Few years back we got a small, cheap 50cc ATV for the kid to drive at our summer home. Originally we ordered (and paid for!) one with electric starter, but those were out and we settled to one with pull-start instead. This was cheaper so we should get refund for difference, right? Of course not, this seller (name escapes me, but IIRC from somewhere near Vaasa region) is one of those you shouldn't ever make business with. Eventually we got the refund, but only after numerous more or less thinly veiled threats of legal action. This left pretty bad taste so there's just about no way in hell we'll be doing any business with him ever again.
Cheap chinese kids' ATV. What can you expect? Well, bad quality, obviously. Entire pull-start system broke after just few total hours of use (numerous starts though, it stalls a bit too easily, especially in hands of less experienced rider) and even managed to damage the cast casing in the process.
The only way to start it now is with a drill. Mains-powered one, none of the battery drills I have have enough power for that. Considering tendency to stall easily, not exactly great option as it's a long way to push it back to the yard if it stalls somewhere far away. Note that engine is running in this picture and the "cooling fan/fly-wheel" is a exposed. Very dangerous for restless fingers... So I would have to start this up, attach some kind of cover and then hand it over.
While I might find some spare parts for this, I don't really want to. It's loud, smelly (requiring 4% two-stroke mix!), and as-is, dangerous to fingers. Yet it is fun for the kids, so I don't really want to get rid of it either.
So, why not take the two-stroke engine out and replace it with electrics? That's certainly not cheap nor easy either, but as a project and especially learning experience it might be kinda sorta worth it.
When I'm writing this it's start of September, so there are roughly month or two of "driving season" left for this thing before the winter. As my plan goes, I am planning the process and choosing and ordering suitable parts first, leaving the ATV to its current state for a while now so it can be driven yet. And when the winter rolls in I bring this to home and start the real work with it.
I've been doing some preliminary browsing, and at the moment I expect majority of the work being on metalworking side: Removing old parts (only if/when absolutely required), creating new structural assemblies for new parts and so on. I've never welded before, but I expect to learn some of that too - which actually is major motivation for this project. Work with electronics I expect to be almost trivial matter with variety of ready modules available these days.
So I will be posting some updates here as things progress. Like I said, I expect this to take better part of winter so updates may be quite infrequent. We'll see as I go.
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