Modern Vespa

The chances increase drastically the closer it is to a rally.

are the damaged woodruff keys on the clutch or fly side? You can fix it on the fly side, but I'd be very hesitant to trust it on the clutch side, where that key is load bearing and not just positioning.

Clutch side. New cranks sadly aren't in the budget for the two scoots. I know were on borrowed time but if we can get a year or two of light use out of it, I'll be happy.

I like the custom rims

OK...I'm going to look into this. I'm not going to go custom rims like you, but an extra inch of ground clearance wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

And since my speedo reads fast anyway, it would actually make it MORE accurate to have the bigger tires!

Now, I'm just trying to figure out if I can make it work without having to do a full front disc conversion

Ouch...yeah, that's gonna be risky, but how bad is the crank damage?

Make winter feels like summer

Have a nice hallowen to you all and cheer

Very nice brother E. And I'm digging your grips!

Yesterday, I found a few minutes to re-install a new spacer and rear shock on the Sprint. It fixed things up nicely, and I now understand how the whole thing probably failed in the first place.

Fundamentally, I made the bad assumption that the spacer and shock couldn't turn once installed because the shock is held in place by the motor mount. The mounting stud (which screws the shock into the spacer) screws back into the shock and is then held in place by the nut on top of the shock. In my case, that nut was just loose enough that the stud could turn. It had worked itself down to about half the height it probably should be, and I'm guessing that entire top assembly had twisted around over time as well.

So taking ebeth's advice, I made sure everything was good and tight when I installed it this time, and am hoping for better results going forward along with tighter turns.

Also, prior to fixing things, the most I could lean the bike over without grounding out was about 20-21 degrees. Now, it's about 42, so doubled. Makes a HUGE difference.

And you thought you needed to go on a diet.

We require some knee-dragging action shots to confirm this statement...

Yesterday... I painted a gas tank for my Lambretta...

Today... I scraped my new paint off trying to install/tighten the retaining straps of the gas tank for my Lambretta.

Mmrrph

birdsnest - those straps can be finicky but you didn't forget the rubbers did you?? the edges are sharp.

Yeah rubbers in place... metal bands just made quite a few scratches in the course of fiddling with the positioning

yeah I hear ya. good thing they are under the cowls. A bit of polishing compound may soften the damage...

Today I gave up on the idea of JB welding the cranks. While the JB weld application turned out well, the crank was too ovaled to get the oil pump cog on the crank. I would have had to dremel the crank/sand/ mess with it to get the cog on. I'm not that desperate to reuse this crank so a new race cut 57mm crank is going in tomorrow.

Put a mirror on a rack so i dont have to shake my head to see the past behind

I tried to install a cdi boot on Sweet P (my P2). It has never had one in the 12 or so years I've had it. But as soon as I was done, no spark, then a spark and no spark again. Rode it to the store and no spark again. Put in new cdi, Jiggled the wires, started and went home and now no lights. This morning took the spark plug out and grounded it and had spark.Now runs fine.charged the battery and have lights, but I don't think it's charging on the bike. No more cdi boot. I'm baffled. All was well until that cursed boot.

Had a fine weekend at the legendary (soon to be if not already) Crocket vs Fawkes Rally. Great riding and one of the coolest groups of vintage riders you could hope to find. Stopped at the Stesti Brewery in Lovelady TX for a socially distanced outdoor hang.

The rides and the company did not suck.

I'm jelly of your Texas weather!

I got out in the sunshine yesterday as well on a nice spin with a pal, but it was chilly and bit of rain too . Was still a great ride and bike did well enuff. Cut out some before it warmed up, so still needs more tuning. It's my first reed valve motor, makes LOTS of power but seems to tune a little different. Always something to fiddle with...

Modified my clutch basket, hope this will make it strong on a long run

Not scooter related. Harvesting weekend. Took us 12 hours each day to gather all (3 tons this years). One side of the pile...

I was at Home Depot today buying some blinds and a guy stopped me to tell me he liked my scooter T-shirt.

He tells me he has a Vespa (modern GL) and an Allstate. Whips out his phone and starts showing me pictures, so naturally I showed him pictures of my stable, too, and we just nerded out on scooters for a few minutes as my wife stood there and rolled her eyes.

The Allstate is not running, but he got it free from a guy he does photography work for. Red, all original, some of the best OG paint I've ever seen. He's never gotten it running just because he doesn't want to touch it and spoil the pure vintage-ness of it.

Anyways, it was a great random scooter-related interaction.

