Modern Vespa

It is pearls like this that make the random NSM dive so worthy.

Sounds similar to my weekend minus the dog pee...

Cleaned a friends carb and fuel system for a stella that has been idle for 10+years.

Futzed with the VNB.

Road the PV 125 between rain storms every day.

Fought the carb and manifold on the ET3 Monday.

Eventfully uneventful and semi productive.

Now I need to trackdown a UPS package that never showed up.
*Mumbles curse words*

There used to be a manager at my local DMV that was a huge .ick. Emphasis on the words, "used to be". I was talking to a different DMV employee on a different day and mentioned to her about how i don't want to deal with her manager…like ever. She kinda looked as me a bit strange, then looked to her left and then to her right. She then leaned over the counter and got pretty close to my face and whispered, "if you're being serious, you can fill out a complaint form"…which i immediately did. 20 minutes later i got a personal phone call from the main main DMV guy down at headquarters. We had about a 30 minute talk. He thanked me for my time and then hung up.

A month later i went to the same DMV. There was a long line of about 30 people in front of me. A couple of the other DMV employees saw me, and immediately called me up to the counter. They both thanked me profusely and told me the guy got fired. I know everyone needs money if they wanna eat, but if all you're doing is eating other people's souls, then it's time for you to go. I feel bad for the guy's wife and kids for having to live with such an ass.

This problem is everywhere because no one wants to "rock the boat" for whatever reason--usually because they have no faith that their actions will produce anything but more abuse. Sadly, they're usually right.

I've seen HR screw over so many employees to protect bad managers, and have never been able to figure out why. Managers are, frankly, a lot easier to replace than good workers.

This evening was the VBB's turn for catching up on deferred maintenance. First test ride was pretty good, but the fork was rattling. Took a look after I got back and...yup...loose fork.

So I fixed that, maybe a tiny bit too much, meaning I might have to pull the headset again if it doesn't loosen up on its own. If I do, I'll add some more grease to those bearings, though, so not a wasted effort either way.

And I finally installed the DC horn after 18 months, then took it back out for a quick test ride, which it passed with flying colors.

Hit 62 easily and still accelerating uphill when I caught up to the car in front of me. It should be good for about 70, but I don't know that I'd want to do that for more than passing. These *are* tubed 8"s, after all.

Ripping around on the two lane highways reminded me why I love this little 8" monster.

My only real complaint is that this motor vibrates more than any of my other motors. It's starting to jump out of gear in 4th a little if I'm not careful, so it's about time for a new cruciform. Maybe a rebuild will smooth it out a bit.

Lastly, the front brake needed a little bit of tightening, but that just took a second and it's now working about as well as an 8" drum brake ever works.

And, I realized I'd never added my trademark decal, so I rectified that error before I headed back into the house.

VBB FTW

Deferred Maintenance Catchup Week continued last night. I got after the SprintV, which I loaned to a Club Mate for WKRP and don't think I'd ridden since. It, too, had a loose front fork, so I dealt with that and sorted out an electrical gremlin it had developed, then took it around the block to confirm all was well.

It needs to go down a couple points on the main and I still need to re-attach the mirror and turn signal which my buddy broke off at the rally. (No unobtanium turn signals were harmed in the making of that incident) The mirror was on the righthand side, so I'll swap it to the left, replacing the one that I stole for another bike at some point.

If I were a smart man, it would be the bike I ride up to Kentucky this weekend. It's an almost-stock Malossi 210, so it's basically unkillable.

I just replaced the cruciform this spring, so it's not trying to jump out of gear like the VBB, 10". It's even autolube. Throw some tubeless wheels and a rack on it and it's a damn near perfect touring machine.

So of course, that's probably not going to happen.

Going for it on the bus paint job. I won't get it all done before winter, but I'm hoping for a good start. I usually do a a lot of dithering and hand wringing with body work and paint, but I feel I have the process down at this point.

Cleared a panel with at least 2 resprays on it in under an hour.

I'm guessing you didn't use a roof sealer/weedkiller 500k BTU torch?

Nooo…Gas tank is on the other side of that panel. Air intake vents also vent tank fumes. Burning mustard colored '70's polyester would make my yard a Superfund site forever.

Pulled the rear hub apart on my MotoBi. The cam is wobbly, both springs are broken and everything was just bouncing around.

Yowza

Not sure I can (or want to) top this one. Today a group of us are riding along, and I notice an odd noise. Sort of a whining noise. It seems to start over 60 or 70km/h but sometimes sooner. I stop to look but can't see anything, the guy behind says he thought he could smell clutch maybe? Clutch is working fine, but feels like brakes are on a bit. Brakes worked normally and were not hot. So kept going slowly for another 30 odd km. Then we found this.

