Hi everyone! I bought a meerkat 50cc (used) for my grand daughter. When I went to look at it, I found it started and idled well but would stall when applying fuel. I figured it was a carb. problem which I am good at fixing or rebuilding. After removing the body parts, I found the carburetor choke lever was cut off externally and the plastic spacer from the carb. to the manifold, had a piece missing from it( I assumed that was the reason it wouldn't take fuel). After ordering the new spacer and O ring, and carb.( which I changed the choke lever on so I didn't have to cut it also),It wouldn't run. Valves? I took the plug out, got it to TDC and found the intake was completely loose to where the lock nut was backed off fully. I set both valves at .004 and restarted the motor which ran out of control. I figure that I screwed up the carb somehow or was stretching the cable. Removed carb and intake, put in new gaskets and O rings, back together-nothing. Has spark but wont fire on ether. I also believe there is a wiring issue. Can someone help me out? I need a wiring diagram and some idea of what to do next. It ran once and I don't get it.

 

On the one I had, the frame had bent such that the carb collided easily with the top frame tubes when riding over bumps, and this caused an imperceptibly cracked inlet manifold at one point. Result was allsorts of bad running.

I discovered the cracked manifold by chance when removing the carb one day - what looked fine, just fell apart once the bolts were undone.

Remedy was to replace the manifold (cheap on ebay) and jack the frame back into shape. To do this I removed the engine and inserted a bottle jack where the engine goes, with a plank of wood across the top of the jack between it & the top frame tubes.

I know at least two large adults had ridden it in the past, one had been in the habit of pushing it along & then hopping on to 'bump start' it.. probably the cause of the frame deformation

Your mention of the choke lever having been meddled with pricked my ears up because when the frame deforms like this, the first thing to happen is that the choke lever starts to interfere with the frame. One of my early attempts at fixing the problem involved re-bending the choke lever with an oxy torch. I then discovered that something very similar to my 'redesign' of the choke lever was actually available on ebay as a new item - so this must be a common problem.

That was only one problem though. I initially found the valves were tight on mine, zero clearance, once I backed them off to a guessed clearance of about 4 thou (coke can feeler gauge) it ran fairly ok but not perfect. idle ok but loads of bogging, carb adjusters making 'no sense' whatever i did with them. Redoing the clearances to 4 thou with a proper gauge made no difference. I decided in the end to regrind the valves. That ended up sorting the problem but there's always the possibility it was the head gasket change that rectified matters rather than grinding the valves. I got a decent all-inclusive gasket set on ebay for not much money.

I did find a few wiring diagrams for these, lost them again now but can confirm they're about on the net. But early on I decided to forget the factory wiring & just rebuilt the loom entirely from scratch, it wasn't that hard, the hardest part was figuring out which pin is which on the cdi. All the electrical info I found relatively easy on Google / YouTube.