Modern Vespa

I have a new Pinasco flytech and need help wiring this into the existing (original) wire harness. I attached a photo of the wiring diagram for the original wiring harness. It originally has a battery and would like to leave it as it came from the factory: A/C headlight, high beam indicator and D/C everything else (turn signals, turn indicator, horn, tail, brake light. Will be using SIP speedometer.

I attached stock diagram and Pinasco instructions. I would also use the Pinasco voltage regulator/rectifier instead of the OE Piaggio item.

Any help is appreciated.

Since you have two yellow wires going from the junction box to the regulator, I would use one of them for AC, and the other one for the DC circuit. Put a stripe on it or something or a piece of tape so you know which one is which.

So yellow wire off stator to yellow wire of harness. Move over to the regulator side and plug that into the far left plug of the Pinasco regulator. Black ground wire remove from the old regulator and put it in slot #2 of the Pinasco regulator.

Going back to the stator, connect the white/ red wire to the extra yellow at the junction box. Then go to the regulator and plug that into slot #3. Plug the old pink wire that used to plug into the regulator into slot #4 of the P.R.

A few words of caution though-
1. My fly tech stator had poorly machined slots. They wouldn't fit and I had to dremel two to get the slots to line up with the case screw holes.
2. My fly tech kit was missing spade connectors. You might need to pick some more up.
3. My Pinasco regulator failed on me after 2 months. Save up for another one.
4. There was no holding tool for the flywheel. Rather than break the fins off I jammed a piece of rope into the spark plug hole to lock the crank. Then I torqued the flywheel to spec. If you want to buy the tool its another 20 euros. Otherwise the rope trick works fine.
5. I installed mine on a Rally. Pinasco idle timing was listed at 24*BTDC. That put me wide open at 16*. It was too much and I holed my piston. You may want to consider going conservative and making it so at WOT, you dont go below 17. Either that, or use some higher octane gas to prevent knocking/detonation.

Thanks for that. I noticed in the original wiring the purple wire from the stator is delivering a/c direct to the headlight- unregulated.

Do you know an easy way to get regulated a/c voltage to the headlight with the Pinasco setup? Also, what is the pink wire on the original harness doing? It runs from the turn signal flasher to the voltage regulator. I wonder if this is a sensing wire to help the original voltage regulator figure out when to charge and when not to??

Adding to Malcolm's instructions above. There's a unregulated purple wire that needs power for the headlights. You will need to run another wire to the regulator side to power the headlights. These are the same instructions as above but my instruction is more boring and I used the double yellow wires as AC in/out and added a wire for DC.
I knew nothing about wiring until after bugging MJ and just a lot of research. I blew a pinasco regulator too but it was because of incorrect wiring. Knowing the purpose of wires on the stator and from the harness will help a lot.

Stator Wires:
Red/Black is for the ignition. Goes to CDI
Red/White is for the battery. Goes to regulator
Yellow is to power the lights. Goes to regulator with double connection to scooter lighting wires. In/out in same regulator slot.

This may help along with the written instructions provided.

A: Try to get a spark before hooking the wires for the lighting:
1. Connect the red/black wire from the stator to the cdi. The connection for that red/black wire should have a double connection (faston 3 per the instructions) That empty side of that connections (faston 3) should connect to your on/off wire which is green coming from the bikes wiring harness. Previously, that green wire was connected to the old HT coil.
2. The other connection on the cdi is for a ground wire to the fan srew. Use faston 2 that came with the kit.

See if you can get a spark. Make sure other wires are not connected to anything.


B: Try to connect the lights:
1. Connect the yellow wire from the stator to one of the double yellow wires coming from the wiring harness. As you can see from the original diagram there are two yellow wires going to the regulator from the junction box. You will only need one. Use a multimeter resistance test to determine which wire is being used. Connect that yellow wire to the regulator based on the instructions. You will need another double connection for this (faston 3)
2. The purple wire from the harness at the junction box is unregulated power to the headlight. You would want to regulate that power so connect that wire to the other yellow wire that goes to the regulator from the junction box. On the battery side, put some tape or something on that yellow wire so you will know that it is actually the new purple wire.
3. Connect the new purple wire (actually yellow) to the purple wire on the battery/regulator side of scooter. Those two connected wires should connect to the unused side of the faston 3 with the other yellow wire on the regulator. In summary, in that one connection, power goes to the regulator from stator via the yellow wire, goes out the regulator via the purple wires.
3. The red/white wire from the stator needs to go to the regulator to power your battery. Connect the stator red/white wire to a new wire that ran from junction box to the regulator. Connect this new wire to the regulator slot based on the instructions.
4. Connect the pink wire from the battery (should have a fuse on it) to the regulator slot based on the instructions.
5. Connect a ground wire from the correct regulator slot to the other black wires connected behind the stator. You will need to use faston 2 that came with the kit.

Whoops! Sorry i missed that. If you could find some way to pigtail the purple wire into slot #1 of the regulator that will work. Strip and solder both wires into one terminal? Or what i like to do, keep the original terminals intact and just make a Y out of extra wire and 3 spade terminals. 1 female into regulator, 2 males to yellow and purple. Then heat shrink insulate each open connection and make things pretty in the battery box.

The pink wire should go from the regulator to the fuse to charge the battery.

