Modern Vespa

how did you cut that off the cylindrical portion without making a horrible mess of it? it's so clean

SIP's "grade A perfect repair" TIG welds only penetrated about 1/16" (if that?) into the material. And it was only welded on the outside, not the whole perimeter of where the two pieces joined. It was more or less a "score and snap" to remove the flat portion of the bracket from the cylindrical portion. SIP's welds were most likely strong enough for the intended purpose, but still...


I made some time this morning to reweld the bracket together where I wanted it to be...while opening up another can of worms. The cylinder head now fouls out against the frame...of course

Got dang you just keep getting curve balls. In the end when it's all said and done it'll be worth it at least!

Great work!

For me a Tonya Harding (a hammer) would fix that head fouling the frame situation real quick.
You may have better plans.

Heat and Jeff Gillooly's hammer would probably have done the trick, but I ended up cutting yet another notch into the frame. The main benefit is that I now have socket and wrench access to the engine case's swingarm bolt. Without that access, the SIP engine mount adapter would have to also be unbolted from the frame, and the long bolt (that passes through the original VB1 swingarm bolt location) would have to be loosed up as well.

I now also lack any sort of clearance to fit the plastic cylinder shroud over the cylinder. But I'm going to try to use heat and a hammer to gain the little bit of clearance that I'm after. If that won't work, then I'll just try a larger hammer.

For the past week I've been wondering if the exhaust will fit up with no modifications. Well let me reassure you that it too will need to be "warmed over" a bit as well. I mocked up a random Sito+ on the engine, and it fouls out against the underside of the floorboard...of course.

I'll also have to come up with a solution for aligning the rear shock as well. Currently in order for the shock to line up with the engine mount, the upper shock mount would have to be relocated a full 1" out further than where it is now! I'm thinking about making a lower offset shock mount. I think that would be the least evasive option at this point.

Before I go any further, I really need to get a fuel tank. The scooter didn't come with one when I bought it, and if it had come with one, I'd venture to guess that it would have been rusted to death. Currently the T5 carb box cover sits so high up into the frame, that I might actually have to notch the fuel tank as well! Hopefully not, because if that happens to be the case, then it could also mean that I might have gravity fuel delivery problems too. So right now I'm contemplating on either buying one of those fancy oversized "Six Days" fuel tanks. I've done a few local ISDE (International Six Days Event) enduro races on my KTM dirtbike, so I'm all about building a sei giorni tribute, but at the same time I like the super clean round lines of just having a single saddle seat and no rear racks or anything. It's going to be a tough call for sure.

And it's a relief to know that the engine seems to fit fine under the cowl. What I did realize though, is that it will be a pain to fit the rear wheel over the rear disc brake assembly. I'll have to remove the lower shock bolt and swing down the engine in order to gain enough clearance to slip the rim on.




*i was just looking closer at my pics, and now I'm wondering if the kickstart lever will foul out against the floorboard. Answers on a postcard.

I just re-found the link to the German scooter forum where they are swapping PX engines into Wideframes. It's a great read...if you can read German https://www.germanscooterforum.de/topic/64116-wideframe-conversion-teil-2/?page=39

what kind of tank does that beast take?

man, talk about pound to fit and paint to match. what a doozy.

if you got the room to move the shock, that would be my first choice. but I don't see a relocation bracket as a problem to be honest.

do think some type (read anything tuned) of pipe might be a better fit and not foul out on the floor board because it kicks down a little further?

no kick start, just push start. problem solved!

The frame is a VB1T, but it looks like some of the early GS tanks fit as well?
https://www.sip-scootershop.com/en/product/tank-sei-giorni-style_752072L
https://www.sip-scootershop.com/en/product/tank-sei-giorni-sport_752072XL
https://www.sip-scootershop.com/en/product/tank-sip_75207200
https://www.sip-scootershop.com/en/product/tank_75207210

There doesn't seem to be any room to move the shock, but i'll definitely take a 4th looksee.

I tuned style pipe might fit better? But i'm guessing that pretty much whatever exhaust that's mounted up is going to rub.

No kickstart...that's how my T5 trackbike is setup. I removed the kickstart gear and used a dummy quadrant inside the case. It's not optimal for push starting up hills, but luckily it always started up very quickly.

The other difficult find will be a seat. I'd really like to find a used one, but new might be my only option. https://www.scooter-center.com/en/saddle-oem-quality-vespa-vl2-till-vl3-vb1-central-spring-7673342?number=7673342

Welp...it's going to be a few months before I can work on any scooter projects. I ended up crushing my right foot at the Desert 100 race (first weekend of April). I finally had surgery on my foot yesterday afternoon. A few reinforcement plates were installed to help patch up the bones and a ligament. You know what they say, if you wanna play, you gotta pay. I'm not looking for a pity party, but I'm bummed out about missing Portland's Spring Scoot rally and the Oregon 100...as well as a two other upcoming dirtbike races. I was really hoping to meet some of you guys here face to face at the Oregon 100.

