February 2014 Archives
[update January 1, 2014] I got an email from Rudy P. who was the lucky guy who ended up with this scooter (though it went through others before he got it). He's now in the process of a nut-and-bolt restoration on it. It is now in bits awaiting paint. I can't wait to see the finished product. It looked to be a nice straight scooter, so the restoration should be pretty straightforward.
[original post June 16, 2011] This is one of those rare Ebay moments, when the quickest draw gets a super deal. Here we have some longtime owner who didn't know what he had, and put, what could be described as a "barn find" Lambretta SX200 up on Ebay. Now normally, if the seller knew anything about how Ebay worked, he would have just run a normal auction. However, for some reason, he put a Buy-it-now of $1500 for this scooter. What a deal! What strikes me as totally insane is that you can see that there were a total of five bids on it. So that means that four people saw the ad, and did not hit the $1500 buy it now, but bid below that. I think we can safely classify those people as dumbasses. I feel sorry for the seller, who if he would have run a normal auction would likely have gotten around $4000 for this scooter.
Cool video of Lambrettas at the race track. I guess they had to race, rain or shine. Clearly, a lot of wrecks due to the slick conditions. It is amazing this footage survived!
In 1965, a young Bristol UK woman was part of a team formed to beat the world scooter speed record. Marlene Parker, a taxi driver in the city, had been selected from 67 female applicants from across the country to ride a Lambretta scooter in Monza in Italy and break the world record of 110 miles an hour.
The team behind the attempt, which was sponsored by Lambretta and Filtrate Oils, is now reuniting. The only missing member is Marlene - but no one knows where she is.
"Eventually the machine was sold and the team lost touch with Marlene. Unknown to the designers and engineers the machine wasn't scrapped, and has recently been discovered in the hands of a large German scooter company (SIP, perhaps?) that is intending to completely rebuild it and return it to its former glory of 40 years ago. "They are also trying to bring together all those of the British team who attempted the world record at that time."
I've dealt with countless 70's US Market Vespas, and they all had the crazy battery system that Piaggio came up with to comply with US regulations. Needless to say, their solution was half-assed, and basically didn't work well. Mostly, I just removed the battery from the scooter, and re-wired it to run AC. It is actually pretty easy to do, especially so with the trouble-prone 1974 versions. Here is a nice video on how to do the modification from one of my favorite shops, Vespa Motorsport in San Diego.