Elite 150 restoration

Hello All

I have been lurking on this website for a few years.

I have had a number of scooters starting with a 1958 Cushman Highlander around 1960. I advanced to motorcycles and have had a dozen or so motorcycles with the heaviest being a 77 Goldwing that I restored during COVID.

We are retired now and my knees can't handle 750 lb bikes anymore so we are migrating back to scooters. We moved to Florida from Ohio about 5 years ago and sold our Silverwing and Reflex.

Now that we are settled down here I found a Shadow VLX for me and a Reflex for her.

To back up 20 years, my wife got her motorcycle temps and asked me to find her something cheap to learn on as she had never ridden any powered 2 wheeler. I found an 1984 Elite 125 and she was off to the races.

She recently said she wanted to move to something smaller than the Reflex and I found a barn find 86 Elite 150, hence this comment.

Got it running but at about 45 mph and above, the handlebars shook pretty bad.

FYI: This is something that all Elite's may have in common. I took the front wheel off and balanced it and the handlebar shaking was only a little better. It didn't solve the problem.

The Elite's all have the 2 piece rims with a 3 spoke aluminum center hub and a steel tubeless rim.

I took the front wheel off again and attached a dial indicator to my balance stand. The wheel ran out +.030" on one side to -.050" on the other side. There is enough play in the three bolt holes securing the spokes to the rim to allow the rim to be off center.

After obtaining those readings, I wedged a flat blade screwdriver between the spoke and the rim that were negative and then tightened up all three spoke bolts. After a few attempts, I got the TIR on the wheel within about .010". I rebalanced and it drives great now.

Good troubleshooting and glad you got it all straightened out.