Modern Vespa

I have many plastic pieces ripped torn scraped. I am going to fix these this winter. Does anyone have experience with plastic repair. It is obvious I could buy some new pieces, that's not my question, thanks. It is for my et2 and my cage too.

It's fairly difficult. Most (but not all) of the plastics used on a modern Vespa are polypropylene, which is difficult to bond anything to. There are some specialty glues that are designed to glue thermoplastics (polypropylene and polyethylene are both thermoplastics) but most epoxies and super glues will not make a firm bond.

The best way to repair polypropylene is by using a plastic welder, which can either be a very focused stream of very hot air, or a glorified soldering iron. There are a couple of these on the market, and they're not too expensive, but they're definitely a specialized tool.

The problem with the plastic welders is that if you need fill material (which is readily available as "plastic welding rods") you'll probably have a fairly difficult time getting the fill material to stick to the part you're repairing. This is because polypropylene actually consists of lots of different subtypes, and one type of polypropylene is fairly finicky about bonding to other subtypes of polypropylene.

The good news is that thermoplastics are endlessly meltable and reshapeable, so using a plastic welder, you should be able to make one part of the piece stick to itself. As soon as you mix another source of polypropylene, though, you'll probably meet failure.

So... you might seriously consider just buying a new part from Piaggio.

I have had to deal with broken parts of plastic panels here and there on my GTS over the years and, so far, have always been successful with a German glue, Uhu Allplast.

These plastic parts were mainly ABS, which works very well with this glue.

Or take a rat-bike approach, drill lots of small holes and use miniature zip-ties to hold the bits together. Gives a zipped-up 'Frankenstein' look.

Certainly good enough pro tem.

AFAIK, there's very little ABS on the bike. I think one half of the headset shell on the GTS is ABS, but the other half is polypropylene.

There might be some more hiding here and there, but mostly I've only seen polypropylene.

I did have a first thought on some of the repair. That is put some backing material on ie duct tape. And use plastic/ fiberglass body putty. The glue sound good I might get some. How do you tell the difference in plastic on an et2?

Yes, the front part of the headset is ABS. I have also had parts on the rear half of the headset, where the two screws go in on the sides, break on me and be held together again by this glue.

That glue would not work on polypropylene and polyethylene.

Generally, the part is stamped with its plastic type, usually inside the triangular recycling symbol, often with "PP" below it for polypropylene.

For whatever reason, I've never seen an ABS part with a recycling symbol on it. It will usually be stamped simply "ABS" somewhere on the part.

As you indicate - you are really only talking about your ET2, as your other two scooters really don't have much plastic to speak of. And even the plastic trim on the ET2 is not extensive. Have you priced the replacement pieces you really need (new or used)? Seems like it wouldn't be that expensive and the result would be better. (here I'm talking about significant breaks in plastic panels - scuffs and scrapes can easily be filled, sanded, and repainted, in my experience)

Not certain to what extent your repairs are, however I hope the below helps.

I've done some repair on my glove box panel when I took a spill and the area surrounding the screw to hold the panel to the body snapped off.

I worked from the back side roughing up the surface with 80 grit. The surface it's got to very course to increase the surface area for the bonding agent to grab and hold.

I used JB Weld Industrial epoxy. I mixed some of the fiber glass with the JB Weld which acted like a thickener and then after applying a layer of this mix I layered a piece of fiber glass cloth on top of the mix and then applied another layer of JB Weld mix.

Note: I did try to use JB Weld's plastic epoxy...but that just didn't work as well as the JB Weld Industrial expoxy.

If you end up having to clamp it...use some waxed paper and clamp. This way you won't have to worry about the clamp boding to the epoxy.

This rough work worked out fine and then I took it into a body shop to finish and painted outside surface. Saved on the labor of the body work and / or having to replace.