Modern Vespa

When I do these pieces I do my best to use busted or bodged parts, that would either be too difficult to restore or straight up not safe. The back half of frame was already chopped in half as it was a race frame, so no VIN; and the floor was rotted from sitting outside. Headset was cracked, tube well worn and sloppy, and so on. Great parts for art supplies!

I love it! Nice work!!

Good man on the project and keeping it from adding to a landfill. Many years ago I picked up a Suzuki SV650 with a trashed front end. I put out the word to find a replacement and was contacted by an artist that was willing to trade a GSXR front end of the same year that was in great shape. All I had to do it deliver/pickup a couple hours away. The guy wanted the trashed front end to go with a trashed bike that was missing it's front end and was going to be being mounted on a bar wall frequented by guys who tracked their bikes close by. I hung around for the day and helped him do the install on the art project. I finally got to see it along with a few others that were mounted as well. Happy days.

Took Lil Red for a spin. Hadn't fired it up in months, so had to take the carburetor apart and clean the cobwebs out. Fed it some fresh gas and it fired right up.

Peppy little fella. Almost forgot how much fun smallies are.

*wave* Hi, Little Red!

I have not been riding the Boo Badge nearly enough. I started to revisit the carb setup, which is pretty much a mess right now, but an thinking I need to take a look at the port timing first. The rebuilt all-Quattrini build has never been as good as my first long stroke build.

Of course, because life is unfair, I haven't even had time to keep the herd in good running order, much less make progress on projects.

Meanwhile, I noticed the Riverside had gotten loud and hot on the EGT again. As feared, it blew out its exhaust gasket. Again. So I need to figure out what's causing it to blow out.

Did the mounting bolts back out (safety wire failed)? Is the semi-crushed header pipe the problem? Is the ScootRedacted silencer choking it off?

I won't know 'til I know, but boy is it frustrating to need to be fixing it again in such short order

encountered and almost got sucked into the labyrinthian hell within the tunnel...now I know why it's referred to a Pain not a PITA...because it's Pain of Hell! No worries...am thinking like Indiana Jones and am figuring out a way out of this situation!

Awesome display, it's fantastic! Headlight and turn signal lights can be hooked up to color changing leds and tuned to music and colors that can be changed via remote control too.

Thank you! Thats a cool idea too!

Today I decided to the try the freezer method for getting dents out of pipes. The exhaust header on the Riverside was pretty well smashed in and I wondered that was contributing to the exhaust gasket blowing out (spoiler: the safety wire had just come off and it worked its way loose).

Anyways...I got it off the bike, filled it with water, dropped a few ice cubes in each side to make sure the ends froze first, then threw it in the freezer for six hours.

Pulled it out and it was damn near perfect!

Ultimately, I found where a seam had developed a pinhole, but welding that up just took a minute, and it's now back on the bike, good n' tight, and well-wired.

Sometimes, you can actually believe what you read on the Internet (though I wouldn't make a habit of it).

I'm assuming the risk had nothing to do with the exhaust itself?

Nice work!

Not a damn thing. The funniest part was that we were discussing the weeks grocery list and she went through what was in the freezer and didn't even ask what it was.

I'm not sure if she just didn't want to listen to me explain it or was just choosing not to believe her lying eyes.

Thats very impressive freezer work there Chandler

Also impressed how HulkSmashed up that thing was before

Well, you know what they say: when you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Got the rim laced up, tire mounted, and on the bike. Test ride tomorrow

How does that work? I get (on paper) that the water freezes, expands, and fills up the dented parts, but how does it know not to burst the undented parts? Or even when to stop expanding when the right shape has been attained? I'm guessing it has to do with the concave parts opposing less resistance than the convex so they give in first, and that expanding ice only has a limited expansion factor, but still: impressive!!

Btw: I had to zoom into the first pic, because it looked like you either had a very heavily tatted arm, or one of those metal arm casts the gladiators used back when they fought lions and tigers at the Coliseum

Short answer is that it doesn't know. Water (and thus ice) don't compress, so it's just going to expand until it's finished doing so. I was more concerned that it wouldn't expand enough, but it did. when the water can't expand any more, it just increases pressure, which is what pushes the dent out. If the dent hadn't been there, it would probably just split the metal like when a water pipe freezes in the winter. I have one of those metal arm casts, but I keep it work since that's where I do most of my trench warfare and gladatorial combat.

Today I.....

Had a go at making some sound dampening replacements.. closed cell foam and a bit of leftover wallpaper to make a rough template. Its not pretty but it will do.

Also fitted some emblems to the sidepanel.

And spent some time cleaning the flashing off the NASTY aftermarket spoiler for the underside... im looking out for a better one as this to my eyes is plain nasty

That spoiler's not bad considering the alternatives. An RMS I'm guessing? The Piaggio ones and the LML seem to be the same, in a nasty gray with little embossed placeholders for reflectors. They just look awful.

Absolutely no clue what make this one is. The photos make it look better than it is unfortunately. There was a massive amount of flashing that needed to be removed and now its insitu i can see its warped where it fits the floor mats. It will do for now until I can find a better one... ill look into the other ones and see if they are any better.

