Modern Vespa

Preface

This is not a story about a Vespa, but it is a story of one of those moments when scooter karma delivers.

We're all very aware on the nonsense that sprang forth from CaliJ's epic trolling thread. It makes one wonder: what does the inverse of that story look like?

The Story

The phone rings this afternoon while I'm chorin'. I look at the caller ID, it isn't the name of any person or business I've dealt with before, so I ignore it. A minute later, the phone chimes. They've left a message. Okay, probably spam. I don't have student loans or crushing debt, the house isn't for sale and I'm not keen on political robocalls. It can wait.

Fifty minutes go by. I'm taking a break, so I check the message.

It's from a salesman at one of the city RideNow dealerships. He got my number from one of the guys at the shop that I bought the Buddy and the Scarabeo from. He has a customer who is going to be moving and wants to unload an '80s Honda scooter. Rumor has it that I'm the guy who likes this sorta stuff. He leaves me the customer's name and number.

Okay...I really don't need more crappy scooter projects...

Intrigued, I call the number and chat with Larry. Really nice fella, used to use the scooter as a pit bike when he campaigned a '64 Corvette in SCCA back in Florida. He was the second owner and had bought it from the first owner when that guy blew his car's engine and needed funds to repair it. Larry ran it in the pits for a few years, then loaned it to his son when the boy attended USF. After the son returned it, Larry brought the scooter to Arizona with him. Many, many years later, he and the missus are moving back to Florida to be near their children and he'd hate to have to pack it up again. I tell him I'll give it a look and see if I can find a purpose for it. He's adamant about giving it away, but I decide to swing by a bank on my way over to Larry's.

Larry is way out on the Eastside. Like, out where the pavement runs out. I'd been near where he lives before, but I was unaware there were homes back up in there. I did find his place and he met me in the driveway. We shook hands and bullshitted about SCCA autocross for about half an hour ( I participated in and supported Solo II sessions back in Alabama) before inspecting the scoot.

It was near the front of the garage, under an original Honda-branded scooter cover. I've seen the cover in old sales brochures, but never in person. I felt compelled to ask if I could remove the cover, because this was starting to feel like something special. Larry laughed and nodded before I lifted the cover.

Underneath was a surprising clean and complete '87 Elite 50S.

Here's why that was a big deal. The '87 Elite 50 was a one-year scooter. It's the USDM version of Honda's DJ-1, which preceded the Honda Dio as the hot-ticket 50. It was offered in three versions: a 25mph nerfed model for Iowa and other fun-deficient states, a 30mph version for almost all other states where it could classify as a moped and finally, the "S" model, which had no restrictions applied, sportier bits and could hit an honest 43mph stock. This last model was uncommon due to regulations, but I don't have numbers on how many were sold.

I already own one of these little oddballs. My first one was the less-flattering black and purple colorway and it's a mess. I've had it for a decade and it's been mechanically sorted. Parts are somewhat rare due to the single-model year. Body panels are unobtanium. I've been playing with techniques to restore faded plastics and repair damage. Honda didn't use ABS in the late 80's and the composition is a mystery. I finally found the remaining broken bits and just need to finish unscrewing the body plastics.

Now I was staring down a very tidy and cared for red and grey example, complete with the accessory cover, windscreen and front rack. After a quick inspection, the only flaw I could find was a broken turn signal lens.

I was frank with Larry and told him what he had. He was still fine with letting it go, but we agreed to a $100 price, so long as he would sign off on the lost title paperwork for me if I brought it by later this coming week. In the truck it went.

Summary For the TLDR Crew

I'm still floored to get a call out of the blue, which leads me to meet a genuinely cool old fella who has a really nice example of the shitbox unicorn I'd been intermittently screwing around with for about a decade and I have to convince him to let me give him some money for it.

I need to go leave my scooter contacts some lunch money bribes too!

Love that scooter…

Have a soft spot for old Japanese scoots.

But never really saw anyone outside JP tuning them… maybe the occasional ruckus… which has its own crowd.

The engine is the AF05E, which Honda introduced in '85 and discontinued in the US in '93. We never got the Dio here, but instead received an AF16E powered Elite SR from '94 through '01. The guys that still mess with the small Honda 2Ts worship the Dios and love the AF16E and the AF18E, which both have huge tuner part offerings.

These days, tuning parts are quite rare for the AF05E. I do have a few goodies stashed away, in the form of a Gilardoni 65cc kit and an Alferre full circle crankshaft. Airsal used to make a 65cc kit as well. Malossi had a 9:1 final gear set for the AF05E, but I'd likely stick with the 10.43:1 that the Elite 50S came with. CVT parts from Malossi and Polini still exist and both S23 and NCY offer a tuned exhaust for AF05E.

