Modern Vespa

Last year at the end of October I was in an accident, I was headed down a four lane road in the left (i.e. inner lane for all you Brits, Japanese, Indian, Aussie, Kiwis etc.) and a gentleman attempted to turn from the center turning lane into a parking lot. I hit the brakes, tried to swerve and ended up taking off his rear bumper using the front end of my scooter.

The scooter was a total loss, but some good did come out of it, first I discovered that despite having reoccurring dreams of flying, I can't. Second seeing as I only payed $40 for the scooter in the first place (see herehttps://modernvespa.com/forum/topic138656?highlight=vespa), the insurance pay out was more than enough to replace it, although it went towards plane tickets instead so I could marry my now wife, speaking of this, this accident is what I feel really cemented our feelings for one another, so there is that too.

It took a few months for the road rash to fully heal, a couple of weeks for the pinched nerve to sort itself out and an unknown amout of time to get back on a scooter (I promised no more commuting and that I wouldn't ride a scooter until spring time, I ended up doing neither(I mean comon who could resisit a chance to ride a rare only seen once Japanse scooter, and I'm commuting once a week with a friend, saftey in numbers right...)).

Fast forward a few months, I decided I wanted a tatty looking scooter that will be a decent runner, for some reason that just really appeals to me. I approached a friend about a Motovespa 150 frame he had bought from a mutual friend and was at first planning on making an electric scooter, and then a sign for his business. He gave it to me for the low price of free, i.e. a wedding gift.

Here are some pictures.









The dent on the glove box and steering column corresponds to where my knee hit before I went flying over the scooter.


This is the damage to the front fender and fork


Closeup of damage caused by the rear quarter panel.

That looks nasty! Sounds like things may have come out much worse. But the Motovespa is pretty cool... do you swap the P engine into it?



Just out of interest, I wonder if your riding gear has changed before and after? Actually I don't want to divert the thread - maybe here? What do you wear when you ride?

I am planning on swapping it into the Motovespa, it didn't come with an engine. My riding gear has changed, at least for anything longer distance, I recently purchased a mesh armoured jacket, and consistently wear it along with my kevlar lined pants and leather boots. Before it was always a helmet and gloves.

This will be interesting.

One little thing to keep at the back of your mind is if you expect to split the motor, track down on older kickstart gear & lever so the motor looks 'right' in that frame. If the motor is good, SIP has a curved lever splined to fit your existing kickstart gear shaft properly. Small thing that makes a nice difference.

You will love your P200 power in the older MotoVespa roundtail frame. Do I dare ask if you plan on keeping the paint & old decals?

It's a P125X, so points model, and I rebuilt it a few months before the crash, so I am planning at some point to get the SIP kick lever.

As for the patina, it is what I wanted, I'm planning on doing a matte clear coat over everything to preserve what is there, and to stop it from continuing to rust (as quickly).

I have acquired a Bajaj headset, because I only have the headset and the little bracket that holds the cables in place. I'm planning on removing the paint off of it and having the bare aluminium (on the Bajaj headset) and keeping this just incase the right parts come along.

Just a little update, I've recently moved and am still settling in. The nice thing is instead of needing to drive around 13 miles (one direction) to work on my scooters, I have now only to walk out the back door and around the shop (read large shed). I have been working on it to make it into what I want, the next big project is to change the direction of the doors to open out instead of in, and add a little roof over each door to stop rainwater flowing in. It is big enough for 3 scooters right now, and once the doors are switched I should be able to fit 4 in there. I did do a little work on it tonight, I removed the old hub bearings from the fork, and the old spring, so not much, but money is tight after buying a house, returning to school and being between jobs at the moment.

Die Wespe Kind

Sorry about your terrible accident. Nice Motovespa ! It looks like a VBA. It looks to be pretty straight. Are you planning on setting it up as a 10" wheeled scooter or an 8" ?
Is that extra fork a P fork ?
When I put my P200 motor in my VNB (almost exactly the same as your new old frame) I rode it for awhile with a 10" back wheel and an 8" front wheel. It did not handle well, so I put a Rally front hub and associated parts on the VNB fork. It's not the best combination, but handles very well now. The front wheel does rub a little sometimes under braking, something that could be mitigated by installing a stiffer spring and using spacers to mount the fender slightly higher.
The other possibility is to convert the PX motor to 8".
You can buy shift and throttle tubes to fit that headset. Is the Bajaj headset you mentioned a similar design to the old one ?
Keep us posted on your progress !

I am going to keep it original, so a 10", the Motovespas came that way from the factory, the fork is from a Bajaj, I am going to use the hub only (also a 10") and put it on the old fork, so that the hub will need no tweaking to get it in place. As for the shift and throttle tubes, I tried to track some down, but was never able to track down the right tubes. The Bajaj headset is not similar to the original, but looks more like a Rally headset in shape, but I'll probably use it anyways because I want to put an S.I.P. tach/speedometer in there, and they don't make one for the smaller speedometer hole.

Die Wespe Kind

looks like a vb1 headset

That's going to be a great bike ! I think SIP has a nice speedometer for the vbb headset ( clamshell) that would look even better than a Rally style headset.

This is the one I got, so a clamshell VBB (Bajaj)






Die Wespe Kind

Great ! Just promise that you won't put turn signals on it.

I've made some progress on putting this thing back together.

First I cobbled together a new fork setup using the hub from the Bajaj fork and the down tube from the Motovespa.


Next I proceeded to run the wiring harness.



In order to run tail light wires I cleaned out the tube using a piece of wire that I had made into a spring like coil to scrape out any large chunks, like wasps' nests ect. I then soldered the three wires together and ran a piece of wire up into the tube, made a thin hook and pulled them through, this was after fighting for about a half hour trying to route all three together and then individually.