Vise Grip tires are not as grippy as they used to be. It could have been worse. Glad You are ok

Ha ha! Yeah everything was better back then!

Wobblyness is sorted

I wound up taking the Lambretta this weekend even after getting all my Vespas ready to roll in case the new flywheel nut didn't make it in time.

Rode 150 or so miles in total, most of it 50-60 MPH on two lane roads. Awesome weather, with sun and temps in the 70's.

I had some interesting CHT findings, though, which are probably worth discussing. The Quattrini TV210 cylinder head doesn't come with any provision for a CHT. The cooling fins are so tight around the plug you can't get a spark plug sensor on there. I tried, including significant Dremeling, but just couldn't make one fit, so I drilled and tapped my own M10x1.0 mounting hole into it.

Now this thing is in there pretty deep, so it reads FAST. What I didn't realize was that it also reads HOT. As I was riding up to Kentucky on Friday, I still had my AFR installed, so I could see my mixture numbers and I knew they were mostly (more on this) good. But my temps we climbing and climbing and starting to make me really nervous.

I was over 300 pretty much immediately, which was not happy-making. Cruising at 50 MPH, temps were getting up over 350F, but the mixture was still where I wanted it (13.0-13.3) and the motor was running well, with no zinginess or hunting when returning to idle, so I just ran with it. And this was pretty much all long, fairly flat stretches of constant throttle position and it the temp would settle in, so I decided to just accept it.

At 55 MPH (right at half throttle), the AFR showed the mixture spiking lean up to like 17:1 . If I cranked it on up to get on the main, though, the mixture came back down, so I knew I had needle rather than fuel flow issues. Throughout the ride, temps were stubbornly high, sitting mostly in the 380's and getting high as 430F at a couple points, but the motor was feeling and sounding great.

Since I was able to avoid the lean throttle position, I just dealt with it until I got out to JJ's place and then richened up the needle a clip after I got there.

Saturday, we rode about fifty miles, pretty much all 50-55 MPH. Lean spot was gone, temps were consistently lower, reading 375 or so for the most part. It was easily 20 degrees cooler out than on Friday afternoon, so I'm sure that helped some, but in general, it was all good and made for a great day of riding.

Today, other than occasionally confirming the temps, I ignored the gauges on the ride home.

Nothing fell off and temps stayed nice n' cool while I ripped along at 55-60 MPH until I got about 3/4 of the way home. Then, half throttle got super rich and stumbly to the point that it was hard to ride in that 40-50 MPH range.

Naturally, this was right as I got back into civilization and the speed limit dropped down to 40-50. Temps were still good, but AFR confirmed stumbling rich.

When running up on the main or down on the diameter of the needle, it was fine, so I again just dealt with it and made it home without any actual problems, just annoyance.

My theory as I was riding was that the atomizer or main had come loose, which will produce those symptoms, but it was all tight when I pulled the carb.

So I cleaned the atomizer and main jet in the carb a little while ago and all seems to be well again. I didn't actually test ride it, but it revs cleanly on the stand and the AFR numbers look right at all RPM ranges, up to 10,500 RPM's.

Clogged atomizer jets, maybe?

I'm declaring victory over dirty carbs for now, but I'll definitely fit an air filter before my next trip out to ride on dirt roads in the country.

Glad you had a good ride despite some troubles and troubling gauge readings. Those temps do seem incredibly high

And I'm sure all that dirt road grit is great for the bearings. It'll loosen em right up for smooth running

Did you mean 275?

Loose is fast, fast is loose or something like that right?

Nope. I meant 375, peaking in the 420's.

But in my case, the reading is happening much closer to the head's dome than a spark plug sensor. I have an in-head sensor and it's pretty deep in there, so much closer to the combustion chamber and thus faster response, plus less mass to dissipate heat into.

According to some googling, the piston face (and, I'll assume, cylinder head dome) are about 300C (572F) at operating temps.

That's also why we have the known difference between spark plug and in-head sensors. 350F is for under-plug. I'm going to run some tests on my VBB, which has both the in-head sensor (it's a BGM177) and under plug and see how they compare in order to validate my theory a little bit, even if I can't do the math to confirm it (Thermodynamics wasn't a required course for a degree in Political Science. ).

I also discovered while I was doing some research to validate or disprove my theories is that Copper is the best common metal for heat dissipation, aluminum is second (by a factor of almost 50%), and steel is one of the worst. Hence why aluminum cylinders are better than steel, once they worked out nicasil to give them the necessary strength.

