April 2012 Archives

My friend Nick had me take a look at his Lambretta awhile back, and I realized that it essentially had no brakes. So I ordered up some new brake shoes and got to work! I'll focus on the rear brakes now, and show you the front brakes in a later post.

This is one of those jobs that just about anyone can doe with some basic tools. The only real special tool you need is the rear hub remover.

This is a pretty rare period photo of a very stylish woman and an early Vespa 90. I believe that this first version of the Vespa 90 was only sold in the U.S. for one year, 1964. It came in this red color, and a powder blue.  Note the leather camera front cover sitting on the scooter floorboards - you don't see those anymore!

When hunting for vintage scooters, always follow up on every lead, no matter how unlikely it may appear.  Yeah, most of the time it's a wild goose chase, or a some old guy's moped. But every now and then you strike gold. You never know what it is until you see for yourself.

This particular find was described to me as "a rusty old thing, kinda tapered at the back . . . doesn't look like your Vespa there."  Lo and behold, it turned out to be a 1948 Salsbury. Rusty, damaged, missing engine, but an honest-to-goodness holy grail of American scooters - a Salsbury Model 48, sitting quietly in the woods behind an abandoned house.

Sadly, this tale doesn't have a happy ending. What happened next? Loaded it on my truck. Cops came; said I was trespassing; had to unload it. Tracked down the property owner. He told me in no uncertain terms that he didn't want me (or anyone) on the property. Time goes by; I approach the property owner again; he had sold the property; I track down the new property owner. He gives his blessing for me to remove the old rusty thing (also tells me if the cops show up tell them to call him so he can confirm he gave permission to me); I drive over to pick it up and it's GONE. Scrapped, most likely.

But hey, I owned a Salsbury for 5 whole minutes! I'll find another someday. And until it does, I follow up on every lead.

Velocette made some pretty great motorcycles. They were famous for their middle weight singles, and their high quality construction. Alas, in the post-war period, they had some pretty major styling mis-cues. Their biggest was the Velocette LE motorcycle, which was a sort of cross between a motorcycle and a scooter. It was homely, and quite expensive. Those were bad qualities when competing with the Italians, who made beautiful and cheap scooters.  The LE almost bankrupted Velocette, but luckily for them, municipal governments bought them for police use.  Velocette also made the Viceroy scooter, as seen here.  I'm sure this scooter was well made... but boy was it ugly!  I think it remained a secret, as the brochure says, since I doubt many were sold. 

This last Sunday was the annual LALO Rally in San Francisco. LALO - the "Loose Association of Lambretta Owners" - has a rally that is really low key and always a ton of fun. Last year, we hosted part of the LALO across the bay in Oakland, but this year was San Francisco only. It is always great to see old friends, since this is usually the first scooter rally of the year. The weather this year was typical for SF. Half of the city was sunny and wonderful, and the other half was foggy and cold.

The photo above (taken by Pelayo L.) was a shot of us riding over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco into the Marin Headlands. You can see the fog totally covering the bridge... which is pretty normal. I'm the guy on the right side of the photo on the white Lambretta

Ford M., had a camera strapped to his helmet, and got a nice video of the ride across the bridge. I have it linked below. You can get a sense of what it was like to ride with the 40 or so of us die-hard Lambretta folks. It is hard to imagine how there can be such a huge amount of nice open space just 10 minutes outside of San Francisco. The video below gives you an idea. As we get over the bridge, we ride into the Marin Headlands, which used to be a military base, and is now open hiking trails and wonderful vistas.

Tons and tons of photos of the LALO below the jump

So I had made some progress on the orange GP, and gotten the old girl running.  However, when I took her out for a test ride, she was having trouble.  The scooter bogged at high rpm's.  I'm thinking that it is a fuel starvation issue.  So I pulled the fuel tap, and installed a new one.  This is one of those jobs that is dead easy.  The only real trick is that you pretty much have to pull off the carburator to get the fuel rod linkages connected.  Here is the new one on the scooter.  I had just enough time to get this on before I left for my vacation.  However, I didn't have the time to actually put some fresh gas in and test it out.  Maybe this weekend!  

Here is one that I've never seen before. This is a Moto Guzzi scooter. I'm thinking that this was a prototype, and never actually went into production. It is a more fully formed scooter than the one that Guzzi is known for, the Galetto. This scooter is located at the Moto Guzzi museum in Italy. Does anyone know the story on this scoot? What is it? Was it ever actually put into production?

