Modern Vespa

Yup, after all these years (since around 2012?) i'm finally getting the paint damage fixed! Painting the fuel tank was kind of a last minute plan, but i'm glad i did it. I really wanted to paint the fork link and caliper carrier, but both of those particular parts get really filthy from the dust that's caused by the hydro brake pads, and it would be difficult to keep clean. I figure i'll leave them both silver and the grime won't show up as bad.

Here's a pic from That Scooter Shop's website of a painted fork link and caliper carrier. I dunno how they keep the green so clean.

I transitioned over to working on the headset. I'm trying to cleanly mount a Baja Designs Squadron Sport LED into the headset. It's been quite challenging so far. I REALLY want it to look sanitary, but i don't think i can make that happen...but i'm going to keep working at it until i can get somewhat close.

I decided to fab up a removable bracket that the LED will get mounted to. I kinda just eyeballed the positioning of the bracket. I think what i'll have to do is install the fork and lower portion of the headset (no cables or wires run yet though) and wheel the scooter out to the county road and figure out the final position and aiming of the light at 10pm at night. Then finish the bracket, then repaint the whole headset.

My friends has a 3d printer and he make me a blue colored bezel that i can use for temporary mock up purposes. Once the LED is mounted exactly where i want it i'll probably get a custom aluminum bezel made.

Nice! Here's an idea... 10 at night, take one of your other scooters and go 50 ft from the barn and figure out where the light falls on the barn - maybe 20 or 30 ft. Then you have a place and spot to adjust the new headlight to....

The welds aren't pretty, but they are pretty strong. This is as far as i've got with the headset so far. Maybe i'll try to figure out the final positioning of the LED this weekend, but i don't feel like it's a high priority just yet.

The blue paint got burned during the welding, but since i'm planning on respraying the headset it isn't a big deal.

That's actually a pretty good idea, but most all my headlights are a different size LED and have different lenses installed over them. I also have an uneven gravel driveway, so it's really difficult to aim headlights and spot lights on my property. What i need is a straight stretch of tarmac that's about 400 meter long.

I've been wrenching on dirtbikes, went on a 3 day dirtbike ride with 3 other friends, pedaled my BMX bicycle 210 miles (Seattle to Portland bicycle ride in two days), ordering parts for my Lammy, and finally got one my KTM 990 Adventure bikes reassembled (i've owned this one for 1.5 years and finally ride it for my first time ever a couple days ago). So yeah, my Allstate got put on the back burner.

I'm back focused on the headlight now. I had some custom aluminum bezels made from Send Cut Send. It was only $30 shipped (their minimum) for three bezels. I mocked up a Baja Designs 40 watt Squadron Pro headlight in the headset in order to get an idea of where the beam patter will shine. What i found was that the 40 watt light will be waaaay too bright to use. I'm completely out of spare 20 watt Squadron "Sport" LEDs. I had to temporarily "borrow" one off of my sister's pick'em up truck for mocking up.

I used super glue to temporarily hold the LED's mounting bracket to my custom made housing bracket. Both are stainless steel, so of course i welded them together with stainless wire (from my spool gun).

I just did a couple tack welds to join the two brackets together. Notice that i purposely centered the LED into the bezel, not centering the two brackets together.

That's a great headlight setup. I am currently running a halogen bulb on a Stella with a PX Stator. Barely has enough juice to charge the battery and run the light. LED is much brighter and more forgiving. Great build!

As ya'll probably seen in previous pics, there's quite a bit of road rash on the right side legshield. That happened when the previous owner laid the scooter down on the tarmac when trying to avoid a car. I always hated the looking at the damage so i rarely rode the scooter...which was probably 4 times in 10 years.

I made the decision to do a slap-happy touch up paint fix on the legshield. In my mind the only other option was a complete body and paint restoration...and if that was the case i most likely would have slipped in a couple orange paint stripes and done a full blow Gulf livery. Crunching the numbers, touch up paint costs about $1000 less than all the paint and body materials combined...plus however many labor hours it takes me to make it look perfect....ain't no body got time for that.