I may just tidy this up, clean the fuel and oil systems, replace the crank seals and enjoy it as-is. Now I'll feel better about fitting the other one with angry bits.

Great story. Best part is your knowledge and affection for the oddball, weird, misfit toys.

Thanks for posting!!! Scoot looks like a gem.

I love that story!

Karma is huge in a community, especially one like scooters. Glad to see it paid off for you.

Good for you, it's about time a little Karma came your way. I can relate to what the owner wanted, in that, he just wanted it to go to a good home. I had a 2001 Honda Elite S when I lived in FL some years ago. It was blast to ride in stock form, but I was not riding it much. I had an old friend that had been in the Navy, was disabled while in service and discharged. He stopped by to tell me he was going to marry his native born Hawaiian girlfriend and settle in Hawaii as he feel in love with her and the place during his time there at Pearl. He then spotted the Elite in the corner and became enamored with it. I handed him a helmet and told him take it for a ride. He came back all smiles. He told me that the Elites were THE scoot to have in Hawaii and wanted to buy it. I declined any money as he gotten me out a few jams during my misspent youth. He got it shipped over thru a Navy buddy and is still riding it today, 20 years later. Last I heard, he said he is a part of a scooter gang consisting of former Navy old farts that ride around the different islands and terrorize the general populace. His wife says he's just crazy but is glad he is having some fun. Gotta get over there some day.

Tierney,

Thanks for being an enabler and setting your buddy on a great path!

These little Japanese 2Ts really do have a cult following on Hawaii. The guys there seem to have the hookups for the best bits and build some stupidly quick rides.

From last night:

F#cking selector outers dropped down into the steering column as I routed the choke cable down the handle bars!!!!

All ready to button up the headset and now have to tear all apart again.

Transitional headset bullshittery!!!

I did that when I broke the shift cable on the Smallie. If you can get an inner up from the bottom to protrude back up, you can either guide and push the cable up that way or, if you don't mind committing another outer, run a long piece of steel cable and then do an impromptu cable replacement to get a new one in place.

No good options, but some are worse than others.

I was able to get them back out with some long-ass hemastats and a fair amount of cussing. Trying to suss out how to prevent them form falling back in as apparently red sticky grease isn't enough to hold the outers to the plastic able guide.

I usually put a zip tie at the end and that keeps it in place. I'll trim just enough off the tail that is not in the way.

My VBB's throttle cable kept wanting to fall down and that was my fix, but it works well for any disaster-prone cable.

Yesterday and today, I had a little Not-so-Not-so-Modern exposure to working on an LX 150. Yes, I worked on a modern scoot. Don't tell anyone.

One of my clubmates has a neighbor who had an LX150 that was not starting. He asked me if I'd take a look at it, and since I'm always up for an adventure, I said yes.

He brought it over to my house a couple months ago and said, "No hurry," and I told him that I had some other high priority projects (i.e. rally-related), so there would definitely be no hurry. Still, the time had finally come when it was either begin to detangle the mint Stella's electrical or tackle the LX. I chose the LX.

When I started to dig in, my initial impression was that I hated wrenching on it. So much more complexity than I'm used to, and so much less flexibility in how you go about it. But, fundamentally, it was still a carburated motor and I'm annoying persistent when I want to be, so I stuck with it.

The symptoms per the owner were that it had gotten increasingly difficult to start and finally wouldn't start at all. He took it to the local scooter shop and they were unable to get it going, so he was pretty much stuck and it had been sitting for a couple years before it came my way.

I turned on the ignition and the low oil light came on. Check the oil showed it was full and the oil was brand new--still light brown, so it'd been changed since the last time the bike ran.

My very first test was to isolate the fault. Hit it with starting fluid as an easy first test of compression & valve adjustment, spark, approximate ignition timing. It fired up and ran for maybe five seconds, so I knew I was looking at primarily some sort of carb or fuel delivery issue.

Assuming the gas was bad, I pulled the fuel line to drain the tank, remembered it was a vacuum tap, so put a hose on the vacuum line and sucked and...nothing. The tap wasn't opening.

At that point, I thought, "This might be as simple as the fuel tap!"

Naturally, I thought wrong. I hooked up a test tank to the carb, threw a little gas in it, and tried to start it. Nothing. So now I had two problems.

Putting aside the fuel tap, I knew I needed to clean the carb.

Now I've cleaned and rebuilt a LOT of carbs over the years, but this was my first exposure to the Keihin CVEK-2600A (or, really, any carb more complicated than a Keihin PWK), so I was a little hesitant just because there's a lot more going on there.

