I've had a niggling suspicion for a while that my rear wheel was not as it should be, and now that I am starting to work on the chassis, I will be needing wheels shortly to stand it on. So I dug the wheels out of the shed.
Right from the beginning, I couldn't understand why the brake lever was on the opposite side of the hub to the chain sprocket - drawings showed them both on the same side of the wheel.
Now that I look more closely at my wheel, I see that it is totally different to what was designed (according to the parts manual)
In addition, I notice that the designed chain sprocket (they call this the 'chain crown' in the parts manual) has 56 teeth - my wheel has 32 teeth. Cripes! with a ratio like that my scooter must have run like a rocket! Perhaps my scooter had been make into a special racer?
The more I look at it, the more I think this is not the original wheel. I wonder what it came off? and why would anyone change it anyway?
At one stage I thought I might try and work with it (and fit a larger sprocket) but on closer inspection, I see its actually rusted through at the rim - I don't mind trying a bit of tricky welding, but I don't fancy risking a wheel failure, and so it looks as if I am in the market for a replacement rear wheel :-(
Now as chance would have it, I do happen to have a spare rear wheel hub and set of spokes (I bought these ages ago in a bundle of parts from a chap in France) So if push comes to shove, I could try and re-spoke a new rim..... but I'd still be in need of sprocket and brake assembly.
So I guess its fingers crossed now to find a complete rear wheel assembly.
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