Modern Vespa

Glad the rider is ok.

Can't tell from afar… silver and grey are the most forgiving I think with scratches.

mannnn... super bummerz. glad you're none worse for the wear!

I lost my super off the lift a few weeks back and I wasn't even that mad about the damage. I was more mad at myself, I've never lost one before and I *knew* how tippy that stupid thing is with the p2 motor and wonky stand.

and I spilled my beer.

Let's not even talk about dumping bikes off lifts at least until I get the wider base installed!

I have a decent scrape on my knee, starting right at the end of the Great Scar, so now it'll be even longer than it was. It'll be fine in a few days, though.

Repairs-wise, I need to see how much of the damage I can buff out. Like I said, I think the scratches on the cowl will at least mostly buff out. I have a vague recollection that the instructions for the Summit Racing clear coat said not to color/wet sand it, but we'll see.

For the mudguard, if I can't fix it in place, I'm just not going to fix it. I'm not dropping the fork if I don't have to. Meanwhile, the bare metal gets some Ospho and a dab of primer to keep the rust out, and if I'm honest, by the time I get around to it, I'll probably be used to it and no longer care. Party foul!

Looks like I spoke too soon on the knee.

Bummer!

I bet you can do something without dropping that fork.

Gah! Sorry man.

I was going to say at least it wasn't the smallstate because you would have been gutted to get a scratch on that. - tongue in cheek obviously.

Then I was thinking - At least it wasn't the smallstate, god knows what sort of carnage you'd have caused.

That's the beauty of the ugly that is the smallstate: Once your scooter has been run over by a truck, you really quit worrying about the aesthetics of it. Perhaps, but so long as the carnage wasn't to my person, I wouldn't have really cared! .

Wife brought me back a gift from the UK. An old garage/dealer Vespa sign they found in an antique shop out in Devon. The thing is 8"x10" cast iron and weighs about five pounds.

I have no idea if it's an actual antique or not. There's definitely some old schmutz on the white paint that didn't fully clean up, but there are no manufacturer's marks on it, either.

Any Brits out there know one way or the other?

Okay Greasy and Safis, I just finished a full service, fork rebuild and electrical mods on my buddy's 2007 Burgman 400. I figure I'm in the right frame of mind for the Beo, since I used up so much vitriol on the Suzuki.

Wish me luck.

And yes, that's a partially disassembled Velocifero in the background. Still hunting parts and documenting the wiring harness, since a diagram doesn't exist

godspeed and good luck my man, we'll be rooting for you along the way!

if you get stuck or have a question don't hesitate to reach out. I don't think I have much to offer parts wise, but a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on is all yours if you need it!

The JBWeld fix to the Grabor turn signal switch I added to my GL broke over the weekend. Naturally, it did it when I turned the signal ON, so I got to ride for a while until I could dig my keys out and use them to turn it off.

So I fabricated a new one that's not going to break, but has some rather material design defects I'll need to address sooner than later...like choosing aluminum...

For now, I just put electrical tape on it and the cover to prevent it shorting out, but my grander plan is to do it with a JBWeld top that the contact point and spring sit in. The JBWeld will act as the insulator and be more than strong enough, especially being mostly cupped by the aluminum.

It's not pretty (or finished), but it gets the job done nicely.

finished product looks shocking...

*un*finished, but minimally functional. And less shocking, more shorting, but yeah.

It may be time for a Bridgeport

I was once accused of making something that was highly polished but deeply scratched.

The thing in question isn't even finished.

The 7mm case bolt lock washer was a particularly nice "touch".

This ensures continuity, for the shock, which runs from your right hand touching the brake lever, to your left hand, no matter what position the switch is in.

Well done sir.

Shocks following a blinking pattern of a human pulse?

Tactile feedback… solves the problem of knowing if the blinker is still on without the little red light.

(I got a real charge outta this.)

First off, to all of you. I figured I'd get some good responses, but was shocked by the punniness of this crowd. Well done, everyone! It's a 5mm washer, I'll have you know!

There was a circlip on there that I lost during disassembly the first time the switch broke. The circlip might have been gone, but I had that lone lock washer, which is in turn held in place by the screw you would use if you had a wire run into the center of the switch.

For the turn signals, positive comes in from the two outer posts and the signals are the inner posts, so once I actually insulate it in version 2.0, it'll be just fine.

For now, though, yes, I'm livin' la vida electrical tapero and hoping that my blinkers don't leave me short before I can get the improved iteration completed.

Shocking, yet ingenious

Pimping my Meggy. New spoiler for the front bumper…

Can you electrocute yourself with it, or does it just look pretty?

For the record, the new turn signal lever worked perfectly today. Neither signaling failures nor electrocution vexed my rides

I'm still going to do the JBWeld insulator fix, but probably won't die in the meantime.

OK, Scarabeo bodywork is annoying.

What really boggles the mind is all the evap and EGR bullshit. Seriously, someone was on something when they designed that hot mess.

