Recently in Garage Time Category

Recently, I've been working on my friend's Vespa 150 Sprint.  It has been in storage for a long time, and now wanted to get it roadworthy again.  The main problem that it has had, even in storage, was that it leaked oil - bad.  It was two stroke oil, not case oil that leaked out.  All the largeframe Vespas in the US market in the 70's had oil injection.  This one had a problem keeping oil in the tank.  It was a slow leak, but over time, all the oil came out.  So now, I had to determine the cause of the leak.

My first thought was that there was a crack in the tank, sight glass, or oil line.  I pulled the seat off and got the tank off.  

When I got the tank off, there was no problem with anything in there.  As you can see from the above photo, there was no oil inside the frame.  The metal oil tank was fine (the oil tanks from the pre-P series were metal, not plastic), the oil line was fine, and the sight glass was not cracked.  I did notice that the fuel line was hard as a rock.  Since I was already in there, I replaced it.  

Next, I turned my attention down the line, the oil line, that is.  I couldn't find any really obvious culprit.  When I took off the carb and looked in the air box, there was nothing that jumped out at me.  The only thing I noticed was that the screw that holds the air box on the case was a bit loose.  I tightened it up.  I think that the air box was not 100% tight on the frame, and oil was leaking out from the bottom of the air box.  Since I have tightened it down, the scooter does not seem to be leaking.  I'll keep an eye on it, but for now, I think it is problem solved!

I had some time to work on the Lambretta recently, and figured it would be good to install the choke kit on the carb.  It has a 24mm Mikuni, and previously, I had to pull off the cowl and manually pull the choke on it when I wanted to start the scooter from cold.  Jet200 sells the conversion kit, but I previously had gotten the wrong style of choke cable, so I was thwarted in my attempts to install it.  Finally, I got the right cable, and it was time to do it up!  As you can see in the photo above, the existing choke is the black plunger on the left side of the photo.  

Here is the new kit that I got from Jet200.  Not a lot of stuff, easy.  So I pulled out the old mechansm, and installed the new cable into the lever on the frame.  Then I threaded the choke end into the brass adjuster as seen above, and attached the cable through the spring and onto the plunger.  Simple. 

The only problem I ran into was that the cable housing end would not fit into the brass adjuster.  So I had to make some "adjustments" to the cable housing.  It kind of looks ugly, but it does get the job done.  When I was finished, it all worked great.  Sweet!  Now I don't have to pull off the cowl every time I want to start the scooter!

As you may recall, I had recently purchased on the hot new "Clubman" style exhausts made by BGM.  (get yours here). I thought it would be a straight up fit, but alas, I was mistaken.  The exhaust header would not clear the fins on my cylinder.  (photos here) 

With that problem, it seemed only brute force would be my solution.  So I got out the trusty Dremel tool and got to grinding.  I roughly marked where I thought the header was hitting the cylinder, and cut away.  As you can see in the photo above, I got the small bit off that was interfering.  Then I cinched up the header.  You can clearly see how beefy and huge it is.  Nice!  As an added bonus, I should be able to get the pipe and u-bend off without taking off the motor tin.  I like it.

Here is the pipe on the scooter.  As you can see, it looks totally stock.  I can report that, at idle, it is surprisingly quiet.  It is almost as quiet as a stock scooter.  However, once you get on the throttle for any amount, it gets loud quickly.  No big shock, I mean, it is a performance exhaust.  I can also say that this scooter is crazy fast with this pipe on it.  I still have to do some jetting work, but it just feels like it wants to rip through every gear.  It is very very quick.  (note, the motor is a mildly street tuned 175 with a mikuni flat slide)

I have a Lambretta Series III that had an Indian big bore exhaust on it. Well, it eventually shook itself to bits, giving up the ghost a few months ago. Right about the same time, Jet 200 announced that they would be selling the new BGM Lambretta exhaust. Good timing! After waiting for them to arrive from Europe, I finally got one from my local shop, and just recently had time to start the process of installing it. I got all the old junk off the scooter, and proceeded to put the new stuff on. Alas, I found that the new header is a bit too wide to fit on my cylinder. It hits the cooling fins. Now I have to decide whether to cut the fins, or try to jam it on there as-is. Hmmmm, where's my Dremel tool?

