Hey, That's Not a Scooter!

It has very recently come to our attention that the makers of the RocknRoller® Multi-Cart® recommends Monster Scooter Parts as a supplier of spare tires and inner tubes for their series of carts. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the RocknRoller® Multi-Cart® series, these are rolling platforms especially designed to meet the requirements of musicians, DJs, videographers and other industry professionals who need a sturdy and convenient way to move their piles of gear around. In designing the RocknRoller® Multi-Cart®, the engineers figured out that the very best size tires and inner tubes for their products were the same tires and inner tubes found on some scooters. For instance, the RocknRoller® Multi-Cart® R12 uses a 10"x3" (3.00-4) tube and tire that is used on a wide number of recreational scooters such as the Razor E-300 and X-Treme X-500. Another example is a smaller 8"x2-1/2" (2.50-4) inner tube that is found on many mobility scooters. RocknRoller appreciates that Monster Scooter Parts is the best place to locate these otherwise hard to find sizes. Likewise, Monster Scooter Parts appreciates RocknRollers' appreciation of us! Pardon my redundancy, but Monster Scooter Parts sells parts for scooters. (duh!) We offer parts for recreational scooters like Razors and Curries, motor scooter parts for street-legal Hondas and Vespas, and also parts for Pride, Invacare, Rascal and other brands of mobility scooters and power chairs. We sell tires and inner tubes --lots of tires and inner tubes. Now we are suppliers of a minor but very essential part to the music and entertainment industry as well. And we are proud of that. What goes around... It has been said by many pundits and philosophers over the centuries that each person is a product of their own times. Meaning of course that we are who and what we are because we live in the times that we do. People today are surrounded by and exposed to early-21st century culture and technology that our ancestors couldn't dream up in their wildest mead-soaked fantasies. So I kind of bristle at the gall of news and e-zine writers who make rediculous statements drawing parallels between modern events and historical persons of the past. "What would Ben Franklin say about shopping on the internet?" Or perhaps how Alexander the Great might balance the Federal Budget. You know what I mean; we hear and read stuff like this all of the time. Let's be real here, Old Ben wouldn't know how to open a PDF attachment any more than I know how to shoe a mule. We are all the children of our own times and no other. I mention this because I am of an age to remember when most kids had the dream of growing up to be a rock-star. OK, a lot wanted to be rhythm & blues stars, but R&B and rock & roll were still closely related musical cousins in the 1960s and '70s. That proverbial thin red line of division was even thinner back then, with groups like Rare Earth, the Animals, and Sly & the Family Stone blurring any distinction between the two genres as to make the distinctions utterly meaningless. Suffice it to say that no kids the I knew wanted to grow up and play the sousaphone tuba in a polka band, but that may have just been our regional preferences. Maybe kids in Milwaukee or Pierre, South Dakota were different from we Virginians. But kids today all want to be rappers. They can't seem get enough of that hippity-hop music. I visit my old hometown in Virginia Beach, and all the kids want to be rappers. I fly out to California, and all the kids want to be rappers. I try to broaden my horizons a bit by watching the French news network on cable, and what do you think the kids in Paris want to be? (Hint: NOT sousaphone tuba players.) So times change and the popular taste in music changes right along with it. Another new generation comes along to spend their money according to the fashion of the hour as defined by the marketers and promoters on Madison Avenue and Los Angeles. There has been an almost unbelievable advance in recording technology in the past half-century; everything from 45s and 33-1/3rd vinyl LPs, and on through 8-tracks, audio cassettes, CDs, to the now ubiquitous iPod. But inspite of all this technology in recording and playback, the essential fact of all music is that it must be played first by a real human musician. Musicians today not only need their instruments, but they also require a plethora of sound systems and ancillary gear to lug around. The folks who make the RocknRoller® Multi-Cart® are doing just fine manufacturing the equipment movers essential to bands, orchestras, news crews, TV networks and even sports teams. We are rather proud that the RocknRoller® website recommends Monster Scooter Parts for spare inner tubes. Although we are a scooter-centric bunch, we now grudgingly admit that there are things with wheels that aren't even scooters! Like the youth of today, I am a product of my own times and musical tastes. Just when I think I can't stand to hear any more of that hippitty-hop music, my thoughts go back to when I was 14 and grooving to Iron Butterfly playing "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." To this day I can hear my mother's voice yelling out for me to "turn that nerve-wracking noise off! Are you trying to grow up to be a hippie?" www.monsterscooterparts.com/

