Step Three: Wiring

Rewiring the moped was the most difficult part of the rebuild and is actually what is still wrong with it right now. To begin to understand the wiring, I looked at several wiring diagrams. The moped is such a small bike that there actually aren't that many wires and connections to account for. What was difficult was tracing the wires to be certain full circuits were connected and dealing with the stater (I'll explain later).

This is what a wiring diagram should look like on a '86 Tomos.

 

When I purchased the bike the ignition switch was hardwired to "on", meaning the purple and yellow wires, on the left where it says "switch", were soldered together. This isn't a problem, it just means I need to lock it up with a bike lock because it doesn't require a key to start. What is a problem is that the speedometer didn't work. And the thing about electronics is that everything has to be on a complete circuit, so if one thing isn't working, the bike won't create electricity to start a spark to get the bike started.

So, I found a wiring diagram that more closely resembled the state of my moped and went from there.

This new diagram excluded the pilot bulb (speedometer) which was great, but it also excluded turn signals and the horn. My turn signals already didn't work but my horn was hooked up. So, I went through everything and corrected it to fit this diagram.

After getting that sorted, it still wasn't sparking. So now I had to look at the stater. The stater (called magneto in the images above) contains the points that create the initial spark. 

This is the stater, and as you can see on the left where the yellow wire connects, it has been soldered by the previous owner. This was concerning, but as it turns out what was wrong was the points weren't adjusted correctly. Now, what happens next was the excruciating process of adjusting the points. I will not bore you with the details, but if you are interested, the video below is a step-by-step guide of how I did it on my bike. 

After I finished that, it sparked! A few hours of tweaking later, it was running! I had officially rebuilt the Tomos by hand. This was a very proud moment for me.

...and then two days later it broke down. So it is now at the local moped shop, Wick's Wheels, and it should be finished next week. I am looking forward to posting about how life is riding it very soon!

Thanks for reading!