Always great to get stuff for almost nothing and bringing it back to life.
A co-worker gave me this Slovenian built 1999 Tomos TX-50 (I know it's not Chinese) for free. He said he bought his son a Yamaha 70 and the guy said he had to take this bike with him. So it sat in his storage building and knew I was into mini-bikes and offered it to me.
This is the bike before finally finding a rear fender. I made this one out of cardboard soaked with fiberglass resin:
Issues:
Brake and throttle cables were seized. I bought one of those Bell bicycle brake kits from Wal-Mart. I had a local guy who restored vintage motorcycles fabricate a longer throttle cable.
Fuel tank, filter and carburetor was packed full of rust. I took the carburetor apart and cleaned it, cleaned the fuel tank out with muratic acid and gravel. Patched bottom of tank with fiberglass but I eventually had to replace the fuel tank.
Crankcase seal was bad causing transmission fluid to be sucked into engine causing excessive white smoke.
Modifications include:
Voltage regulator and headlight
Heavier shock
Raised handlebars using water pipe, a union and two tees and longer bolts
Found a heavier shock for the rear end that fit:
Original one may have just been busted:
New kick stand:
Years later finally found a replacement rear fender:
Tried to fabricate an exhaust system with an expansion pipe but sort of gave up on it. I didn't like how to hung so low to the ground and didn't seem to make much of a difference in power.
Exhaust was a bit coked up. I plugged off one end with a rubber cap and filled it full of Drano and let it sit overnight then flushed it out with water. Did the trick!
Scorned cylinder wall kind of concerns me but the bike has 120 lbs of compression last time I checked it so I'm not too worried about it. I need to de-coke the cylinder head but otherwise runs fine.
