The Scooterlounge home base recently moved to the tony hills of Oakland California. I ride my P125X beater every day on my way the train, and on to work. My old commute was an easy one, on straight and flat streets. It is no longer. Now, I rip it up steep hills and very curvy roads on my way to the train. It is much more fun, but significantly more strain on my scoot. I should also mention that my P125 has a mild performance cylinder kit on it, and my throttle control is set alternately to either "wide open throttle" or "idle", and not much in between. I am not gentle with my trusty steed.
After about a month of thrashing, with little to no maintenance, it has taken its toll. Last week I heard a strange, but faint, clunking sound from my motor. When I got home, I noticed that there were fine metal shavings all around on my rear wheel rim. "That's strange", I thought to myself. Perhaps my wheel nuts loosened up. So I tightened them. The wheel nuts were indeed loose, but they felt sort of spongy when I tightened them. When I tried to get one really tight, the stud on the rear hub simply broke off. "That's not good..."
More to the story, below the jump...
At that point, I knew it was not safe to ride the scooter any more without tending to this problem. So I ordered up a new rear hub and set the scoot up for replacement. The first thing to do is remove the rear hub nut cover. It just prys off with a screwdriver.
That gives you access to the rear hub nut, and the cotter pin which locks it in place. Simply use your screwdriver to release the lock on the cotter pin. Then, use pliers or sturdy wire cutters to pull the cotter pin out. My cotter pin was locked in pretty good, and I ended up having to cut off the lower tips of the cotter pin. Then, I tightened the nut just a bit to release the pressure on the cotter pin. At that point, the I used locking pliers to ease the cotter pin out of the castle nut.
With the cotter pin out, it is time to remove the rear nut. I use an air-powered impact wrench to get it off the rear axle. If you don't have an impact wrench, you can use a ratchet with a "breaker bar" attached. If you use that method, you'll probably have to have a friend press down on the rear brake pedal so the rear hub doesn't turn while you work on the nut.
Once the nut is off, just ease the rear hub off the axle. It may not come off easily. In my case, I simply tapped on the hub with a rubber mallet, then turned it, then tapped, and repeated... eventually it came off the axle. With the axle off, you can inspect the rear brake area. My brakes seemed fine, and there wasn't any problem in there. I just left it as it was.
Now is time for the new hub. Oooh, shiny!
Time to put on the rear nut, and the new cotter pin. If your rear hub nut looks beat up, now is a good time to replace it. Mine looked ok, so I used it again. The next time I take it off, I will replace it. The cotter pin is a must. This is a safety system. Your life depends on this small bit of metal. Do not neglect to install it. Use a new one EVERY time.
The cotter pin is snugged up tight in its new bed...
Now, use a rubber mallet, and tap the nut cover into place. As you can see, mine is a bit beat up. This is my daily driver, so I don't care how it looks. If this were a nicer scooter, I'd get a new one, just to make the scoot look pretty.
With the old hub off, I could inspect the damage. As you can see, it is pretty severe. This is a chicken or egg situation. I'm not sure if the nuts had gotten loose, which caused the wheel to move, or something happened with the wheel. I think that the wheel nuts had gotten loose, and that allowed the rear wheel to move on the hub. The wheel then started digging into the studs on the hub, and cutting them down. You can see here, that the stud has very little material left on it. All of the wheel studs looked like this. I wasn't too far away from having the wheel simply fall off!
The take home message is to check your scooter over regularly. The world is an imperfect place. Nuts and bolts come loose all the time. This is especially so on something that vibrates and shakes to the extent that a two stroke Vespa does. The rear wheel is the part on the scooter that takes the most stress and abuse... so you might want to check yer nuts!