in good condition and so on. He was smart to purchase from a dealer whom he trusted to give good support.

I spoke with Larry from Bachman's auto sales a few weeks ago and he stated that he has been having some difficulty selling his scooters since late last year. PennDOT is now requiring a majority of Chinascoots to be fully titled before they can be registered. Here is a link to a document on PennDOT's website that explains their reasoning. It doesn't do a very good job of explaining though. Here is another cryptic, uninformative document from PennDOT's website that offers little in the way of clarification.

This whole thing is a fiasco for Chinascoot dealers and anyone who might want to purchase a Chinese built scooter in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, Mr. Bachman and others like him are left sitting on several thousand dollars worth of inventory that they cannot sell since very few people want to wait for PennDOT to process a title so they can ride the scooter they just paid $1200 for.

Perhaps it is time for PennDOT to update their computer systems and revamp their processing. It's past time that they joined us in the 21st century.