Inner Tubes, Scooters and the Last Days of Summer

Last week we had a delivery truck come in with bundles of tires and box loads of inner tubes in all kinds of sizes for recreational scooters. I counted almost three dozen different sizes of tubes from 8 X 2s all the way up to the 20 X 2.4 size. One of the most popular tubes of them all is the ubiquitous 12-1/2" x 2.5/3.0 inner tube. This scooter inner tube is puncture resistant and comes with an angled valve stem. A size common to a great number of scooters, the 12-1/2" x 2.5/3.0 inner tube will fit so many scooters that I cannot even begin to list them here. Just click on the link here to see the compatibility list. So versatile an inner tube, it even fits on a number of wheelchairs. Why do some scooter tires still use inner tubes when tubeless is almost the rule these days? Well it mostly comes down to mounting and repair. A typical tubeless scooter tire is stiffer and will still allow emergency riding at very low air pressure; however they can be a bear to replace. The same qualities of stiffness that keep a tubeless scooter tire on the rim -even when almost totally deflated- mean that getting them on or back off of the rim is sometimes a time-consuming, frustrating, and possibly knuckle-skinning chore. A scooter tire with a puncture resistant tube, like our 12-1/2" x 2.5/3.0 inner tube, is far easier to fix and remount. The tube holds the air pressure, so the tire itself doesn't need to create the air-tight seal on the rim. Rims can get damaged, bent and dirty without creating too many problems for the tire. As such, scooter inner tubes are preferred by many riders due to the ease of repair. Additionally, many riders prefer tires with inner tubes due to what they perceive as smoothness of the ride. Those air-filled donuts do double duty as shock absorbers. Back in the proverbial Olden Days of Yore, almost all tires used inner tubes. Whether on cars, trucks, aeroplanes or bicycles; if it was a tire it had a tube inside of it. Scooters had not really made much of an appearance in the US until the mid-1960s, and even those were the street-legal gas-powered motor scooters like the Vespas and Honda Cub 50s. Electric scooters like the various eZips and IZIPs and Razors and such weren't even thought of yet. Even if they had been, they would have had tires with tubes. If you picked up a nail, you put a patch on the tube to get rolling again. Almost all kids who had a bike sooner or later made the trip to the hardware or dime store (anyone remember those?) for the little repair kit in the can. They came with a 4X4 square of rubber, some glue, and a textured metal lid like a cheese-grater that you could use to roughen up the rubber prior to slapping a carefully-cut and glue-smeared rubber patch over the nail puncture. You practiced on your bike tires because you knew that sooner or later you would be grown up and repairing the rubber on your (hopefully) future Mustang or GTO in the same way. I don't think that "puncture resistant" had been thought of yet, not for small vehicle inner tubes anyway. With all of those inner tubes in circulation -(no pun intended)- there was always a few old ones ready to find a new lives as rafts. Swimming pools, ponds, creeks, branches, runs, rivers, ocean waves, inlets, lagoons, and swimming holes of every description and water level would be festooned with kids floating and frolicking on old inner tubes. And that was just what summer was for. Hint: if you want to re-create the joys of inner-tube rafting, use a tube with an angled valve stem pointed down. Not heeding this advice will sooner or later result in a very intense pain in a place that you really don't want to get hurt. 'Nuff said. And then they invented the tubeless tire and rafting became rarer each year. They also invented a lot of other things that took away the fun of being a kid on summer vacation. Then they told you about this terrible thing called work that would replace your carefree summer delights as soon as you turned 17 or 18 and life would never be the same. It is now late September and the summer has flown off south with the Canadian geese. Perhaps to Uruguay or Argentina or wherever it is that summer retreats to. A Southern Hemisphere location anyway. The kids are back in school trying to decipher the algebra that most will never again have any practical use for, and those of us who live in the coastal South-eastern and Mid-Atlantic region will keep one ear on the weather forecast, always on the alert for terms like "growing tropical depression" and "maximum sustained winds." September morphs into October with its cooler nights, small-town Oktoberfest celebrations and the sound of Vince Guaraldi playing his magnum opus "Linus & Lucy" on the piano. Mr. Guaraldi may have passed away decades ago, but his classic soundtrack to the Peanuts television specials like "The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" was the first introduction for millions of us to the joys of listening to genuine jazz. The cooler weather of autumn reminds me that I might never again get to drift down the lazy creek in an old inner tube. Somehow trying to float on a tubeless steel-belted puncture resistant radial just doesn't cut it. Maybe I could tie up a bunch of these puncture resistant 12-1/2" x 2.5/3.0 scooter inner tubes (heavy-duty thorn resistant with angled valve stem), take my shoes off and pretend I'm floating down stream. www.monsterscooterparts.com/

Modern Times... or is it Post-Modern now?