I have stainless steel legshield trim that will cover most of the damage, so that will be my saving grace.

I also sanded off the paint and primer off of the headset. A couple coats of SPI epoxy primer were spayed a couple days ago, a sealer coat yesterday morning, and 4 coats of PPG DCC concept single stage paint got squirted on this morning before it got too hot out. I have just a small smidge of orange peel. It's only noticeable on the side of the upper headset when i'm looking really close at it. I'll probably cut and buff it to get the finish more consistent.


At this point i'm going to say that i'm 100% done with all the paint work. I only have a couple ounces of blue paint left over, so i feel like i kinda cut it close. There's just enough left for some emergency touch ups.

Even though everything is now painted, i'm in no rush to assemble the scooter. I might wait a month or two for the paint to thoroughly harden up.

I'm an LED headlight hater but you've pulled it closer to acceptable than any I've seen. That's good work. Generally the sight of them on vintage makes me want to hurl but you really did a lot to soften the weird stylistic disconnect that I usually see with those.

I 1000% agree with you on the aesthetics of LED lights on vintage scooters. They just look like poo when installed. I think i just kinda got lucky on this build. The headset opening is just small enought that the LED refectors don't look super duper terrible once installed.The absolute only reason i install them on my scooters is because in a rural area where there's lots of deer. I've hit and went down on one before after dark while riding my dirtbike on the gravel county road. I've also had multiple close calls with deer while on my vespas. On any given summer night i'll usually see deer eyeballs 50% of the time.

LED headlight allows my charging battery voltage to get to 13.8 volts and I have seen as high as 14.2 on volt meter.

I did some more layers of touch up paint on the legshield. I then sanded it down a bit and then did a quick buff. I bought stainless steel legshield trim. I had to manipulate it a fair amount so that it would fit correctly. Once i had it installed the previous damage on the legshield is mostly covered up. At a quick glance the damaged areas that have the touch up paint isn't noticeable. Only once you focus in that particular is it noticeable. So i am going to say mission accomplished with the touch up paint.

One of the existing fork stops on the SIP PKXL conversion fork was located in the incorrect spot. It caused the fork to turn way too far to the left. I thought about relocating the fork stop, but the second hole i would have had to drill and tap would have been pretty darn close to the original hole. Instead i welded about a 1/4" thick piece of aluminum to the existing for stop. It went fairly smoothly, so i'm very pleased about that for sure.

At this point i'm kinda unmotivated to work on the scooter for a bit. I did mess around with the wire harness for about 10 minutes, but since it's been almost a year since i've looked at it, i don't remember which all wires go where. I'll probably wait until later this fall to dig into that again. Right now summer will be coming to an end in oregon, and i want to get a whole bunch of other outdoor projects completed...such as fix my parent's roof, cut/split firewood, convert my newly acquired 2wd Toyota Tundra (with a blown engine) over to 4wd and swap in the good engine that's out of my wrecked 4x4 Tundra.

Your touch ups look great. Anything that gets ridden ends up with some dings and road rash. It's painful when it happens to a pristine new paint job. Nothing wrong with giving a project a rest to take some time for other projects.

What a mess! Good luck on your conversion. Who is the little man belatedly directing traffic?

No idea, but he's been hanging out in the stake pocket for the past year or so...

I wasn't planning on working on the Allstate for a bit, but i ordered some LED modules that i'll be using inside the taillight...and they arrived yesterday in the mail. I used the exact same LEDs as i did in my VB1 200 project. They're made by Hyper-lite. I bought their Universal 32U running/brake lights that flashes when the brakes are applied. It's a real annoying flashing, so that means that they should do their job of keeping me seen by other vehicles.

I used Lord Fusor 152 epoxy to attach the two individual light bars inside the housing. Their's also another module that comes in the kit that controls the running, brake, and strobe. That also got epoxied inside the taillight.

So that fender bracket that's welded onto the fork that my angle grinder sent off into a low orbit and out into the field last june? Well i found it today while i was wrenching on my truck! It was found about 30' away from the launch pad.