Oh, and I closed on a house today, so I'll somewhere to work on scooters again pretty soon.

Wow! Those look amazing! How many trees does it take to get three tons of olives? And was that a good harvest?

Congrats on the house! Missed that you moved from Chi to TN. Enjoy!

Impressive! You got some of those nice power tree shakers I bet.

If you're gonna press them locally, would you mind getting a few pics for me? Hoping for classic one horse power(or donkey or ox...) press, veve...

CM, I really like your new house! Classic like a Vespa, but appears much roomier with many more storage options!

Garage pics, STAT!

That is a lot of olives!!


Chandlerman, where is the picture of the shed?

Hah! Thanks, V oodoo! We fell in love with it pretty much the moment we saw it. It's on a big corner lot and should be just right for us.

The garage will come. It has a car port, but for the moment you'll have to use your imagination. I have room, both in the back yard and the budget, to have a workshop built. It'll be along the back fence to the right of the car port, 12x24' I think.

I don't know if I'll be able to do the full-on Garage Mahal with heat and air conditioning yet, but I can certainly dream until I get the final quotes back.

Spent yesterday cleaning out my garage and found a baby seat. I bought it off eBay for some reason and it's been in the pile.

I found out today that a friend who seized his motor is having his first kid. Dad got a free top end cleanup, mom got some diapers. Baby Birdie Lynn got this.

Nice and very cool how those organic conversations just seem to happen.

Congrats on the new place, Chandler. Looks like you have plenty of scooter room back there.

SaFis: Quite the harvest. We're having our own harvest here ... our macadamia tree is producing like crazy this year.

Safis - that looks amazing. Do you guys have it pressed for you?
CM1 - Congrats. I can attest - house is completely charming and just a short scooter ride in to town.
SCG - wholly cow - must be dangerous to work under that tree this time of year! Whadda y'all do with those?

CM1, first off. Congrats on your new house!!!

To answer your questions, we have 60 trees in total. And yes, it was a really good year, the best so far to be exact (eighth year of harvest). The weather is very important during pollination season and this year was really good. Last year was the worst ever, cause we had early warm weather, the trees were "fooled" and started flowering and then we got snow and rain. That was what killed our harvest...

Terry, no tree shakers. We have a battery powered branch shaker and the rest is hand labor (sticks and hand rakes). We were five people, 3 workers, me and my brother in law. As for the "mill" it's state of the art, with ISO and so certs...

SoCal, your macadamia nuts look a lot like our olives...

Oh, and results are in. Harvest was 3.2tons to be exact and it gave us 600kg of extra virgin olive oil. Annual expenses (including the mill) are 1k euros and 600kg of extra virgin olive oil would give around 2.5k euros if we sold it...

A few photos of the mill and our edible olives, curing for 2+ years in 20kg barrels. There are times that I can't stop eating them...

It's nowhere near as elaborate as SaFiS' olive processing operation!

Basically 5 steps, all done by hand:

1. Gather nuts
2. De-husk
3. Dry the inner shells for ~ 2 weeks
4. Crack out the nut meat
5. Lightly roast & distribute to friends

How interesting, very much like almonds w/ same husk. Except almonds also have that tuff skin on the final nut we soak in water to remove. We like the 'green' rubbery nut too, very strong taste. But must roast the rest or they spoil. We get some walnuts too, but kind of small.

not my pics

When the husks are starting to split on the tree it's time to harvest


Tarps under the tree, then shake the HELL out of it and use long poles to knock renegades loose. And I stand corrected, BRANCH shakers, not TREE!


We end up with something like this

Wow! I need a glass of red with this

This thread is making me hungry

And I've learned a little bit about olive oil production and nut harvesting, which is also pretty cool.

When I was a kid, we'd go out to my grandparents' house in Amarillo, Texas every year to help with the apricot harvest. They had I think five trees in the yard, and they'd send the kids up into the top branches to pick the fruit, which would then be canned, made into jam, eaten fresh, etc. One thing you could always count on at their house was that there would be Apricot Something with pretty much every meal.

It was tons of fun as a kid to finally be told to climb to the top of the tree, rather than to come down before I killed myself, though

Back in this decade, the movers got all the stuff into the house, which is a bit of a crisis without a workshop to hold all my scooters and tools. Getting that going is on today's to-do list.

Pics from the CvsF Rally last weekend.

POIDOG took these...

What a cool event!

House built 1883.

(Scoots... 1963)

Vibes from the Sunday ride...