The exciting world of Chinese scooter repair.

So I bought a little 50cc scooter for cheap off of craigslist for $120 dollars. The owner couldn't get it running. I figured he was just not really willing to put the time into tuning it up. All I really needed to do was adjust the valve tappet clearances. Took me all of ten minutes. The thing ran like a dream until yesterday I got a flat rear tire. No big deal I thought, just take the wheel of and repair the leak. I had to remove the muffler to get the tire off, no easy task since these things are meant to be worked on by oompa-loompas or some other thing with tiny little hands like a hobbit or chinaman. After removing the muffler and removing the tire I found that the previous owner was too lazy to get new tires and instead put tubes inside the already decrepit tires. I shredded the tube trying to take the tire off, and needed to get it replaced today. My new tires are on the way now, I'll be replacing them soon. I can't wait to take the muffler off again to put actual tires on it with actual valve stems, sans tubes. This means I've put a total of $40 dollars into it and about two hours of work so far. I can't wait until something else goes wrong so I have to tear the entire thing apart again. ramble ramble ramble.