Photos by Scott Burton

This post card was sent and had a stamp cancelled in 1956. Some nice accessories are visible on this scooter!

Vintage vehicle ownership is not all about full restorations and making things shiny.  No, it is mostly an exercise in keeping entropy at bay.  Often, it is the really small things that end up taking much, much longer than you anticipated that end up being the focus of your efforts. 

As a case in point, I give you my recent job of replacing the center stand rubber feet on the orange GP 150 that I've been working on. 

Above, you see the existing feet as they were when the scooter was wheeled into my garage.  The rubber was all rubbed away, and it the metal on the feet was starting to get ground down.  Clearly, way past time for replacement.  I figured it would take me about 15 minutes to pull these off and put on some nice new feet that I got from Jet200/Casa Lambretta. 

I was wrong.

You know, although scooters are pretty small, they do take up some space in the garage. At some point, if you are not Jay Leno, you max out space for storage. At that point, what do you do if you still are crazy for scooters? Well, you start collecting scooter-related memorabilia. I've been doing it for years. I was inspired by a good friend of mine, Ansgar Fulland in Germany, who built one of the best alltime scooter sites, Vespa Das Archiv. He had collected brochures, and when I saw his collection of memorabilia and it really impressed me with its quality. He was also one of the first to scan brochures and paper material and put it up on the net. Well, I took that inspiration, and have built my own modest collection.

Here is a photo of one of my most recent aquisitions. It is (obviously) a Lambretta dealer sign. There are a few things that set this sign apart. First, is the fact that it is a US market only sign. There are quite a few of the big heavy porcelain European Lambretta signs that I have seen, but very few of these lighter US signs have survived. Second, is the non-obvious fact that this sign is NOS, or "new old stock". This sign has never been hung. It was in the original packing cardboard box from the manufacturer up until about six months ago. There is a slight bit of edge damage from storage at one corner, but otherwise this sign is perfect. It would be hard to find a better one. I'd been looking for one of these signs for at least a decade, and I'm happy that I finally found this one!

So before I left for vacation, I did some work on that orange GP150 that has been in my garage for awhile.  I got it to the point where I was trying to get it finally running... and discovered that it was giving no spark.  Sure, I could have futzed with it a bunch to try to coax some fire out of the old girl, but really, why bother?  So I ordered me up a shiny new electronic set-up from Jet200/Casa Lambretta and pulled the old stuff for posterity. 

Above, you see a shot of the old Ducati points stator while I had everything apart to clean out the top end.  It looked fine in there, and there was no obvious reason why it would not spark.  In the age of good quality and reasonably priced electronic ignitions, there really is no rational reason to waste time troubleshooting a Lambretta points igition - so I didn't!

Here is a shot of the new unit while setting up the timing.  Everything fit pretty well with a minimum of fuss.  This scooter was originally a battery model, but I set up the electronic as a AC unit.  Don't fret you trainspotters... I kept all the original components should some new owner decide to do a 100 point restoration on this scooter.  I also did absolutely no modifications to the wiring.  It was all just plugged in to the new setup.  Everything I did would be easily reversible in a matter of hours. 

After I got it all on there, the scooter fired up for the first time in at least 10 years!  It has been a lot of work on my part to get to this point.  I basically had the motor apart to clean and check the top end, and replace the stuck clutch plates.  It also now has a new exhaust as the old one was really rusty.  My plan now is to get it finally dialed in as I'm able to ride it on the street.  My vacation stopped me from finalizing the scooter, but I expect to have it in the hands of the expectant owner at some point this month.  Stay tuned!

I had to spend some time digging around in my storage a few weeks ago. I had to move a bunch of stuff out to get to something tucked in the back of the storage. This is my 90SS. I found it when I was living in Germany in the mid-90's, and shipped it back with me when I returned to the US. It has been living in my storage for a long time. Shuffling things around, I had to pull the 90SS out of where it was squeezed between a motorcycle and a scooter. It has not seen the light of day in at least 5 years. It is one of those scooters that I have on the "list" to do a full restoration. You know the old saying "when you have the time, you have no money... when you have the money, you have no time." Well, that is the case with this thing. I've been planning to restore this scooter for at least 15 years now... someday I'll get to it...

Sorry for the light posting the last couple of weeks. I've just gotten back from a nice vacation in Mexico. I'm tanned, rested, and ready to get to work on the site!