Introducing my scooter gang : the daughters of anarchy
 

A bunch of my friends and I scored some cheap scooters and every sunday we ride around town. We've been having a lot of fun!
http://i.imgur.com/9V67holl.jpg

Mine is the only one that is 150cc because I had a motorcycle license. It is the retro looking one, I believe a bashan. The title just says LHJ.

Mine did about 55-60 when I got it, then one day it went down to 40. I'm not sure whats wrong with it, but part of me doesn't want to mess with it. We all paid so little for these that if they stopped running we would probably just scrap them. I am sure I would start with a carb cleaning but it doesn't look very accessible, and I don't want to make anything worse.

Looks like an intimidating bunch. How long have you owned the LHJ? It usually takes several months of not running or several years of regular use before the carb needs cleaning.

I've owned it since may. Part of me doesn't want to fix it only because I feel exponentially less safe on it at 50 than 40. Sometimes it feels like it's going to fall apart.

Welcome to the forum, very cool little group you have there! :tup:

I'd fix the issue that makes you go 40, then use the throttle to go 40 instead of 50.
You may surprise yourself, and enjoy tinkering on your cheap scoot.
Parts are easy to get, cheap, and it's a sense of accomplishment when you do get them going on your own.

If you learn to fix a bunch of smaller items, then if you need to hire a mechanic for something out of your comfort zone, you already saved yourself some money for that repair.
If you get a mechanic to fix every little item, it's going to be expensive, from my experience anyway.
Enjoy your rides!!

Yes, the problem of only doing 40 could be a vacuum line fell off somewhere or it's time for a valve adjustment. These things are stone-ax simple to work on and even the slightest issue will cause them to run funky.

I cleaned the carb last night and it's back to normal. It's odd that it looked very clean, but obviously there had to be something in there.

I was wrong about how fast it went. Speedo was showing 55 but gps says 48. I'm happy with 48. It gets there pretty quickly.

Here is a pic from Casey Key road in Sarasota. http://i.imgur.com/87OZ09rl.jpg