I'm guessing that I won't be finishing this scooter until late summer now....ARRRG!

Dang dude! Sorry to hear that. First of all, get well soon. You mosdef paid the Iron price.

wow yeah, bummer to hear. foot problems make everything tough, my wife had a foot surgery in the fall. make sure you get some good PT and follow the directions!

Well shoot! Heal up fast.
(I have mucho empathy. Been waiting for neck surgery for like 60 days. Finally scheduled for April 28th and then will be about 2 months before I can get on a bike. Mmmmrph.)

Last edited by Birdsnest on Sun, 24 Apr 2022 12:59:26 +0000; edited 1 time

Damn. Sorry to hear that. Heal up fast!

NOOOOOOOO! So sorry man. Here's to healing up fast and straight...

Maybe Chris and I can make a run up to your neck of the woods over the summer sometime....

Thanks for the words of encouragement everyone! I don't know how I managed to get into surgery so darn fast. The doctor put my foot in a compression cast for a few weeks (just long enough for the swelling to go down), then went at my foot with a knife. Good luck to your wife's continuing healing John! And good luck to you Birdsnest for getting your neck sorted out 100%!

Right now I'm kickin' back with my icing my foot while it's elevated and taking pain pills. I don't have cable TV, so I'm relegated to watching prime time tv. I've been catching up with all the favorites...Matlock, Magnum PI, Knight Rider. I lucked out and got to watch a late night Planet Of the Apes triple header marathon over the weekend. There's also something to be said of watching a Godzilla movie at 2am.

Well...I played and then I paid. A few broken metatarsals, a few more fractured metatarsals, and a tendon that got ripped from the bone. No doubt it sucks to have a painful injury, but I realize that even with a smooshed up foot I still feel blessed to have great health both physically and mentally!

Funny thing Scott...I smashed my foot April 3rd, went to get it checked out on the 6th, got it in a fiberglass cast on the 14th (Thursday night), left to road trip to LA the 15th (Friday 3am), arrived in LA at 1:15am at Greasy's pad, hung out and talked stories and left at 5am, arrived at 6am to buy a non-op clapped out turd of a KTM 625 SXC dirtbike, slept for 1 hour in front of the seller's house, turned my Scion xB back north, and arrived back home just in time for Sunday's Easter dinner family drama back at home!

It was super cool to meet and hang out with Greasy for those short 4.5 hours. Definitely great conversion (and brownies and tea) the whole time! I REALLY wanted to have more time in LA to hang out with greasy AND to meet up with a bunch of others. Greasy and I did talk about quite a few of you guys (and we both said good things to say about everyone...I promise).

So basically it was a 2k mile round trip just to buy a crappy dirtbike. And the only reason I went after that bike is because that particular year and model came with a specific CDI ignition box (that is NLA) and a FCR41 carb! I need it to swap onto my KTM 640A.

So i crushed my foot a little over halfway through the race. The terrain was SUPER rocky and challenging this year. Way more so than in the past. It was also insanely dusty. Many times I couldn't see past the end of my front fender, so I'd have to slow down to almost a stop. So to sum it up, race conditions were way less than ideal. I ended up dumping my bike on a steep rocky hill climb. I tried to get out of the way of the bike, but my right foot got smashed between the muffler and a very large rock. I tried "walking it off", but dang, there was definitely no doing that! I ended up picking up the bike (once again very painful) and keeping racing (more like riding) to the finish.

Zoom in on in the picture and you can see my crumpled muffler. My buddy made about 15 minute video of himself racing that day. It's edited pretty darn well, so it's worth the watch. It also gives a good insight of how dusty the conditions were. Watch the whole video when you have some time. I make a cameo appearance on my blue and orange ktm 950 at
11:48 and 13:05. Both appearances were after I broke my foot, and it was painful to stand on the footpegs. The terrain was also too rough to sit in the seat. https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=BfG0ExX_Pq8&feature=emb_logo

Looks rough but rewarding and the foot looked pretty bad!

How long does this race take approx? Even if you didn't destroy the foot, it seems like you'd still be sore as f for a day or two after that thing.

Well - I'd wondered what was up with one of my favorite threads.
Seems you've hijacked it with your inconvenient injury.
🙂

Sorry to hear.
That ride afterward - with foot swelling - and knowing it was not going to be pretty when boot came off - could not have been pleasant.
Great pic with muffler damage...
That was a hard strike.

