It’s a cliche, but it’s hard to believe that it is already January of 2012. I seem to have lost all track of time – years and months and even days. I was handed my pay slip by my company the other day, and I had no idea what it was. I didn’t even know it was pay day. I had this idea it was much later in the month. (In Taiwan, one generally gets paid once a month.)

Probably the biggest adventure for the week was getting my scooter overhauled. It’s a year 2000 150cc Sym Attila scooter. In the time I’ve owned it, I’ve done regular oil changes and I’ve fixed all the little things that go wrong. Not that long ago, I replaced the rear tire and got new front brakes. I also at one point got new shocks. However, in recent weeks, the rear brake light stopped working. I wanted to get that fixed. Plus, I wanted to look into doing a bit more maintenance than just changing the oil. I don’t know much about it, but I have read that one should at least replace the drive belt after x-number of thousands of kilometers. I assume the same goes for the spark plug, the fuel filter, the air filter, and perhaps some other things. I looked around online for some information, but I couldn’t find anything. In the end, I decided to just bring the scooter in to my regular shop and ask them.

I was a little bit worried about this because it edges into the territory of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The thing is that I plan on taking the scooter on the road during the Chinese New Year holidays. That could be a nine-day ride racking up over a thousand kilometers. I didn’t want the scooter to break down out in the middle of nowhere. Dealing with that could end up being a lot more expensive than just having the maintenance done in advance. However, the scooter ran perfectly. There was nothing, other than the rear brake light, wrong with it. There was a chance that taking the thing apart and replacing the drive belt and the spark plug and whatever else would upset the subtle mechanical chemistry and it would end up running worse than before. That can happen with older vehicles.

I asked Selina, a friend and coworker of mine, if she would mind translating a list of possible repairs into Chinese and then I could show it to my scooter guys. Selina offered to go one step further and contact a scooter shop in her neighborhood. They would come and pick up the scooter with one of the ubiquitous blue trucks of death (ask anyone living in Taiwan why I call them that), check it over and give me an estimate, and then bring the scooter back at the end of the day when it was done. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: scooter mechanics in Taiwan are awesome.

When the blue truck of death arrived at the building where I work, Selina and I went down to the street to meet the driver. He was a youngish fellow in professional-looking blue Yamaha mechanic overalls and a baseball cap. There was nothing frivolous about him. He was all business and he apparently liked to talk about scooters and scooter repair. He had a lot to say to Selina and she translated for me. When all the details were settled, I rolled my scooter up to the back of the truck and handed over the keys. I showed the guy that there was a trick to opening the seat cover. You had to turn the ignition key to the left and then jiggle the back of the seat till it popped free. I was just showing him, not asking him to repair it, but this guy instantly said that they could fix that, too. He pulled a lever or pushed a button, and the tail gate of the truck lowered to the ground. He rolled the scooter onto the gate and then held it upright there as the tailgate rose back up to the level of the bed of the truck. He then rolled it into the back of the truck and tied it down with several ropes. It was all great fun – certainly more fun than sitting at my desk and correcting verb tenses.

Not long after that, Selina came over to my desk with the first rough estimate of the repair bill. It was for about NT$5,000, which is about $166 Canadian. That was significantly more than I had been expecting, but the list of repairs and replacements was also much more extensive than my original list. The biggest extra expenses were the clutch and the front tire. It turns out that the drive belt and the clutch wear out together. Eventually, the wear pattern gets to such an extent that you can’t just replace the drive belt. The old clutch wouldn’t match the new belt, and it would just chew it up and wear it out very quickly. You have to replace them together. This a familiar concept to me from bicycle maintenance. I recently put a new chain on my bicycle. However, the new chain wouldn’t work at all. It skipped consantly and just couldn’t get a grip on the worn-out teeth on my bike’s gears. In the end, I had to replace the entire drive train of the bike. That’s a common thing, and the same principle applies to scooters.

The drive belt was only about NT$800, but the new clutch was double that at NT$1,600. The mechanic also suggested putting on a new front tire for NT$800. I was kind of expecting that. I had replaced the rear tire a few months ago and the mechanic at that time had said the front tire was still okay but would probably have to be replaced in the near future.