I have not had any time to work in the garage recently. But I dug up this photo I took of a Vespa Sprint that I worked on several months ago. It was having problems with flooding and poor idle, as well as a headlight that had vibrated apart. After some fiddling, I traced the running problems to a faulty float housing on the carb. A new one of those did the trick, and she ran great. I took the headlight out, and did a little surgery on it. I got some heavy duty adhesive, and got it all back together and rattle-free. I may have done some other work on the scooter too, but it was so long ago now that I can't remember.

A friend of mine has a nice Vespa Primavera ("Sears" VMA1) that has been sitting for awhile after being restored. It would start, but would not idle properly. So he brought it over to the garage for a little fiddling...

When it got to me, it would start and idle, but would not rev out properly, and seemed to bog when I got on the throttle. All points lead to the carburator.

Last weekend I got some time to work on a few scooters that had found their way to my garage. First up is the PX150 that is the daily ride of Steve, one of the Scooterlounge backbone support team. It seems that something strange had happened, and although the motor would start and it would go through the gears, the scooter would not move. Steve suspected that something in the clutch had given out. Time to find out...

I've beenw working on an SX Lambretta recently.  It has some big, and some little things to attend to.  One of the little things was that it was missing the rear frame badge.  It isn't a big deal, but it is these little details that really pull a scooter together.  This is a job that just about anyone can do.  I got a nice reproduction badge from Jet200.  Then, I had to pull the frame holder.  It is held on by two nuts under the frame.  In typical Lambretta fashion, it isn't just two nuts, but the whole assembly uses a stupid amount of parts.  There is the frame holder with two studs, two nuts, two flat washers, two lock washers, and two clips that make the nuts have a flat surface to tighten up.  Silly really...

Of course, even the easiest jobs get complicated on an old vehicle. This was no exception. One of the studs had problems with the threads (or was it one of the nuts?). So the nut had a hard time coming off. When it was off, I had to dress the threads on the studs with my handy metric die set. Replaced with a new nut, and she's good to go.

Here it is with the new badge,ready to install.  I could have polished the aluminum, but opted not to.  The whole scooter is very original, and has slight patina all over.  If I start polishing, it won't ever end.

Dano, head of the Scooterlounge IT team, was having some problems with his lights on his SX 200.  So we decided to have a little evening session to get them sorted out.  The SX is totally stock, with the exception of electronic ignition.  So we worked, like any good detective, going through the electrics methodically, part by part.  First we checked that there was power from the stator.  Yes.  Then we checked for power to the loom.  Yes.  Then we moved up to the headset, and checked the connections up there.  Ultimately, we found a bad ground in the wiring junction at the headlight.  That is a common source of lighting problems.  Problem solved.

One thing I wanted to highlight was Dano's regulator. Dano had Lambretta expert dial in his scooter, Derek in San Jose. Derek modified an old Lambretta regulator/rectifier box so that it could discretely hide a small regulator. He cut the bakelite internals and discarded the old electrical items. Using the old connectors at the top, he soldered in the needed connections for the regulator to the loom. When the cover is on, you can't tell that it is anything but stock. Very very nicely done!

This is the follow-up to this post where I discovered the dead piston in my friend Andrew's P200.

It took me a bit of time, but I got a new top end shipped in. I also figured that I should just tear the motor apart and inspect everything. I'm glad I did.

This is a shot of the motor when I got it most of the way apart.  As you can see, the gears are out.  At this point, next steps were to take out the crank and work on the shift cross.

I've had my buddy Andrew's P200 sitting in my garage for awhile now. (Too long... sorry Andrew!) He has owned it for awhile, but never got it running right. I took it, and did some basic troubleshooting, which in turn discovered more issues. After a new carb, new CDI, new clutch, new clutch seal, and some electrical wiring, it still wasn't running right. I finally got some time to tear into the motor this week. After pulling the top end, here was the piston. A dead duck! Crazy, but this thing still ran ok. Not great, but ok. Given the other things I've found so far, I'm just going to take the whole motor apart to inspect the rest of it. It should run nice when I'm done.