It's kind of subjective in how long this particular race takes. The course and conditions are different every year. If there were zero dust, then it should take me 2:45~3:15 hours? It also depends upon how what format the race is set up. Last fall I raced on two different days in two different classes on two different bikes. They were milti lap races, and Saturday's race was a minimum of 4 hours, and Sunday's race was a minimum of 3 hours long. So if you get tired at 2 hours 59 minutes and don't want to go out for another 30ish minute lap, well, you earn yourself a big fat DNF. And yeah, even with two good arms and feet racing a dirtbike takes a high level of physical strength. Imagine going wall squats non stop for 3 to 4 hours. That's literally what I'm doing out there. I used to just run a whole lot to train for riding and racing dirtbikes...anywhere from 40 to 80 miles a week. What I found out was that running and riding a dirtbike took completely different muscles! I ended up joining an intense many years ago (aren't they all though?) hour long spin class at the gym 4 days a week. I also started lifting weights (for my first time a few years ago) for an additional 2.5 hours on those same 4 days. I usually sneak in 1 to 3 mile run 3 days a week as well. Yes it's whole lot of time at the gym...yes I'm single so I can make time to go to the gym! While I'm not really strong from all that time
spent lifting weights in the gym, I do have a very high level of endurance. I noticed within about 3 months of going to the gym that racing a dirtbike got WAY more easy. Normally a dirtbike would totally kick my butt physically wise. Every single one of my arm, leg, back, mid section muscles would be crazy sore for a few days after a race. Now I that I actually physically train my body for for a particular discipline, i can push myself much further and harder and still have a faster recovery time. And I'm nowhere the fastest dirt rider or racer. It's just one of my other passions besides my old Vespas and Lambrettas.

You should do kettlebell goblet squats every day. That really works those muscles. I used to be super healthy and fit in my mid 20's (30 mi a day on bicycle, Kung fu 2 days a week twice a day for 3 hours) until I moved to NYC. Then I got fat for the last 14 years until I couldn't stand it anymore. Closer I got to 40 the worse I felt, and worse I slept. Finally at 41, in December I signed up for a personal trainer.. and in January I started doing kettlebell workouts at home 4 days a week for an hour each day. Single Arm alternating swings, turkish get ups, goblet squats and clean and presses. Plus some heavy club excersizes to build shoulder muscles. 18 lbs down in 4 months. Hips/Thighs back and abs are growing fast from that. 32 lbs to go. Kettlebells really kick your ass and heart. Whole body beat down. I imagine that would help with dirt bike racing as well!

BTW, cheapest vespa tuning I've ever done! I think I've gained 10 mph top speed in the past 4 months. ha

Wow...

It totally sucks to be in great shape, and got all kinds of stuff planned, then BAM, something snaps in the ole body and down you go for the count. Your attitude is stellar, and that's the most important thing.

The race looks rad, but those conditions were harsh...very harsh. And you are a road warrior - and back for Easter family mayhem! Ha!

I've been to a few of those Easters. It was always brunch in our family - Eggs Benedict and Mamosas. Twenty some odd people minimum. My mother loved it!

Well, no Oregon100 for you! But I'm getting ready. Maybe B62 on Friday night and Ruby for the ride. Choices, choices.

Heal fast my friend...

It's been many months since I worked on this scooter. Crushing my foot 6-1/2 months ago really knocked the wind out of my sails for carrying and lifting around awkward items...such as oh, SCOOTER FRAMES.

I got motivated to start work again on this scooter earlier this week. I mocked up a rear shock, but the springs fouled out against the rear of the carb box big time. I had planned to just do a simple modification on the VB1's stock upper shock bracket mount, but I found out that wouldn't work in my application after I installed the airbox. That definitely caught me off guard. I had to just walk away from the scooter for a while after that. Turns out that SIP makes an upper conversion PX shock mount bracket to fit a VB1, but after studying the pictures of it online tells me that there's absolutely no way it would fit my scooter.

After racking my brain for a bit, I figured I could fab one up. I had a bunch of remnant 316 stainless steel in my shop. I started out with a 6" long piece of 3/16" 3"x3" square. I put it in a shop press to mimic the same angle as the VB1's original bracket mount. It was sketchy as all get out, but I managed to get it parallelogramerized.








I should have been wearing a full face helmet when I attempted to press this. I got lucky and the square chunk when flying off the opposite direction of my face.

I then had to rhombus up a portion of it to match the curve in the frame. It involved making a few slices and pounding down a portion of the bracket. This is what it looks like after the rhombroiled bracket was welded up.

I then cut a flat piece of 3/16" thick plate. I bolted the plate to the upper rear rubber shock mount. I put duct tape on the shock in order to protect the piston from weld splatter. After mocking everything up with and without a shock spring I made a couple tack welds.

I installed two gussets to the mounting plate then welded everything together. Some of the hard to reach corners got some really ugly welds. Stainless takes a ton more heat than mild steel, so it can be more difficult to get pretty looking welds when you can't get the gun nozzle close enough to the material. The whole bracket is overbuilt, so I have no concern about a couple ugly welds.