One of the best-selling items that we have here at Monster Scooter Parts is a little 3-prong, 24 volt battery charger that we call the "Razor Pocket Rocket & Pocket Mod (Bella, Betty, Bistro, Daisy, iMod & Vapor) Battery Charger (Standard)." The name is almost bigger than the product, and these popular battery chargers are usable on a wide range of recreational electric scooters. We also list this battery charger as the generic 24 Volt 1.6 Amp 3-Prong Battery Charger (Standard) but both item names refer to the same thing. These work on those little electric scooters that swarms of kids zip around with on countless suburban sidewalks and cul-de-sacs when Saturday morning cartoons are over and their parents have claimed the big screen television to watch the cooking shows on PBS. Please don't get the idea that I am endorsing one scooter manufacturer over any other, but I admit that I think that those little Razor Pocket Rockets and Pocket Mods are some of the cutest kids' products ever made. Scaled-down replicas of the classic old Euro-scooters of the 1950s and '60s, these represent a masterful marketing endeavour by Razor to introduce the street scooter concept to another generation of riders. By patterning their ride-on toys after a design style that has world-wide recognition, Razor has all but guaranteed that some of these kids are going to buy full-sized street scooters when they are older. Electric scooters for kids have been around for a few years now and the idea is catching on for adult models as well. In these eco-concious times the term "green" has taken on a new meaning for both the consumers and manufacturers. Whether this signals a fundamental change in global priorities, or just another faddish affectation remains to be seen, but there is no denying that environment-friendly personal transportation is a growing business. The Powers That Be tell us we need to wean ourselves off of our addiction to fossil fuels, and all for the better future of our dear old planet. The gasoline 2-stroke scooter engines of the past have all but been replaced by the cleaner-burning, less pollution-spewing 4-stroker designs. Eco-friendly hybrid-electric technology holds a lot of promise for the near future, while an almost mythical hydrogen-powered utopia always seems to be just out of reach. The street-legal scooter, whether gasoline-powered or electric, has been enjoying quite a burst of popularity lately here in the US. Sales are increasing even as other economic indicators are down. Still relatively rare just a half-decade ago, scooters like Vespas and Honda Silverwings and a host of other models are now begining to populate the urban asphalt and the suburban side-streets. I have begun to see full-powered 250cc scooters burning up the roads of rural Maryland and Virginia, places where you once saw a Ford or Chevy pick-up in every driveway. There are even rumors that Harley-Davidson is doing the R&D for another scooter model, maybe an up-dated and refined version of their long out of production 1965 Topper model. Perhaps Dylan said it best when when he sang that the times they are a'changing. I don't want to tell you how old I am, but when I was a kid "The Jetsons" was on prime-time television. There were only three channels back then and Ed Sullivan had the closest thing to reality TV. Men were orbiting the Earth in Mercury capsules and we were all being led into a bright and prosperous new future where every kid was going fly to school on their very own jet-pack strapped to their backs. We didn't see "The Jetsons" as another mindless cartoon whose strategic goal was to get us to consume more sugar-coated cereal products; we watched "The Jetsons" because it was prophecy! We saw on the news how NASA was developing real jet-packs, and that dad was going to get a flying car, and sometime in the not-too-distant future people would be living on the moon and vacationing on Mars. Well, the future didn't quite turn out that way. Dad never got his flying car and by the time I graduated from high school I still hadn't gotten my promised jet-pack. I sit here and contemplate what it would have been like if "The Jetsons" really was the harbinger of our future. Would I be writing the blog for Monster Scooter & Jet-pack Parts? Maybe so, and I bet that we would have the correct battery charger for it too. http://www.monsterscooterparts.com/

The Scooter Brake that Stopped the Experts!