I've been working on a VBA on-and-off for quite awhile.  Eventually the owner decided to put the original motor on a shelf, and install a newer P125 motor for increased reliability and power.  I built the motor up for him, and installed it in the scoot.  Now it was time for it to return to its owner.  He lives about an hour and a half drive from me, across several bridges and long highway stretches, so trucking it was the best answer. 

I've seen too many scooters just leaned over in a truck, or tied with rope... if you do that, you're doing it wrong.  Here's how I move scooters.  First, I get my truck ready.  Note: it helps to have a friend assist with loading, but I almost always end up going solo.  I try to move my truck so that I have some sort of raised area behind the rear wheels.  This makes the distance up to the rear gate much less.  My old house had a nice curb, and it was super easy to load.  As you can see in the photo above, my current joint doesn't have such a luxury, so I use a light rise in the street.  I also point the truck down the hill, so as to use gravity to my advantage. 

As you see, everything is set up, the ramp is obvious.  Less obvious are the tie downs, which I have set on top of the edge of the truck bed, so I can reach them when I get the scooter up there.

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.

A friend of mine has a Lambretta Series I that he thinks may have a tweaked frame. There is some info on the frame specs for the Series III scooters, but not much on the internet about the Series I/II. So I pulled out some of my old manuals, and came up with the crucial measurement. If you have a suspect Lambretta frame, check the distance from the chrome ring to the top of the toolbox. The distance should be 17 inches, +/- 1/8 inch.

I did some work on my friend's brakes awhile ago, and now have had a few moments to write it up.  As you may recall, his back brakes were bad.  But so were the fronts, so here is how I went about replacing them.

This is the business end of the front fork in all its glory.  Note that the rubber on the bottom of the shock is in rough shape.  I chose to ignore it, since it was still functional.  That's an easy enough fix, if my buddy wants to takle it himself.  Now, on to the disassembly! 

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.

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!  

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.

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've been working on getting the orange GP 150 back to running shape.  (See Part 1, and Part 2).  I previously replaced the stuck clutch, only to discover that the top end was locked up solid.  It is time to investigate further.  First, I took off all the extraneous body parts as well as the carb and exhaust. I removed the rear shock, so I could get the motor to pivot lower to allow me easier access to the top end.

Click below the jump for more exciting motor repair action!

Well, I finally got some time to dig in to that tasty Lambretta GP150 that I featured last month.  I had tried to kick it over, but the clutch was clearly stuck.  Time to crack the cases and put in some new clutch plates!

More Lambretta clutch goodness below the jump

A friend of mine has some really nice Lambrettas, and is slowly downsizing his collection. I recently helped broker a sale of this really original and tidy GP150. This is an original Italian one that was first sold in the UK. Note that the Italian market version would have the "DL 150" badge, rather than the GP. I'm working on making a gallery for this scooter, and once I get the time to build a page, you can find other photos here.

I agreed to help the new buyer of the scooter by getting it running for him. The GP is in great shape, but it has been sitting in my friend's collection for many years. He guessed that he had not started it in at least 10 years. So there are certainly going to be some cobwebs to clear out.

Things I immediately noticed were that the tires were dry rotted, and the clutch was stuck. Opening the gas tank released a toxic brew of fuel gone bad, so that would need to be sorted.

More below the jump.

I was working on getting this scooter ready to drive after a long hibernation, and found that the clutch was stuck.  The plates must have gotten gelled together, which is not totally uncommon for scooters that were sitting for a long time.  Time to pull the clutch and replace the clutch plates!

First, I got the scooter up on my lift.  I put the centerstand on a two-by-four to get it lifted up a bit, then I clamped the front wheel in the vise on my lift.  With the rear wheel up in the air, I could start working.  I pulled the bottom rear shock bolt from the motor, and let the motor drop a bit. Then I removed the rear wheel.

Continue after the jump for the rest of the story... 

A friend just got some new tires, and asked me to help get them set up.  This is a pretty easy job, that you should be able to do at home.  However, there are a few tricks.  Let's get started!

