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The day before I was to leave on my trip to Key West, Florida, as luck would have it I realized I lost my low beam headlight.  So, I pull it off my motorcycle carrier on my RV here in KW, and am happy I at least have a high beam working.  I got the bright idea of taking the combo switch off and spraying with De-oxit contact cleaner.  I wound up killing all the functions on that switch, so no headlight (high or low beam), no turn signals and no horn.  At that point I started to disassemble the switch but realized it made to be replaced and not serviced.  Luckily, they are dirt cheap on eBay, so I decided to order two, thinking I'll keep a spare just in case.  I know the bike was left out in the rain a few times, and am wondering if the rain shorted out the switch.

My question here is, are these scooters really not waterproof?  I never used a cover while transporting on the carrier, but after this failure, I'm thinking about buying a cover and use it when rain is forecasted.

Luckily, the brake lights still work and the two parking lights, located below the headlights, are all working.  People can see me coming, but the bulbs aren't bright enough to light the roadway of even a few feet away.

Nope. It gets warm. Keep in mind it's a ten inch donut spinning at Warp speed. I have a 17.5 mile ride home from work and do 40 mile jaunts pretty regularly. You might want to look for something rubbing or a small exhaust leak. When I first got the scooter I used to smell burning rubber when I stopped and it caused me some concern. I would check to see if the tire was hot or scuffed and it wasn't. Finally one day I noticed there was a rubber mud flap in front of the tire that had some wear on it. It's a guard to keep crap out of the engine compartment. Once I saw that I stopped worrying.

On the subject of the tail light I also compared it to my Wife's Honda Rebel parked right next to it. Mine is easily 1/2 again as big but hers is much higher. I just figure since it's a copy of the Honda Helix those Japanese guys know what they're doing so it must be OK.

I just went out and looked at my Fashion. Yes, the amber lights outboard of the red tail light don't light unless the turn signals are being used. The only problem I see is that the red tail light is kind of low but it is pretty big and at night it is lighting your license plate. In New York the plates are amber. I'm not sure but if my dusty memory is correct it's illegal in this State to have amber lights on all the time in back. Plus on both sides of the tail light are large red reflectors that would enhance the back of the bike when a headlight shines on you. Does your scooter have the red strobe bar up above the trunk lid? Mine does and I'm not a fan. I can tell it annoys people behind me and have gotten passed in some ridiculous places because of it so I know they see it. Before you go to the pain and aggravation of replacing sockets and rewiring you might want to consider either the strobe bar or silver reflective tape on top of the trunk lid.

I've actually thought ahead for once and bought 2x MCP23008 (for more digital I/O), 2x MCP3008 (for more analog input), and 3x 74HC595 (for more digital outputs). With those, I could add 16 more digital I/O pins, 16 more analog input pins, and 24 more digital output pins.

I do also have more arduinos, but those are mainly for if (when) I make a mistake and release all of the magic smoke from one of them.

As long as the extruder can go up to about 250°C, you can print with nylon. I don't think you even need a heated bed. I remember one person in the printrbot forums who discovered that putting canvas over the printbed instead of the usual kapton or blue painters tape helped the nylon stay put during printing.

I've also thought about using an inductive lead around the spark plug wire for the rpm signal, but it appears that getting the right voltage and current requires a lot of math regarding the length and diameter of the wire, how many loops around the spark plug wire, in which direction to loop, where along the wire to have the loops... - not my strong suit.

I have an oscilloscope so I can probe different potential signal sources and see which one is best suited to the job.

At the moment, I'm using a hall effect sensor and a small electric motor which has a printed flywheel with magnets in it simulating an ignition signal. The hall effect sensor I have is very similar to this one. Normally, when there isn't a magnet near the sensor, there is an output of +5 volts (or what ever voltage you feed into the sensor, between 3 and 5.5 volts). Now there are two outputs on the sensor; analog out and digital out. The analog out will drop in voltage linearly as a magnet gets closer to the sensor. Once the magnet is close enough, the output will drop all the way to 0 volts or ground. The digital out has a threshold the voltage must drop below before going straight from +5 volts to ground, no linear transition.

I'm using the digital out right now, if I use the analog out, the arduino starts taking incorrect readings intermittently.

When I get to the point where I need to test this with the scooter, I plan on tapping off of the primary side of the ignition coil, like the tach I took apart did. I can duplicate, up to a point, the circuitry it used to lower the voltage to create a nice clean signal that the arduino can safely use.