Sorry for butting in, but isn't piston holing generally associated with high timing numbers? Like when you fit a kit, but leave the static timing at 23? You hear about it regularly. The low numbers are often described as safer, hence why all the variable timing systems retard as the revs get higher. So by using 17 as your low point instead of 16, you are actually advancing the timing right across the rev range aren't you?

Drive by question - not trying to hijack. Is there another brand you like and/or feel is a more reliable option?

Hopefully Patrick or one of the more knowledgeable two stroke experts will chime in to clarify but let me see if I can explain how I think of it. Fuel burns at a certain rate. If you ignite too early (25*+) the piston is going headfirst into an explosion at the wrong time and the opposing blast is what does damage. So in that instance lowering the numbers (retarding the ignition will help).

If you ignite too late, fuel can only burn so fast and youre not giving it a chance since the piston is really moving so youre going to build up a ton of heat/ loss of power. Too much heat can cause detonation which can ignite carbon on the head/ Cause the fuel to burn uncontrolled (so you use higher octane gas to stabilize the burn) and lean out the mixture.

So you find the Goldilocks setting which is designed for the kit and works with the head profile. Malossi says thats 18*BTDC. Polini 16* Piaggio going the conservative route left huge squish gaps in the head and said 24-18* depending on the model engine. The huge squish isn't the best for power, but it is for reliability and emissions. So, Hot Rod Al and other performance makers skim heads, change the head shape and bring the squish down to get the best power/Best burn shape but at the sake of reliability. Black magic stuff!

So what caused my Rally piston to hole? Could be a fleck of carbon that ignited? Could it have been a weak piston? Cheap gas? Timing too retarded 16* which caused things to heat up? I sadly dont know. What I do know is that I've adjusted my flytech to stop at 17* WOT, left everything else the same and its never happened since.

I ran out of money before I could try all the different options out there but I'd say any kit that comes with all the parts needed, fits, has clear instructions and works as designed is a winner my opinion!

Maybe SIP Vape? I havent heard any grumbling with their kit.

i have done several of these conversions for American market P-series.

You will need to change out the regulator/rectifier.
1. Attached your red/white to yellow #1 at junction box. that takes unregulated AC to your new regulator. you will need to regulate both yellow's at regulator. now you have regulated AC going back to junction in yellow #2. Tie Regulated AC into your Purple, you now have regulated AC to headset!

2. take your pink (coming from fuse) and tie in into your CD at regulator. you now have DC going to fuse/battery.

3. the wire coming off of X on your flasher to original regulator, tape it off. you will no longer need this one.

btw. yellow/white coming from stator will not be used.

you can use the PINASCO regulator or BGM type (universal 4-pole type https://www.scooter-center.com/en/voltage-regulator-4-plug-bgm-pro-12v-ac/dc-universal-bgm6690) i have a universal here if you need it.

SIP (vape) or Pinasco/Malossi/Vespatronic/others, there is no difference. you are dealing with American market wiring harness and regulator/rectifier. at the very least, you will have to change out the regulator/rectifier. Those instructions are written up for European market scooters.

Sorry for my ignorance, but what is the "CD at regulator" and do you know why the yellow will not be used or what the difference is in the w/r wire and the y/w at the stator?

Just out of curiosity, can this Pinasco ignition be converted to all DC? Will it have enough wattage to run a 35w incandescent headlight and all LED everything else in all DC?

Typo on my part, should be "DC."

There is a gentlemen on here out of Salt Lake that converted his to DC. He did a step by step on here. I did a bunch of work for him; he did the stator conversion.

Gickspeed,

I'm trying to learn a little something:

Why only use the red/white off the stator, and not the yellow/white wire off the stator?

Do you know if they are parallel circuits? If so, would it be beneficial to combine them?

There was talk years ago about converting the Varitronic over to full wave 12VDC. The Varitronic has pretty much the same 4 pole stator as the all the other kits out there. https://www.scooterotica.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=24233 It's just that it's so much easier nowadays with just using the SIP Vape if you want full wave DC.

True. With the VAPE, it's already DC.

The stator itself is AC in all Vape versions, the DC happens at the regulator. Makes it a pretty flexible system.

does their DC have a floating ground then?

It's still AC off the stator, but the regulator has a built in rectifier. You can swap the regulator/rectifier for AC/DC output. They did the same thing with the CDI. It's the same Stator, but different CDI's for fixed or variable timing.

Pretty good design approach, if you ask me

let me get this straight, the only thing different is that it comes with a Regulator/Rectifier instead of just a regulator? For some reason i thought they had floated on the ground coming off the stator.

That's how I read this bullet point from the SIP site: Assuming I make it out to the garage this weekend, I'll try to remember to check what's coming off the stator since both of mine are DC and confirm or refute.

In their description of the bare stator, SIP has nothing to say "this is an AC (or DC) stator".
Hopefully when they bring out the selectable timing curve CDI, that will be a simple add on to the existing components as well.

is anyone here that can provide me ignition settings for vespa 50s pinasco flytech ignition ? i bought it used and previous owner didnt have the manual

Assuming it's the same curve as the largeframe flytech, the manual was posted at the top of this thread: Pinasco Flytech wiring on 1979 PX125 help needed

Also, the curve seems to be the same on the smallframe version (which makes sense, even if the curve itself doesn't, IMO): Hooking up Pinasco ignition to 100 sport