Thanks for the heads up anout different makes.

I'm surprised it worked without capping the ends. Makes me wonder how thin that metal is. This exhaust has been thru freezing process over half dozen times. The minor dents popped right out but I still have to hammer out the rest of the big dents. The "Expansion Freeze Plugs" worked great capping the ends for extra pressure. If no weak points, the pipe won't burst and plug will slowly work its way out when pressure builds too much.

My best guess is that I dropped some ice cubes in each end so they froze first, meaning that the rest of the expansion had to be the crushed portion.

Good technique! And great job putting the right amount of water in it. The water expands while freezing, if filled up too much it'll overflow out of an un-capped pipe while freezing up.

I suspect some of buongiorno's expansion is lost due to the geometry.

buongiorno, your part is more horn shaped. It is narrow but only at one end.
So when the ice expands, it's pressing laterally in the direction of the big end.

In pipes that have two narrow ends, the water freezes solid and makes a damn - so all the pressure resides between the narrow parts.

If you are seeing the big end plug move when freezing, that would be the pressure relief.

If u can use some wire and figure out a way to get good tension on it, I think you might get much better results.

My pipe was also horn-shaped, but it was enough of a "U" that I could sit it with the two ends full. I still think that getting the ends to freeze and create the plugs that way is what made it work for me.

I think you could get the same effect even on a straight pipe, if you put ice cubes in one end, let it freeze, then flipped it and added ice to the other end so it's freezing from ends toward the center.

(Or I could be completely wrong. I never took physics past high school. )

Perhaps combine chandlers suggestion with mine.

They are two ideas for the same solution. I want the pressure to stay in the pipe.

If you use wire to help clamp, and freeze only the first 4"-5" of the horn end, perhaps it will help act as a damn against the next round of filling and expansion.

Anything that stops it pushing out at that end will add force to the area you are trying to get to.

That's brilliant! I never took physics at all. I love it when crazy things work. Especially with metal.

I posted those pics to show the expansion plugs They can be found in local hardware store and work great. The freezing method isn't going to always take or smooth every single dent out, especially big ones on heavy duty steel pipes

No disagreement on any of this. If YouTube is any indicator, getting dents out of exhaust pipes is one of the top use cases for this technique.

It definitely has potential for disaster, just like freezing a pipe in your house. I had a pinhole where a seam had split a little, so be ready to either weld or break out the exhaust tape afterwards if going this route.

For the past few weeks, I've been riding the Riverside with the headset every-so-slightly turned to the right. Just a tiny bit, to the point that I didn't even notice it all the time.

One annoying behavior it had, though, was that it was really hard to hold a line through any sort of carved turn, of which there are a pair in an S-curve on my route to work. On days I ride one of the Vespa's that turn is fine, but on the Lammy, not so much.

A couple nights ago, I finally fixed the headset alignment and suddenly, it holds the line through the turns no problems at all.

Such a tiny thing, but it made a material difference in the bike's handling.

I've had a similar thing happen, dogleg lever on the clutch, standard on the front brake. Caused me to put my left hand 1/2 inch further out. Scoot was squirrely in s bends. Took a few weeks for that penny to drop, and a new lever to be installed. I may be slow, but I will figure it out eventually

I know EXACTLY how you felt:

I have a couple bikes with a dogleg clutch and standard brake lever, but don't recall noticing an impact on my riding. Or maybe I'm just so used to it, it's now invisible to me.

For this, I'd started to think that the frame must have been a little twisted. I explicitly checked the frame and confirmed it was straight during the rebuild, but kept thinking that something must have been messed up and I just missed it.

Caught a bit of flak when I brought the vespa into the living room to have more room to work on it...she was pissed!
Finally getting somewhere with routing the wires from headset to rear by using the rear brake pedal opening. See guide wire sticking out on right side of pic below.

Routing the front brake switch wires to the rear brake light - I can't test this without stripping the wire to the rear brake switch. Would tapping the positive front brake switch wire to the red/white wire on rear switch be a good way to connect front brake switch to rear brake light?

Today I… felt better about my collection….

B.G.: You need to connect both wires coming from the front switch to the 2 wires at the foot pedal switch, in no particular order. Just unplug both terminals, strip the wires to expose clean copper wiring, twist each wire coming from the front into each existing wire, and crimp a new terminal on both pairs of wires. Then crimp 2 terminals up front. If you want to test the system at that point, you can touch the terminals together to close the circuit.

why the hell would anyone collext that many modern vespas?…I ceel like even 2 is alot

I also feel better about my collection

Two is perfect, one smallframe and one large frame. Just different enough to be worth it. Plus, a modern smallie with a Malossi 190 kit can be a hoot.

Thank you! I was hoping to get away with routing only one wire down there for it. It's already a very tight fit with the existing wires along with the two new turn signal wires. All the best

I mosdef see the appeal of an mv, but maybe not 15. Now if we're talking Vintage Vespa's, 15 is a good start

All of them 4Ts with the retarded seat? I wouldn't trade my one Primavera for all 15 of them!

Yeah, the "Modern" seats never worked for me. I could never get comfortable on the GTS250. And I like to shift.