I’d also asked them to overhaul the carburetor. A new one would have cost NT$4,000, but cleaning and refurbishing the old one was only NT$450. I’d also asked them to replace the seat cover leather. I guess I had gotten a very cheap one the last time, because it leaked. Rain water would soak into the foam of the seat and then when I sat on the seat, it would be forced back up through and I’d get wet pants in a particularly embarrassing place. To prevent this, I’ve had to sit on a plastic bag. The new seat cover cost NT$350. As I suspected, fixing the rear brake lights wasn’t easy. I had tried to get it done before, and the mechanics said the screws were so rusted that they couldn’t remove the light cover. This mechanic found the same problem and the only way to replace the brake lights was to smash the old cover to remove it and put on a brand new cover. That was fine with me, and it cost NT$250. I’d also asked them to check into my starter switch. It had a habit of sticking in place once you’d pushed it in. A new starter switch cost NT$150. The spark plug cost NT$100, new signal lights NT$100, the air filter NT$200, new rear brake pads NT$450, engine oil NT$250, and gear wheel oil NT$50. There was also a charge of NT$250 for a crankshaft oil seal. On top of that, the mechanics (at no charge) fixed my seat latch, adjusted and lubricated all the brake cables and throttle cables, and reattached all the body shell components with tiny screws so that everything was tight and didn’t rattle anymore.

They brought the scooter back at the end of the day, and Selina and I went down once more to meet the mechanic. He handed me a handwritten note in English explaining a few of the extra things they had done to the scooter at no charge. He was just as talkative as he had been in the morning, and he talked to Selina at length about all the work they had done. He also stressed that these were special prices and I wouldn’t have gotten such a good deal anywhere else in town. I don’t know if that was true or not, but I was more than happy with how things had turned out. The final bill of NT$5,850 was quite a bit higher than the figure I had in mind when I first thought about this little project. However, I think I got very good value for that money. As I said, I think scooter mechanics in Taiwan are awesome. Owning and driving a scooter in Taiwan is one of the great values on the planet – it’s so much fun and it costs so little. People in Canada would kill to get this kind of service at these prices. I constantly hear about the woes of my brother and friends in Canada as they get their cars worked on. I know a car is a whole different deal, but still. My brother just this past week had trouble with his van. He ended up with a bill of $500 Canadian for a fuel pump and nearly $400 in labor. And there was certainly no free same-day pick-up and delivery. He had to wait for days and days and days. And the mechanic there did nothing extra. They do nothing for free. You pay through the nose for everything.

Driving the scooter home that night felt very strange. It felt like a completely new scooter.  The ride was a lot smoother, I have to say. They’d also done some work on the shocks, I think, and I went over the usual bumps and potholes on Nanjing with ease. It was certainly nice to have all the little things working properly – the rear brake lights in particular. In my experience, the most dangerous thing you can do in Taipei is stop at a red light. You run the very real risk of being rear-ended as people try to make it through before the lights change. (The Taiwanese have a very different idea of what constitutes a light change. A yellow light that turned red four seconds ago is still considered fair game as a green light. Strange but true.) Having no rear brake light is certainly very dangerous, and I was glad to have a nice bright brake light again. All the running lights were working again, and I have to say that the brakes felt MUCH MUCH better. They gripped smoothly and strongly with little effort. That’s nice. The seat popped open cleanly and easily when I turned the key, and the new seat cover looked great. I can’t say whether or not it is keeping my seat dry yet. It has been raining non-stop in Taipei for about six billion years now, and I’ve been living in my full-length raincoat. I’m not entirely sure about the clutch and engine tune-up yet. At the moment, the engine idle seems very low. It kind of putt-putts as I wait at a red light and it feels like it is just at the edge of dying. Plus, the clutch is a bit rough when it engages at low speed. The pick-up isn’t as smooth as it used to be. I’m going to let that go for now and see if these two issues resolve themselves. Perhaps the new drive belt and clutch have to just wear in a little bit to become smoother. Once I get rolling, it is no problem. Everything feels great and I still have great acceleration. The clutch also disengages when I slow down and come to a stop. My old clutch didn’t seem to disengage like that. One thing I didn’t mention is that my scooter had been backfiring a little bit before. That was another thing I was concerned about. I don’t know what causes an engine to backfire, but it can’t be anything good. Now everything is in great shape and there has been no backfiring at all. All in all, I feel like I’m driving a brand new scooter.

Tags: attila, clutch, drive belt, NT, scooter, Taipei, Taiwan