Fixing a broken electric scooter

After

I found this scooter abandoned a few blocks from my house, and the frame had snapped where the downtube (?) meets the platform. I would guess multiple riders or a big pothole (or both) are to blame. The electronics seemed to work, so i decided to try and revive it with the help of some scrap steel and my trusty MIG welder.

I was able to scavenge a section of a scrap bicycle downtube (from a steel frame) that fit nicely around the scooter’s downtube. I cut a slit along the whole section of tube (just visible on the bottom in the photo on the right) so that I could slide the wires and brake cable through without having to re-run them. 

My idea was to weld this tube to some plate steel, then bolt that plate steel to the platform of the scooter, and run some screw clamps around the tube section to keep it secured. 

Lining things up was a bit of a trick, and the final alignment is far from perfect.

Avoiding re-running the wires was great, but I did nearly screw everything up by burning through the wires while I was welding.

To protect them from all the sharp edges I wrapped the wires in some wire loom. Fortunately, that wire loom saved some of the wires that got too close to where I was welding. 

The picture on the right shows the wires, wire loom (that’s somewhat melted) and an aluminum drink can I eventually used as a heat shield, which worked great!.

The final product! I might throw some paint on it, but it works! The setup feels rock solid, and I’m gonna throw another hose clamp on that tube to really keep things from ever moving.

Were there better ways to do this fix? Probably, but this was the perfect level of quick and dirty that this cheap scooter called for, and made for a great afternoon project.