Next I ran the cables, then put the fork in and installed the rear shock so I could mount the tool I made so I can have it as a rolling chassis while the engine is out.



Next on the list is cleaning up the fuel tank, figuring out the wiring harness that will connect the P125X engine to the VBB harness I installed (I am planning on having a battery so I can run led lights) and finding the missing parts needed for the taillight and for the headset (using the Motovespa fork means that I can't use the Bajaj headset).

So if you have or know anybody that has any of the missing parts for the headset (including speedometer), the horn or the missing alluminium piece that goes over the tail light, let me know.

Die Wespe Kind

looking good there mate


cheer

If you consider selling that Madrid rack, let me know, thanks.

Love motovespas. Great progress, keep up the posts!

Looks like you're making some good progress there. What is your opinion of the quality of the parts picked up, assuming you picked up the ones in your pic.

The headset is of fairly good quality, you can tell some of the smaller parts are made in a fairly crude fashion. The bits that go into the end of the tubes that hold the tubes needed a little reshaping and filing because they were deformed during manufacture. The headset casting has some flash in a couple of the passage ways that a file or Dremel would make quick work of.

The fork was the biggest disappointment, when they coated it in paint, they then covered it in cling wrap before the paint had fully cured, so it has marks from the cling wrap up and down the finish, and there were some places I decided it wasn't worth the trouble of trying to remove it. The hub portion of it seems to be just fine, and the spring and shock absorber where of decent quality too.

If you are interested in the headset, I'm not going to be using it.

Die Wespe Kind.

Hi. You probably know that your motovespa was registered in 1962 in Toledo, Spain. It is a "150 S". Wonder how it got so far from Toledo. Congratulations.

I didn't know that, and would be interested in how you decifered that. To my knowledge it got over here in a shipment of used scooters from Spain that a friend of a friend had brought over in the late 90's early 00's. It was sold to my friend James who was planning on building it out, then my friend Dave bought it from him to build an electric scooter then a sign for the Scooter Lounge (his shop), but when they moved shop that fell through and he said come get it or it's going to the scrapyard and that is how it came into my possession.

Die Wespe Kind.

So cool that you are saving it! 8)

Hi,

You can see the registration number painted on front fender "TO" is the code for Toledo, and then the number. We have around 50 "provincias" in Spain. This system was used till year 2001 from early 20th century. First with only a correlative number after the "provincia" code. A letter (later two letters) code wad added (due to the fact that in big provinces they where running out of numbers, e.g. in Madrid and Barcelona they reached more than 900.000 registrations. There are several "calculators" on internet where one can find out the year of registration for a spanish vehicle. From 2001 we have a registration system not showing where the vehicle is from. (four numbers + 3 letters). In any case in Spain you can allways know how old a registration number is. We cannot pay for a cool combination of letters and numbers.

Some of the old stickers you have in the front were the yearly vehicle tax. (the ones with a "1" number. one of them shows 150 pesetas, less than one euro today). The other sticker with an M is an insurance company (Mapfre).
We hear in Spain that many motovespas are being sold to other countries. The spanish factory closed in early 2000. Now we have "new" PX vespas from Italy as well as LML, and still very popular in our roads. So latest PX motovespas are from 2000-2001. The 200 cc. engine were most popular.

Here you have a link to a service manual (in spanish...) for your beautiful Motovespa.

http://www.vespaclubjaen.es/manuales/Manual_Taller_Vespa_125L-125N-150S_1963.pdf

Thanks for the information and the link to the manual, I'll need to bone up on my Spanish (i.e. learn Spanish) to read it, but it will be interesting to learn such specific Spanish. Do you have a link to one of the registration calculators?

Die Wespe Kind

http://www.dieselogasolina.com/fecha-de-matriculacion-de-vehiculos-por-matricula.html

From other site I found than the last registration issued in 1962 was TO14191, so yours was probably issued in november-decembrer 1962.
Motovespa's factory was in Madrid city limits. It was demolish in 2001. It worked for more than 50 years.
You'll find some interesting pictures about Motovespa in https://www.facebook.com/motovespamadrid/

regards from Madrid!

Sorry about not showing anything for a long time, I "finished" this up a while ago. It ended up being a focused push to get it done. I also wanted to keep the oil injection from the P125X engine so I engineered an auxiliary oil tank that sits inside the glove box.


Die Wespe Kind

love this scoot and the custom oil tank!

+1 its creative

What is the oil tank from originally? I would like to use that idea on future scooters

I ordered it quite a while ago, but I'm pretty sure it is this guy. I searched "plastic fuel tank" and looked at my options, and the dimensions of the one I got fit within the space I had available.

https://www.amazon.com/JRL-Petrol-Pocket-Rocket-Scooter/dp/B01A0B9E8C/ref=sr_1_10?dchild=1&keywords=plastic+fuel+tank&qid=1588101879&sr=8-10

Die Wespe Kind

I ordered it quite a while ago, but I'm pretty sure it is this guy. I searched "plastic fuel tank" and looked at my options, and the dimensions of the one I got fit within the space I had available.

https://www.amazon.com/JRL-Petrol-Pocket-Rocket-Scooter/dp/B01A0B9E8C/ref=sr_1_10?dchild=1&keywords=plastic+fuel+tank&qid=1588101879&sr=8-10

Die Wespe Kind

This is great. I just got my oil tank so I'm gonna mimic what you did. Seems like a good place to put it in the glove box, easy to quickly check the oil level before a ride.

Thanks, post some pictures when you get it mounted, and if you have any questions, feel free to PM me.