Recently experienced this with an SI carb. Whole mainstack backed itself out a little. Jetting that was perfect suddenly became stupid rich. Very confusing until I figured it out.

Been there, done that. It's a great way to test if your main is lean with the motor on the stand, though.

You can back it out a tiny bit at WOT and see if max RPM's go up or down. If they go up, you're lean. If they go down, you're not.

I probably could have saved myself a top end or two in my early days if I'd realized that trick.

Im very interested to see what the test results are for the different probes of the CHT

I fairly recently installed a CHT probe into my Mugello head. I'll have to post up some pics of how i made it happen. Maybe it will give you some ideas for the future?

Me too - I've seen poster here that it's about 50 degrees (F) difference, but will be curious to see what you get.

Thanks for doing this BTW for all us armchair wannabes

On both my lammy and my smallie Quattrini heads, it's basically impossible to install a spark plug sensor due to the opening in the fins being barely large enough even fit a spark plus socket, and the plug hole itself is actually recessed.

On the smallie's head, there's a spot to drill and tap, but it's both angled and really inconvenient to work with. On the Lammy, there's not even that.

We put a Mugello on a clubmate's bike a little while back, but I don't recall what the head looked like.

I will eventually add an EGT, but haven't done it yet.

There was a thread where someone test almost every possible point on the head with a CHT and yes, there was 50 degrees F between hottest and coldest.

edit: found it - CHT Location

I guess it's all a matter of working out what's normal for the location you chose for the sensor and looking for spikes.

When I did my Quattrini I used a dremel bit that was flat on the bottom. I sort of rested the bottom on the plug sealing surface and went sideways between a couple of fins. Worked out ok. Tight but ok. Not sure I have a picture.

The Pinasco 250 used a copper head packer/gasket that is kind of a many-pointed star shape. On the GSF they went over it at great length, in the end I think it was proven that it did reduce temps somewhat.

Thanks for digging up that thread. Good info. I run my CHT sensor on Stud#!, referencing the thread above. Its the clutch side/lower stud

My only anxiety with this is that it would probably be much slower to react than the plug sensor. Whether I would see the gauge in time of course is the next issue!

I understand that anxiety! I keep a close watch on my temp gauge, especially when thrashing it. Watch it closer than my speedo!

With your hand hovering over the clutch...

you know how it goes!

I always ride with a couple fingers on the clutch lever - just...in....case...

I just took some pics of how i installed my CHT in my Mugello head. FYI for others, Lammy heads are usually REALLY thick (when compared to a vespa head), so there's you can drill and tap fairly deep into it. It was a fun project that dealt with problem solving and creativity to make happen without farming it out to a machine shop…or Ned's restored end mill.

I spritzed some brown primer on the socket, just so that it was obvious that it's now not an average socket anymore. FYI, i bought the socket at NAPA for about $3.

Well done!! Thats a very creative and well thought out solution; for both in use and installation.

Nice work WDC. How deep did the hole need to be?

Great write-up!

I did something similar, but mine doesn't look as good as yours. The Quattrini TV210 has flat spot in the fins on the head's crown, but when you drill into it, you discover there's a big air pocket underneath,which you have to remove to get to the meat of the head.

Then, you can drill and tap. I think my original hole was 11mm deep, but I wound up having to install a helicoil because I made such a mess of it and only had about two threads for the sensor to grip on, so they promptly stripped out.

As such, I'm probably closer to 15mm deep now, but it's solidly in there. When I install the sensor, I put a little bead of thermal paste like you use to attach heat sinks to CPU's and GPU's on the tip for better transfer, too.

I'm going to replace the cheap-o Runleader gauge with a Koso gauge in the next few days and I'm wondering if I'm going to have to drill out the top of the hole so it can bottom out.

I have a deep socket 1/2" drive 12mm socket I used to install the sensor and it works great.

Measure from the tip of the sensor to the top of its threads and go for about 1mm less than that, so you can see a thread to tell you when you (should) bottom out. The tip has to be making contact with the head or you get worse-than-useless readings.

Well shit.

At least it is still here.

One of those many neglected side projects. A few years ago, our oven stopped working. The push button board wore out and it kept giving a thermostat error.

Threw it in the garage with the intention of reviving it for a dedicated powder coating oven. Finally got around to pulling the board. Looks like the board is fine and it just needs a new push button cover and a thermostat. Cheap!

Home powder coating would rock my world.

Dang, man! Glad you still have it. Scooter thieves suck.