The first thing you want to do is to get everything ready and set out.  If you are using a used rim, you'll have to get the old tire off.  That can be a major pain, and will likely be the topic of another post.  For now, I'm going to assume that you have a bare set of rims, a new tire, and a new tube. 

I've been riding my trusty PX200 daily for the past year. I've had it for around 8 years, but really only started commuting on it when I moved, and added some fairly significant highway driving to my commute. In any case, it has been a good scooter, as one expects from a late model P-series. However, in the last month, I was smelling gas frequently when I stopped. At first, I thought I had a leak at the petcock under the tank. I looked under there, and I found no leak. Then I thought it was the carb. So I replaced the carb float bowl and needle, but I still smelled gas. At some point, the leak got so bad, that I could physically see fuel coming out of the bottom of the scooter... ok, time to really hunt it down!

After pulling the tank again, and finding no fuel, I felt behind the motor for the fuel line. It was wet. So I figured that I should pull the entire fuel line to see if I could determine the cause of the leak.  When I pulled the fuel line out, I could see that it had gotten hard, and had actually cracked in several spots.  The cracks must have been getting worse slowly, and eventually gotten bad enough to leak.  Time to replace the fuel line!

A friend of mine has a VBB with a newere LML motor in it.  It is a Vietnam resto, but surprisingly, it is one of the only ones I have seen that was actually pretty good.  He's been riding it around for a year or so as a "Sunday driver".  Recently, he took it out and noticed it was making a funny sound.  Shortly thereafter, the motor siezed up solid.  Not a soft easy sieze, but a "something mechanical broke bad" solid sieze.

So, he hauled it over to my garage, and I proceeded to try to determined what happened.

First, I got it up on the lift.  I figured I'd look for the easy stuff first, and slowly dig into the motor. I suspected something in the top end, but I want to be thorough.  So I'm going to start with the clutch, since that is easiest to get to.  I pulled off the rear wheel, to get access to the clutch cover, and then pulled the cover. 

I had an old Vespa seat lying around for a long time, and decided that I should put it to some use.  The problem was that the seat cover was trashed.  However, the rest of the seat was fine.  A new seat now costs around $140 USD, so time to fix this one!  This is an easy project that you can finish in an hour or two.  All you need is an old seat, and a new seat cover.  The covers are not too expensive, and should only cost around $60 USD.

So the first step is cleaning all the old seat bits from the existing seat.  First, remove the seat lock by taking off the three small screws that hold it onto the seat frame.  Then remove the rear "Piaggio" badge from the seat by pulling off the two retaining screws.  Then pull the seat cover clips from the bottom of the seat frame, and take off the tatty old seat cover.  That leaves you with the metal frame, as shown above.

When last we talked about this project, I had removed all the old original parts, and it was time to start putting all the tasty new bits on the scooter. 

Here we have the heart of the matter - the stator.  I got this stator from Jet200.  They have gotten a line of new stators made by BGM in Germany.  As you can see in the photo, these things are just great.  Having used the Indian-made electronic stators that have been available in the past, I can say with certainty that these German ones are light-years better in terms of build quality.  You can see that the coils are very nice and evenly wound, the ignition components are very high quality, and the solders and connections are just top notch.  We'll see a bit more as we move through the installation.

So, I installed the stator as you see above.  I just loosly put it in place, as I'll need to adjust the stator as I get to the timing later on.  I pulled the wiring loom through the hole in the flange at the top, and used a bit of WD40 so it slid through the rubber grommet with ease.

A friend has a Series III Lambretta that has been nothing but unreliable.  My stock query in those situations is "Have you installed an electronic ignition yet?".  I'd have to say that 90% of the problems that stock Lambrettas have can be traced to their crap ignition/electrical system.  So here we are, replacing the stock Ducati system on this scooter, with a nice, shiny, new electronic ignition I sourced through Jet200 Performance in Seattle.

I must say, the parts I got from Jet200 were great.  I've done quite a few electronic conversions.  All of them were with Indian made components.  They have have been fine (apart from a few faulty components out of the box)... but the German made stuff that Jet200 stocks is just head and shoulders above what I have used before.  The stators look OEM quality.  This is especially in comparison to the Indian stuff, which often look like a blind guy soldered the connections in a back alley sweat-shop.  I'll discuss each of the components in detail as we get to insalling them, but suffice to say that I'll be using these German stators from Jet200 every time I do this job again!