Fortunately, I thought, I had the service manual for the LX. But it did something I didn't think was possible: make a Haynes manual look good.

Fortunately, Robot had me covered with a full teardown and explanatory video about the carb.

It filled me in on a couple of key differences from what I'm used to, namely how to *test* that the variable intake slide is working, plus explaining the accelerator pump. Armed with my newfound knowledge and some basic tools, I tore into the carb to get it cleaned out. And holy cow did it need cleaning out.

The variable slide was sticking due to varnish buildup, the accelerator pump was not working at all, the idle jet was completely blocked, and the bottom of the float bowl looked like an oil pan.

So I gave it all a super-good cleaning, put it back together, threw some SeaFoam into my test tank and tried again. And it ran. Not great, at least at first. Stumbly at idle and it struggled to transition between jets, but it got progressively better as the SeaFoam washed away any bits of varnish that I missed and the motor just kind've woke itself up the longer it ran.

Next, I had to tackle the fuel tap. I texted the owner that the tap was not activating and was possibly going to need a new one. Literally as I hit send, the tap decided to activate and started pissing bad gas all over my feet. . So I hooked up some fuel line to the tank to let it drain, fired the bike back up, and it immediately finished draining the tank.

Kill the motor, install a new fuel line, some fresh gas (plus more seafoam) in the tank, fire up the bike, and the fuel tap worked again. Once it had unfrozen, it continued to work flawlessly as, I'm assuming, the varnish cleaned off it as well.

Finally, since all seemed to be well, I rode it across town to return it to the owner, about half an hour at 40-ish MPH and the idle crept up at lights a couple times, so I stopped to adjust it down a couple times as the idle jet cleared itself and things ran progressively better.

It's hard for me to say for sure, but it seemed to be running just fine by the time I got across town. While it seemed super-slow compared to all my bikes, I don't think that was the LX's fault. What I have to compliment it on, though, was the smoothness of the ride. The difference in suspension quality made it feel like I was riding on air. No road feel at all, but minimal vibration, too.

Riding it was REALLY weird at first. I kept trying to clutch+throttle to accelerate and step on the non-existent foot brake to stop. Eventually I adjusted, but I still prefer my shifties. Also, getting it onto the centerstand is really strange, IMO. Less physical strength required, but you can't just grab the centerstand with your heel and then pull the bike onto it.

So something a little bit different, but not at all bad.

Wait one minute! Are you just smoothing up to telling us after fixing that twisty that you already acquired one?!!🤔 If so, I'll ride on the back with you.😁 I was hoping you'd build a chopper and ride to Cabo with me.

Nope, no twisties in my present or forseeable future, just a bit of exposure to them, both wrenching and riding!

Probably not a chopper, either, but you never know what'll roll in or out of the workshop next.

Wow!!! Didn't know someone built a Vespa chopper. You just blew me away with that one!

There's some CRAZY builds out there if you google "vespa chopper." I don't get it myself (if you want a motorcycle, get a motorcycle), but whatever floats people's boat, I guess.

I agree. I would have to be pretty bored and have Greasy's boneyard to get the urge to fab that. Bet ridability is scary at best.

The difference is really quite amazing. For what essentially exactly the same suspension system save dimensions, it's surprisingly different. A mate who rides his partner's 300 from time to time says that they are also much more forgiving, being able to push harder into corners at higher speeds without difficulty.

A dab of hot glue can sometimes help keep things in place, at least temporarily.

Great work, man!

Normally, I'd recommend a penance consisting of thirty lashes with a broken clutch cable, followed by recitations from the Gospel of Wideframes according to Sticky. In light of the outcome, I'd say you're good.

Those CVT scoots will flummox you if you've been riding shiftys for awhile. I can't count the number of times I grabbed a handful of rear brake about halfway across an intersection.

Stock LXs are a bit staid. Look up dynagrego's thread on tuning a LEADER 150 in a light frame for inspiration. I'm trying to something similarly reckless with Project Lucky, but machine shops are killin' me these days. I need to embrace the Way of Ned and start buying old machine tools...

Again, kudos for coming in clutch for your fellow scooterists!

He was my older brother's age and friend more than mine, but we talked motorcycles a lot when I started out messing with them at the age of around 13. He got me out a few scrapes when I was too stupid to know better. It was just pay back that's all.

