My good friend Pelayo was riding his Lambretta a few months ago when it just cut out on him. After a little fiddling on the side of the road, he thought that he had lost compression and trucked the scooter home. With a bit of juggling of our very busy schedules, we finally got some time where we could meet up and give the scooter a once-over. Our late-night session began with getting the beast up on the lift. As you see it above, we had already gottent the panels and the rear floorboards off.
Here is an action shot of Pelayo pulling off the floorboard. You can see that he's got the trick adjustable rear shock system from an R1 motorcycle. He says it has really improved his handling. So after this, we got that trick rear shock off the scooter, and pulled off all the engine tin. Then we got the exhaust off, and pulled off the cylinder head.
With the cylinder head off, this is what we saw. Yeah baby! That is a lot of damage to the piston crown, and the bottom of the cylinder head. Something broke loose. At this point, we're thinking a ring broke.
Here's a nice shot of the bottom of the piston, once we got the cylinder off.
The cylinder head had some pretty nasty gouges. Still, I think this head will work, it looks ugly, but not critical damage here.
Yikes! A close up of the bottom of the piston, and the piston crown. As they say on Star Trek, "She's dead Jim!"
After looking around on the piston, we found the source of the problem. Can you see it here? The circlip broke! Note the indentation in the piston. That is where the piece of circlip lodged against the piston and cut an impression into it!
See, compare the intact circlip with the impression on the side of the piston. Neat! So we got everything apart and ready to fix. Pelayo is seinding the top end off to Deanspeed to build him up a 190cc monster. When it gets back from machining, we'll throw it back on in our next installment!