I love the technical terms parallelogramerized and rhombroiled.

Good job in not getting impaled by a flying parallelogram! And I'm glad the ankle/foot is getting back to usable again...

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to use a stock PX shock or an aftermarket SIP shock. There's enough room to fit either shock in there (the SIP shock has a smaller diameter spring than the OEM PX shock). I did temporarily "borrow" the SIP rear shock off of my pink PK200 for mocking everything up today. As of this evening, the SIP shock is reinstalled back on the PK200.

The next step is to decide just which shock I'll be using. I'll then have to find out how much stroke the shock has so that I can figure out how much uptravel there will be. Once that is figured out I can start clearancing the frame so I can have room for the airbox assembly. I think I'll probably choose a SIP shock because if I remember correctly, they have less shock travel than an OEM PX shock. Normally limited shock travel is a bad thing, but it might work to my benefit in this application.

I spent the extra time to make sure that there will be zero binding or side load on the shock's shaft during the entire stroke of the piston's travel. I also now won't have to offset the lower shock mount inward. So a win win for me.


Plenty of room around the airbox with an OEM PX shock.

And plenty of room with a SIP shock.

Well, I was never good at geometry or English back in high school, but I somehow manage alright as an adult.

As for the foot, I'd say it's currently at 10%. I think I need to go in for seconds in the surgery room. I mainly just hobble around now. One of my friends surprised me with one of those Colman mini bikes. It's been a foot saver for me to ride the 150 meters over to the shop and back multiple times a day.

Wow. Great sorting! 100% belly laughed.

The creative engineering performed this week is impressive!

Damn, sorry to hear that ....

I'm just going to say that 10% is exponentially better than the 0% i was at 6 months ago, so i'm not going to complain that much! The foot is still swollen and it still hurts all day every day, but at least i can now sleep interrupted all night so i'm happy-ish. I lost a fair amount of weight (18lbs) when i was laid up on the couch and floor for 2.5 months, so i've been back at the gym for the last few months trying to gain my weight back again. I think it actually might be more difficult for me to gain weight than it is for most people to loose weight!...yeah, yeah, first world problem in America, right? I should set up a bench press bar with bare smallframe chassis on both ends to build up my chest. Maybe at some point i could work my way up to a couple largeframe chassis? Kettle squats with a P200 engine with a cast iron cylinder? Bent fork arm curls? plyometrics workout with a stack of rusty rims? Folded legshield press? Downward dog clutch cable adjustment yoga pose? Fuel tap-out resistance endurance push along side the highway? The Vespa workout calisthenics are limitless.

Sign me up for that program.

I did some more work on the scooter this evening...

I ended up deciding to use the polished aluminum rear SIP shock that was on my Pink PK200 (which meant that i bought another SIP shock for the PK, but in a black color). I remove the spring coil from the shock body so that i could easily cycle the suspension in order to check for frame clearance. I decided to use the long upper rear shock spacer nut on the shock. It's going to raise the back end of the scooter up probably close to 1.5" higher than stock (plus factor in for the 10" conversion), but it will allow for less frame cutting and HOPEFULLY i'll have less of a chance of gravity fuel flow issues since the carb will be that much lower than the bottom of the fuel tank...we shall see.


The tie down strap is being used to compress the suspension to full bump.

I also worked on the sheetmetal for a little bit as well. No welding, just trimming and fitting...and more trimming and more fitting. I'm glad i saved all the sheetmetal that i roughly cut out last year! There really wasn't another way not hack out a bunch of the Widebody frame, squeeze in a Largeframe 200, and not expect to have to go back and fill in sheetmetal. Luckily it's all pretty simple stuff to do. I made a cardboard template then transferred the shape to the original piece of sheetmetal that i sectioned out.

There's still a ways to go before i can start welding the piece back in. I need to box in the whole open area that's located right above the upper front of the carb mixer box. Just eyeballing it's tonight, and i think it will be fairly straightforward to do.


cardboard template

i drilled out some of the spot welds on the back side of the filler piece.

suspension extended

suspension compressed

I like it! keep up the great work!

And in case anyone is wondering...no, i can't use the shorter P series carb box cover (in order to keep from having to cut as much of the frame). I have a T5 carb and air filter, so i'm stuck with using the taller PX cover. Maybe hindsight it might had been better to install a standard 24/24 P carb, filter, and short cover instead? This engine was running REALLY strong with the T5 carb back when it was all still in my Allstate 200, so i didn't really want to mess with a good thing.

Now that we officially have cold wet weather here in Oregon, i'm done trying to jet in my PK200 and sort out my PX210. Maybe i'll get them dialed in next year? It's now time to focus on building scooters, not breaking them!