Straight from the Official Monster Scooter Parts Dictionary: expert noun, EK-spurt

• 1. a person with special skills or knowledge in a particular field
• 2. ex (a has been), and spert (from "spurt" -a drip under pressure)

Here at Monster Scooter Parts we have a whole warehouse filled with the miscellaneous odds and ends that every scooter owner sooner or later needs to keep on scootin' in style. We have tires and chargers and gaskets and batteries. Look in the corner and you will discover seat cushions and clutches, transmissions and throttle cables, all piled up to the ceiling in a neat and orderly fashion. Need a new electric widget harness? Widget parts; Aisle 7, Shelf B-14. In the market for a replacement gonculator assembly for a 1973 Pasta Motors Parmesan? Look on Rack 420, right above the custom chrome wine bottle holders. Having such a large and diverse inventory as we do, it really shouldn't come as any surprise when every once in a great while something comes across the desk that totally stumps us as to the whats, the whys and the wherefores of its origin. Here is a good example; a genuine "Internal Expanding Rear Brake Drum Assembly-90 mm". Frankly, I have never before seen an internal expansion drum brake assembly on a scooter. All of the small scooter brake units that I have seen use brake shoes that contract or clamp-down onto the brake drum, providing the braking pressure. This little brake unit's shoes expand outwards to grip the inside of the drum. Scooter parts are not usually very complicated pieces of engineering, and most generic parts will (more often than not) fit a multiplicity of scooter makes and models. Consider the ubiquitous 50cc 4-Stroke GY6 139QMB engine, a classic little power-house providing the putt-putt for millions of scooters around the world. It's a pretty safe bet that most any part for this engine will work on dozens of different manufacturers' scooters. And then there is this little mystery brake that defies all of our collective expertise. Lettering on the outside of the housing proclaims this is a "Servo Brake" from Xun Lin Brake. But try as we "experts" may, no one here at MSP can say for certain just what scooter models these brakes fit. It isn't the right brake for a Baja Doodle Bug nor is it anything made by Razor. I think it may be for an electric bike, but my wife tells me that thinking is just what gets me into trouble. The brake passes from expert to expert. Heads get scratched and chins get stroked. We hold it up to view like Hamlet with poor Yorick's skull, all the while trying to look more thoughtful than confused. Perhaps this esoteric mechanical marvel is the long-lost missing part that you need to get your scooter or ebike up and running again. Or maybe this is just what you were looking for to complete that home-built custom project in your garage. We have a few of these brake assemblies in both 90 mm and 100 mm sizes, and they are priced right at $9.99 per unit. Here's the links to see these two brake units:

• Internal Expanding Rear Brake Drum Assembly-90 mm
• Internal Expanding Rear Brake Drum Assembly-100 mm

OK; I confess, I made up the bit about the 1973 Pasta Motors Parmesan. They never came with custom chrome wine bottle holders. http://www.monsterscooterparts.com/

A New Mini Bike Engine

There is a brand new mini bike engine in a heavy shipping box next to my desk. Of course Monster Scooter Parts sells a good selection of replacement scooter and mini bike engines from its veritable smorgasbord of interesting stuff, so the big box labeled "Engine for Mini Bike" temporarily makes an excellent table for me to drop my hat and backpack upon. But this is not just any garden variety mini bike engine. A little research into mini bike engines confirms this is the "97cc Engine for Baja Blitz, Dirt Bug, Doodle Bug, & Racer Mini Bike" and is probably destined to be mounted on someone's Baja Motor Sports recreational scooter. Opening up the box and taking a look, I see this "Engine for Mini Bike" would no doubt work well on any number of applications and garage projects. Mini bike engines, like other small gasoline-powered engines have come a long way in the past few years. It doesn't seem like that long ago when 49cc engines were the standard on street scooters, and a lot of mini bikes and such were home-built projects slung with an engine recycled from a push lawnmower. This box will soon be gone; the new mini bike engine shipped out to someone with a Doodle Bug perhaps. Maybe it will find its calling in a custom-made, one of a kind, king of the dirt-track, mechanical masterpiece that is slowly taking shape in somebody's shop. I will just have to find my backpack and old fedora a new spot to rest. That has me thinking about backpacks and how we carry our necessities around with us. My grandfather was a coal miner and each day he left home for the pits carrying his lunch pail. My dad carried a briefcase and today I carry my daily needs around, my lunch, iPod, CDs to upload onto my work computer, etc., in a small green and grey backpack. When I formerly worked in Washington DC, everyday I saw hundreds of people, from lawyers and receptionists to interns and petty bureaucrats pulling along those little suitcases with the tiny plastic wheels as if their trip to the office was an epic journey like a night flight to Buenos Aires and points beyond. With these thoughts in mind, I have to wonder if our lives in the early 21st Century is really better than that of or parents and grandparents. Hmmm... comfy chair in an air-conditioned office at Monster Scooter Parts or a deep, dark mine-shaft? Brand new 97cc Engine for Baja Blitz, Dirt Bug, Doodle Bug, & Racer Mini Bike... or some rusted and greasy old lawnmower engine spared from the landfill? A no brainer. http://www.monsterscooterparts.com/