So, now, let's turn to the job at hand.  I got the scooter up on the lift, and took off the sidepanel to survey the landscape.  It all looks pretty tidy and stock in there - time to dig in! 

A friend of mine has a 60's Allstate Vespa that is largely original.  It still has the non-dampened "springer" front fork on it.  Anyone who has ridden one of these can tell you that this set-up is laughable at best, and dangerous at worst.  Many people who own one of these Allstates, and ride it regularly, will update the fork to the Vespa version. 

On this one, it resides in a collection and isn't ridden much.  However, my friend noticed that the front end was a bit funky and asked me to take a look.  I quickly determined that the bottom of the front spring had somehow become detached from its mounting on the front hub assembly.

You can see how the spring is hanging loose from the front assembly.  The bit of brass color peaking through in the photo is where the spring should be attached.  Whoa!  This is very dangerous, to say the least.

When last we left this project, I had realized that the motor was not getting any two stroke oil, and had removed the old top end.  I had started preparing the new top end for installation, and that leaves us here...  

I previously modified the locating pin on the barrel, and made sure that it fit ok.  Now, I prepared the barrel further by chamfering the ports.  Basically, I just took a file, and smoothed out the edges of the ports inside the barrel.  When these are cut, the edges are quite sharp.  They can quickly wear down the piston rings.  It helps to just smooth them down a bit to reduce any possibility of bad stuff happening.  Every little bit helps when building a motor.

Read more below the jump!

A friend of mine has a 2005 PX 150, a fairly rare scooter in the US.  In fact, his was one of the very first brought in for that one-year-only scooter here in the States.  That doesn't mean much though, since those first 600 scoots got some fairly basic "upgrades" like a special metallic green paint, brown seat, and a small badge with the "limited edition Serie America" number.  The PX's are great, and since there are only a small handful in the US (a few thousand at best), it is really worth seeking one out.  In any case, my friend bought this used, with super low miles on it... but it just never ran well.  Eventually, he got tired of trying to make it run right, and brought it by for a thorough going over.

The first thing I did, was take off the carb to clean it, and check for anything strange.  I immediately noticed that there was a problem.  As you know, the PX's have oil injection.  There is a special carb that works with the injection system.  If you look at the photo above, you see the bottom of the carb.  There is a small hole at the bottom right of the carb.  That is the hole that the two stroke oil goes through on its way to be mixed with the gas.  We like that hole, because it means we don't have to mix the oil with the gas ourselves.  I've seen people disconnect the automatic oil injector because they don't trust it.. I find that silly.  

Now here we see the carb base gasket.  Notice anything?  There is a small impression on the bottom right where that hole in the carb sits.  Note that there is no corresponding hole in the gasket.  This means that the oil injector was blocked off, and no oil was getting into the cylinder.  Yowch!  You can buy carb base gaskets for oil injected carbs, and non-oil injected carbs.  It is pretty important that you don't use a non-injected gasket on an injected carb.

Click below the jump to see what happens with no oil!

When last we left off with the shock replacement, I realized that I would have to remove the shock buffer.  To do that, I needed to remove the gas tank.  I had removed the parcel tray, and now, we're moving on to the next steps...

After removing the parcel tray, I needed to remove the seat.  The seat has three bolts.  The two on the back are easy to get to with a ratchet, the front requires a wrench. 

More shock removal fun after the jump!

A friend of mine brought me his VBA for some basic maintenence. I quickly realized that his rear shock was totally blown out. So along with working on his carb - replacing the float and needle - I told him we needed to put on a new shock. I didn't take pictures of the carb work, but I did remember to bring my camera when I worked on the shock.

Let's get to it!

Here we have a view up the skirt, as it were... You can see the underside of the frame where the shock attaches to both the motor and the frame.  We will be removing the bottom bolt, which is easily accessible, and the nut at the top of the shock, which isn't.  Mmmmm gunky!

More shock removal fun below the jump.