You let the cat out of the bag, so the secret's out! But since you dared to dip you toe in dangerous waters, I may just as well own up too. My lovely wife and daughter were talking over the Christmas Holidays on how it would fun to learn how ride a scooter. That got my attention. Questions ensued: would you be willing to learn how to use a clutch? "No". That cut out Classic Vespas. Would you be willing to learn how to shift? "No". That cut out an old Honda Super cub or Trail 90. I lost interest after that but looked around anyway. In mid-March I saw an add for a non-running Vespa LX150with 16k miles. It was cheap enough, so I drove then 5 hours round trip. Almost got it to fire but the spark plug cap was crap, carb diaphragm had seen better days, etc... Parts ordered, and went thru the scoot while waiting for said parts to show up CVT check, valves adjusted, fluids changed and so on. Parts back and installed and used about all my patience to seat the diaphragm properly - a little grease helped in the end. It ran good enough, but my wife was a bit hesitant. I got her used to sitting on it, ran next to her during her first ride up the block (kinda like teaching your kid on their first 2 wheeler) so I told her and my daughter to study up for their written learner's permit. 6 weeks nothing was happening and it seems my daughter lost interest and my wife prefers to ride as a pillion. I took a few rides on it and could not get into it. It handled well enough, but not enough power for around here with crazy traffic and hills. I sold it last weekend. 2 strokes are just so much more fun.

*Scratches chin*

Hmmmm….

I love the LX, we have two in the garage. One with a 190, the other with a GT200 motor stuffed in. The 190 has been up to 80mph and is also perfect blasting around town. the 200 is more work than it was worth and not really completed.

A member on here was going to sell me a used, but in good shape, 190 kit. But nothing came of it. Another cat out of the bag - I'm working on a 07 GTS 250 that needs some work and a new regulator. We'll see it works out ... Too bad about the LX/GT200 project, Mr. Owens. That much hp in the LX frame would be hoot to ride.

It was a fun little side adventure and good procrastination from tackling all my other pending projects. Plus, I'd said I'd do it.

I had to take a few turns round the neighborhood just to get my muscle memory retrained enough to also not grab the rear brake to upshift from first to second.

It was a great day yesterday to be riding any kind of scooter, so I enjoyed the ride and tried not to shift by mistake.

I might keep an eye out for a modern project, not because I necessarily want to own or ride it, but because it seems interesting to work on. Not until I get through my current deep backlog of existing projects, though, which is always a year or two deep and never seems to get any shallower.

Is that a donor motor for a scooter?

Hmm.. i dod have to look that one up, but love it.
I manage the Spare Parts Portal at work & may or may not have added a few Easter Eggs amongst it... there are a lot of Part Numbers (from old databases, obsolete, errors, manufacturers numbers, random crap) that don't have barcodes (there are about 23k in current system, my list has 55k), and so i can remember where i "found" them, I've added barcodes (eg. 01010101010, 8888888888...) & a few Easter Eggs (eg. 5318008 & heaps of others)... now there will be 01189998819991197253 amongst them, yay.

A few of my fav's being:
The informative page titled "Safety People"... which is basically a dance party/strip club environment made of "Safety" decals...

Not intended to be a dunk, but too funny not to share:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/121702426548

hey...wait...

Nah man, I dig the Oi! Mobile!

Besides, I have an '83 Riva 180. I grok the highs and lows of owning certain scooters. It's like a vintage Jag. Runs and rides brilliantly, when it opts to run and ride. You should see the thermo-vacuum control systems, therein lies madness!

Finding parts for a bike discontinued forty years ago is a job as well.

It's all good.

I have a full set of go-fast parts for the Oi! en-route from Deutschland right now. Goal is to have the motor rebuilt and new tires rolling by National Lambretta Day on June 8th. That way, I'll at least be able to go really, really fast before I push it home.

Don't forget to work on your kicking technique.

Rumor has it that flooded old Lammys start about as well as a Dio with a bad battery...

hmmm deadline = ham bet around these parts.....

Yeah, but who's going to want the other side of the ham action against me hitting a date?

No way I'm gonna bet against you getting it together and running hot. Betting on another explosion....I might get in on that action.

all you need is a good weekend of uninterrupted time, but your nemesis is shipping from europe on unobtanium stuff....

i hope you make it!

Thanks!

My package left SIP on Monday, so as long as it doesn't hang out too long in Fokkerplatz, I should be fine.

Went to go give a couple of plastic scoots the hairy eyeball for a friend last night.

One looked haggard but ran decently. New-but-sketchy tires. Needs minor electrical work. Otherwise, it's a good learner scoot that nobody's gonna cry over if it gets dropped.

The other looked passible, but hilarity ensued when the seller attempted so start it. Battery was dead, so they tried kicking it.

For every rotation on the engine, a shot of sour gas came shooting out of the tailpipe like a stinky Super Soaker.

I'm impressed it didn't hydro lock and the seals held. Suffice to say, that one's gonna need work.

so you were so impressed that you green lighted the purchase?