New Michelin Scooter Tires for Street Scooters

Monster Scooter Parts has recently received a huge shipment of Michelin scooter tires. We can now offer you a Michelin scooter tire in any one of seven lines:

Bopper

Gold Standard

Pilot City

Pilot Sport SC

Reggae

S1 Performance

S83 Retro

Particularly suited for today's higher-performance street scooters, the current line of Michelin scooter tires meet the very highest standards of safety, while excelling in terms of grip, durability, strength, and versatility.

A full set of specs for any Michelin scooter tire can be seen here in the Michelin 2009 Motorcycle & Scooter Tires brochure and fitment guide.

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when the Michelin brand wasn't exactly a household name in the United States. Tires sold in America were either made by Goodyear, Goodrich or Firestone. And a scooter, what's that? You mean one of those tiny little Italian motorcycles with training wheels stolen from some kid's bicycle? (If your earliest mental image of a motor scooter had Gina Lollobrigida zipping by on her Vespa in some arcane film by Federico Fellini, then you understand.) I suppose the term "urban commuter" existed too, but the phrase would no doubt be accompanied by the scene of thousands of pin-striped rat-race types being disgorged from the gaping mouth of the the underground subway station. And it must be in B&W; no mental images in color were allowed.

Most Americans didn't become acquainted with the Michelin name until about the late 1960s, even though the Michelin brand was just as recognizable and respected in the rest of the world as any of the American brands were to us. Then they went and invented the oil shortages and carbon footprints [feetprint?] and all of the other worries and concerns that plague our the post-modern world. The planet has shrunk down a lot in the past 40 years and the street-legal scooter has evolved from just being a chic European icon into a dependable form of daily transportation for millions. Here in America, Michelin is now to tires what apples are to pie. Monster Scooter Parts is proud to offer a broad selection of these world-renown Michelin scooter tires.

And today's urban commuters get to think in color.

Andy http://www.monsterscooterparts.com./

New Electric Scooter Motors Added

A wide variety of electric scooter motors for recreational and street scooters has recently been added. Since electric scooter motors come in many styles and sizes, we added many to our inventory.

You'll find the electric scooter motor you need in 18, 24, 36, 48 volt. We have brush, brushless, and gear reduction motors. We also carry electric scooter motors with belt and chain drive sprockets.

Electric Scooter Motors Page

Additionally, Monster Scooter Parts has the chains, sprockets, fuses, and throttles you'll need to keep your electric scooter motor in top shape.



Jean
jean@monsterscooterparts
http://www.monsterscooterparts.com/

More Scooter Parts Added: New Models of Scooter Carburetor

Monster Scooter Parts continues to add to our extensive selection of street scooter parts with the addition of many models of scooter carburetors. Please check our scooter carburetor page for many new models compatible with 50cc, 150cc, and 250cc 4-stroke GY6 style scooter engines.

Street Scooter Carburetor Page

In addition to many new replacement scooter carburetor varieties, we now offer scooter carburetor jets, electric chokes, and gaskets. Over the past few months we’ve found many new US based and factory direct sources in China. If it’s a scooter carburetor used on a GY6 engine based scooter, we have stock or can special order the carburetor you need.

If you have a carb problem and need to get back on the street as soon as possible, contact Monster Scooter Parts and we’ll get your replacement scooter carb to you ASAP. Now offering both Express and International shipping, no matter where you are or the emergency you are in, we’re your source to keep you running and on the street.


Glenn
glenn@monsterscooterparts.com
http://www.monsterscooterparts.com/

We Ship Worldwide

No matter where on Earth you live, Monster Scooter Parts will ship to you! As of 3/20/2009, we have shipped to all of the countries shown in red on the map below:


We are shipping more international shipments now than ever and are adding new countries to our list of customer countries all the time.

Countries we have shipped to include the following:

American Samoa

Australia

Belgium

Belize

Bermuda

Brazil

Brunei Darussalam

Canada

Denmark

France

Germany

Iran

Israel

Italy

Japan

Lao

Mexico

New Zealand

Norway

Philippines

Portugal

South Africa

Spain

United Kingdom

USA

Kevin
kevin@monsterscooterparts.com
Monster Scooter Parts