When we last posted, I had gotten most of the motor disconnected from the frame. Let's continue, and finally get this motor out!

We are going to reuse the gear selector box, so I will pull it off as one unit with the control cables.  This has the added bonus of saving me the time to re-install and adjust the cables.  Of course, while the selector box is off, it is an excellent time to make sure the cables are perfectly adjusted. 

I start by pulling cover off the top of the selector box, then I remove the two nuts off the outside of the selector box.  Then, I turn the control on the headset, while at the same time, putting gentle pressure on the selector box outward.  Once the box is free from the motor, angle it downward so the selector arm on the box is free of the arm inside the transmission.

More motor replacement fun below the jump!

When last we left off with the motor swap, we had just removed the top of the airbox, and pulled the air filter and choke cable.  Now, on to the carb!

First, remove the fuel line.  (Make sure the fuel lever is set to "off")  It is held on by a single 10mm bolt.  While it is slotted for a screwdriver, it is easier to use a ratchet to get it off.  When you have the bolt off, pull the fuel line free of the carb, then down and out through the carb box.  You may need to remove the "banjo", or fuel line/carb coupler to fit it through the bottom of the airbox.

A friend of mine has a '59 Allstate with a toasted motor, and just so happened to have another good rebuilt motor on the shelf. Lucky him! So I'm doing the motor swap. This one is pretty straight forward, since the two motors are identical. However, it would not be too different if you were going to drop in a brand new Indian crate motor to your ride. So let's let the fun begin...

First, I got the scoot up on the lift, and just inspected everything. If you don't have a lift, you'll want to get something up under the rear of the frame and the centerstand so the motor is up off the ground.

Here's a view of the other side. Since this isn't my scooter, I'm just checking it over to make sure there isn't anything strange going on before I dive in. This scooter is totally stock, so no worries.

This is one of those jobs that is easier with two people, but is certainly doable with just one.  I didn't have an assistant, so I'll show you how I did it by myself. 

More motor swap fun below the jump...

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...

I did a bit of work in the garage this weekend, all of which will end up on the blog in the coming week.  The first scooter I worked on was a '59 Vespa 150.  The '58-59 Vespa 150's were transition scooters.  These were the first of the rotary valve models.  In fact, the very early VBA's used a "hybrid" piston ported motor in the new narrower frame.  These didn't last very long, and I've only seen a few of them over the years.

On thing about living in Berkeley California is that there are a lot of scooters around, and no real shops in town.  There are two great shops in San Francisco, but many people just can't or don't want to make the trek over the Bay Bridge with their scooter for service.  I end up working on quite a few scooters owned by people in my neighborhood.  This VBA was one such scoot.

It is an interesing scooter from the perspective of its status as a short time transition model.  This motor is one of the first rotary valve versions.  It has some interesting features which are only visible when you open up the carb airbox.  I took a few photos to document it.

This scooter had several problems which together manifested themselves in hard starting and non-reliable running.  The owner had taken the scooter to the a new Vespa dealer, who did some work on it.  By work, I mean they took $500 of the owner's money and came nowhere near fixing the problem.  Warning to all, be cautious before taking your vintage scooter to a new Vespa shop!

After a bit of checking, I think I found the sources of the problem.  First, upon checking the spark with my trusty spark check tool, it appeared to be weak and somewhat intermittent.  Looking at the ignition coil, it looked like it was the original HT coil fitted to the scooter at the factory 50 years ago.  I sourced a new coil, and will post about the replacement when it arrives.

The other problem that I noticed was that the scooter didn't appear to be getting fuel from the carb.  I checked the fuel supply to the carb from the gas tank, and that was working ok.  So, it appeared that a carb clean/rebuild was in order.

I took the carb off the scooter.  This carb is somewhat interesting in that it is the first series of these Del'Orto SI carbs which were used on all the later Vespas.  These first SI's are different from the later ones in a couple of significant ways.  The first, and most obvious is that they do not have a enrichener choke circuit.  As you can see from the photos below, these early scooters used an air choke, rather than a fuel enrichener choke. I guess this system didn't work too well, because they changed to the fuel enrichener choke on the motors just after this one. 