Carb was clean-ish. Tank is hella funky and needs a good cleaning. Several broken junctions in the vacuum system and since the pump is vacuum operated, that would explain the hard starting. The retaining rib for the bystarter was almost completely broken off, so it was flopping around. Fortunately, I have a decent spare.

Marvel did it's job. Piston moved with almost no effort and the engine rolls over easily with the plug out. Cams looked good with no real wear.

Transmission looks decent at first blush, but there are some cracks visible between the belt ribs. I have those service parts.

Engine oil smelled like Marvel and came out looking decent. Filter was used up, so I put a new one it. Gear oil was stanky and had a bit of a sparkle party going on. Flushed it all out and refilled it.

Need a battery and I may try firing it off tomorrow with a gravity feed fuel supply.

Weekend feelz…

birbs: opens garage door, pours a tall beverage and settles in, gazes upon this beautiful sight and smiles knowingly at the hard work and the basking in the out come of a well done job.

greasy: opens garage door, grumbles, walks back to fridge for beverage after forgetting it. returns and gazes at the dystopian scooter graveyard, curses under breath and then decides to work on something else instead.

Didn't get to the garage last night, but I did get a battery and some incidentals for the Scarabeo. Went over this morning, bypassed everything vacuum related and set up a fuel supply. Found the true problem with the scoot: the coil wire had broken off at the coil end. Swapped in Buddy 50 coil and sent it.

Fired up immediately and idled fine. Smoked a bit due to Marvel in the exhaust. Temp came up one click over the middle of the gauge and sat there. Still needs a coolant flush/fill. Brake bleed too.

Now I need to address the fuel and vacuum bollocks, clean the fuel tank and order a few small parts. Ordered new tires at the local real shop after I closed up for the day.

At the local shop, they asked me if I was taking public work due to a bunch of people with weird scooter problems. I declined as it would suck the fun out of work and I know scooter customers are the worst.

from the mouths of babes, truer words, etc, etc, etc




just kidding I still like working on scooters, for scooter people

That's me going to my storage space!

Decided to address the cooling system on the Scarabeo today. It didn't go well. Radiator has a leak and there wasn't much coolant in the system. By coolant, I meant rusty water.

Guess the prior shop hadn't gotten this far down the rabbit hole to find a cooling system issue. Time to look for a radiator and then hope it doesn't have a blown head gasket.

After this morning's defeat, I resolved to sulk a bit and watch some porn:

I cleared out my inbox...

Finished my un-lift

Ohhh, I like that! Drop in a lift to make the floor level and like magic, floor space AND a lift!

Is that a performance gts exhaust in that pile?

yes, right next to the 404 trims, an SS case and some GS carbs.

I figured no body wanted any of that crap.




I'm kidding, it's all Bajaj or china scoot stuff

I figured anything worth anything wouldn't be there but it intrigued me

Today, I finally resolved what was one of my more frustrating, and definitely my dumbest, scooter tuning mistake ever.

The smallstate had developed a bizarre habit of suddenly losing power, possibly even stalling out entirely, when hitting high revs at full throttle. It first began about a week ago after I changed the needle in the carb. I went to go get tacos from my now-former taco truck and every time I tried to accelerate, it would suddenly lose power at about 8,000 RPM's. Like serious fuel starvation, but even more violent. Sometimes it would stall entirely.

So I went through the entire fuel system checking for flow, even going so far as to clean the carb and then confirm flow into the float bowl by removing the drain plug from the bowl and measuring fuel flowing out the bottom of the carb through the float passage. All was well.

Running it on the stand, it would rev out fine. The issue only occurred when the bike was under load.

It wasn't the air filter, because I don't use an air filter since it impedes airflow and I wear out bearings and other bits of my motors long before dust in the air might affect them.

So then I considered the old adage that "90% of all carb problems are electrical." I pulled the ignition out and went through it, checking that all the wires had good continuity. Even though it would rev on the stand, I tried a Known Good CDI off another bike in case the CDI was failing despite only being a year old. I checked timing...the whole nine yards. Nothin'. Everything looked good.

Finally, put my AFR gauge on it to check for certain if I was losing fuel or losing spark (the tach showed good spark, but I wanted to be 100% sure). So I literally welded on a bung for the AFR to test this. That should give you some idea of how frustrated/at a loss I was by this point.

Take it out for a test run and the AFR shows that I was getting fuel up to and through the point of failure. WTF??? So I turn around to head home.

As I got close to my house, I hit the throttle, it revved up and, once again, it choked and died as it got solidly into the power band. It was so sudden, I assumed the carb must have fallen off the boot.

Since I was almost to the house (and on the downslope), I just coasted it home, looked into the frame to reattach the carb to the motor, and realized that the electrical junction box, which I moved from the motor to inside the frame when I rebuilt the motor this spring, was sucked into the carb mouth and had the air intake almost entirely blocked.

The whole time, that junction box was getting sucked into the carb once it was drawing enough vacuum and blocking the carb mouth, then falling back out from the bumps in the road once I was off the throttle and had eliminated the suction.

F M L

epic, chandlerman!

Almost unbelievable, but no one could make this sh!t up. Good man for figuring this out.