On the inside of the carb, there were also some differences.  The main one is that the fuel filter bowl above the float is significantly smaller than on the later carbs.  As an aside, when I took this particular carb apart, I found that the needle was toast, and the float was completely stuck.  So fixing that should help the running.

Given that this carb looked a bit worn, and the owner is not a home hobbyist mechanic, I would normally simply replace the float or the entire carb to ensure reliable running.  However, since this scooter is so early, and has the unique carb setup, I could not do that.  After thoroughly cleaning the carb, I just replaced the needle and float, and put in some new gaskets. 

Above, you see a close up of the carb and airbox interior.  Very sparse and unfussy in here compared to the later scooters.  Note the carb stamp "SI 20/17".  Also note that the fuel line hole on the airbox is small, with no rubber grommet as on the later airboxes.

Here is a detail shot on the choke mechanism.  The choke cable attaches to that little arm on the right side of the picture.  The arm actuates a small flap, which you can see at the top of the picture.  That flap closes off the air flow to the carb, thus richening the mixture.  I'm not sure how well this system works.  I guess I'll find out once I get the scooter all back together!

I've been working on scooters for a lot of years, but I recently attempted my first speedometer repair last weekend.  It wasn't that I felt I couldn't do it before, but I just never had occasion to.  Normally, I just don't care if the speedometer was working or not.  Since this was a friend's scooter, I figured I'd try to delve into the speedo to get it working correctly.  No time like the present!

So this particular speedometer exhibited some of the typical speedo problems that you see on old scooters.  It was sort of working, but was making a loud screeching noise, and sometimes the needle would bounce around wildly.  That is the death spiral for a speedometer.  Normally after doing that for awhile, the needle stops working entirely.  I decided to try to fix this one before it imploded...

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This is the tale of the small, hidden issues which make vintage vehicles so much of a frustration to may people.  My friend had a 60's Allstate Vespa (similar to a VNB) which kept breaking gear cables.  After I replaced the cable the second time myself, I decided to take a closer look at what was going on.  Scooters should not break gear cables but once in a great while, so something was clearly amiss.

After checking from top to bottom, I noticed that the attachment point for the cable barrel-end in the handle bars looked a bit off.  When I took it off the handlebar, I saw what you see on the left side of the picture above.  It was clearly bent, but what is hard to see is that the chewed-up area on the inside of the cable pulley actually has some sharp edges.  Howe they got there, I do not know.  But I do know that they were acting as a knife, and cutting the cable.  You see a brand new pulley on the right side for comparison. 

There are some fairly common scooter projects that are actually quite simple, but can be intimidating to the novice.  Replacing the fuel line is one of them.  The intimidation factor can be traced to the fact that the fuel line runs under the gas tank, and through the frame up under the carb airbox. 

I was recently working on a Rally 200 which had poor quality old (though not original) fuel line, as well as a strange rubbery plastic oil line.  In order to get this scooter in top running condition, I had to replace both the fuel and oil lines.  Here we go:

As with every project, get all of your parts together first.  Read through these directions to get a sense of what parts you may need, and then buy them.  Once thing to consider is that the fuel line has to be the exact right size.  Too short, and it won't reach the carb.  Too long, and it will kink, and not allow the fuel to "gravity feed" to the carb.  The easiest thing to do is to buy the correct fuel line from a reputable scooter dealer.  Make sure to have them double check that it is the correct length. 

First, you need to take off the seat by removing the three seat bolts.  Then remove the two rear tank bolts.

As you may have guessed, I have several scooters that I could ride at any given time... however, the one I ride the most is my "beater".  It is a Vespa P125 with a crappy flat black paint job.  I ride it to the train every day, and run errands on it frequently.  It looks bad enough, and it worth so little money, that I just don't mind if something happens to it.  Although it looks bad, I make sure that mechanically, it is in perfect condition.  I've done a lot of work to it over the years, but when you ride one of these things daily, dilligent maintenence is required.

Recently, my front shock gave it up, after 30 years of rough service.  For me, shocks, tires, and brakes are all very important safety issues to keep in perfect working order.  As soon as the shock seemed to get soft, I ordered a new unit to replace it.  A shock in good condition should rebound quickly, and have no bounce.  Mine was getting spongy and bouncy!  Time to dump it...

With the rear wheel and hub out of the way, it is much easier to access the clutch.  Since I would have to wait for parts to put the rear wheel back on anyway, it seemed like a good time to tear into the clutch.  I pulled off the motor dust cover by removing two of the three bolts on the clutch cover.  Then I removed the rear motor bolt, and dropped the motor down at the rear.  After removing the final clutch cover nut, and the clutch cable off the clutch arm, I could then try to pull off the clutch cover. 

Normally the covers come right off, but this one felt stuck.  After a little struggling, it finally came off.  With it off, it was easy to tell why it was stuck - someone had put some sort of silicone gasket sealer on it.  This area doesn't get a lot of oil seepage, and the cover has a metal lip on it.  Gasket sealer isn't necessary.  I'll scrape it off, and install a new rubber o-ring on the clutch cover. 

With the cover off, I had access to the clutch.  I used an air-powered impact wrench with a wobble extender to get the clutch nut off.  It makes quick work of it, that's for sure.  Next, I used the special clutch removal tool to get the clutch off.  There are not many special tools that you need in Vespa repair work, but the handful of clutch and flywheel pullers are an absolute must-have.

On the left, you see the clutch in place on the motor with the pressure plate in the center.  I removed that plate to get access to the retaining nut.  The Super Sport clutch is fairly similar to those found on later other largeframe Vespas.

It is a fairly simple operation to get the pressure plate off the clutch.  I simply used a flat blade screw driver to push the retaining clip towards the center of the plate, and pulled the plate off the clutch.

With the rear hub off the motor, I could then inspect the area in an attempt to determine what was causing the grinding sound coming from that area.  I immediately noticed that the whole brake drum was filled with a fine powder.  I also noticed that the back side of the hub looked very shiny, so there was some rubbing clearly going on.  I had expected to find some rubbing on the outside of the rear brake backing plate, but I had not expected it on the back side of the hub!

Moving on to the rear hub and clutch requires that I get the scooter up on the lift, and get the motor up off the ground.  I locked the front wheel in the wheel-vise, and got the motor airborne.  This allowed me to get the rear hub off the rear axle without too much trouble.

I can't tell you how much easier it is to work on these scooters with a table lift.  You can do all this work with the scooter on the floor if you have to, but it is just much less of a strain up on the lift!

Now that I had tracked the problem down to the intake manifold, all I had to do was tighten it down, and the problem would be solved... right?  Uh-huh, well it is never that easy in vintage vehicle land. 

I noticed right away that someone had replaced one of the studs which the manifold mounts to, to a bolt.  So there was a case stud on one side, and a bolt on the other.  Naturally, it was the bolt side which was loose.  As I attempted to tighten it, I realized that something had stripped.  Of course, it was not the bolt which was stripped, but the threads in the case.  This is the reason why studs are used in applications like this.  The case is made of soft metal, and it is very easy to overtighten something, and strip out the threads. 

Now, I was faced with a problem.  The area which was stripped was very hard to reach.  In order to get to it, I would have to take off the top end and fully drop the motor.  With all of that out of the way, I saw that the case didn't appear to be destroyed, and I thought that I could do a thread repair with a heli-coil.

I do a lot of work on scooters in the garage.  Mainly I try to squeeze an hour or two of garage time in on weeknights if I'm not too tired.  Sometimes, if I'm really lucky, I can get a solid block of several hours during a weekend day... but that is a rarity.  I'm going to try to document the work I do in the "Garage Time" segment.  So without further ado, here's the first entry, motor work on a '67 Sears Primavera VMA1.

This scooter came in with the classic symptoms of an air leak.  Those are high reving motor, which settles down when you pull out the choke, and a chirping sound when it is running.  The chirping sound is often a symtom of something not tightened down properly and air getting sucked into the combustion chamber.  An air leak on a two stroke is not only a bad thing, it is downright deadly.  If left unrepaired, an air leak creates a lean air/fuel mixture condition, extreme heat in the combustion chamber, which then results in a melted piston...