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.

Some months later and i've been getting a smidge motivated to work on the Allstate again. I filled my late summer with going after firewood at my uncle's property. I used my severely beat up 2000 tundra for hauling wood. It's too small and lightweight to be efficient hauling wood for longer distances, but since my uncle's property is about 600 meters away from me, i just took many trips back and forth. I'm a first time toyota truck owner, and i was impressed with the beating the truck had been taking.

My wrecked 2000 4wd truck has a good engine and drivetrain, i then found a 2004 2wd truck with a blown engine. I swapped the 2000 engine, whole drivetrain, and 4x4 components into the 2004 truck, then converted the 2wd truck over to 4wd. It was actually pretty darn simple...comparatively.

For the past week i've been messing around with the electrical portion of the allstate build. I already had a DC horn sorted out for the scooter, but the horn shell cover that i bought from SIP was their standard "grade A repair"...so i ended up throwing away that piece of garbage shell since the chrome was flaking off. I bought another PKXL DC horn to use with my old horn shell that has a bit more patina than i'd like...but whatever. I'm fine with it.

It was time to finally wire up the rear brake light switch. I was hesitant to do it just because of all the grief i've heard about solder not being able to stick to the metal flags inside the switch. Welp, my switch was no different. I couldn't get solder to stick to the metal flags even when sanding them down first. After some google searching, it looks like charlieman22 made his own metal contacts out of copper. I decided to follow his lead. Brake light switch

After a couple hours of searching around my shop, i found some copper that could work. I used 3/4" copper "M" pipe. It was just thick enough that it made it fairly easy to form, but more than strong enough not to distort. I ended up making the copper fit very securely on the first try. It was VERY easy to solder the brake wires to the copper.

This modification went MUCH easier than i thought it would. Probably because my copper was just thick enough to make it workable.

Awesome work brother - very nice!

Since i finally got all the wires and cable run through the frame, i could FINALLY install the tank and seat. But before i did that, i used some tiny brass machine screws to install my brand new ALLSTATE aluminum id plate. It's been YEARS since this scooter has been assembled as much as it is now.


EDIT: after posting up this last pic in this particular posting, i just noticed that i installed the luggage hook upside down...derp. Looks like i'll have to remedy that next year.

Bodge!!!

Guilty as charged. No doubt i would have MUCH preferred to install that ignition key elsewhere, but there was zero space anywhere else. I'll just have to pretend that i have more of a 1974 Rally 200 theme going on in that area.

Love your headlight. Are you keeping the plate raw aluminum or have plans to paint it?

JK. That's where I put them too, so yeah, I produce bodges too…

Thanks for the complement on the headlight. Aesthetically i'm not really a fan of LED headlights in the vintage scooters. I'm probably less keen on the 4 individual reflector style of the Baja Designs Squadron light, but there are MUCH worse looking ones out there. The aluminum bezel that i had water jetted does look totally acceptable on this scooter. I have the same LEDs installed in other vespas (P series), and they don't look nearly as good. I have no plans on painting the bezel. I have tried a color matching the bezel in the past and it looked so-so. It definitely sounded like a great plan on paper, but after i installed it, well not so much.

Aesthetics aside, no one can deny the high lumen output and low amp draw of a quality LED. There are LOTS of deer and elk where i live, and deer strikes are VERY common on the roads that i ride and drive on. I've hit a deer while riding my dirtbike in the past. I've also had multiple times over many close calls. My good friend and his wife just hit a deer last month while riding 2-up on a KTM 990 Adventure...while going 65mph. Miraculously they pealed themselves up off the pavement without to much bodily damage.

I here you on the vintage scoots. I have a P that will get completed after my GS. Plan on riding the P in Baja. I don't drive at night but having a light people can see is really important down there. I hate the one from SIP. If you ever wanted to sell one for the P I'd buy it!

Here are some links to my other scooters where i've installed Baja Designs LEDs for headlights. I have the same brand LEDs in five other of my Vespas so far. The Squadron LEDs are too large to fit in a P or PK series, so i had to use the smaller "S2" LED. The pre P vespas have a bit more space to fit a deeper LED housing, so it's easier to fit a Squadron or even a Squadron XL. And don't let the size fool you, the little S2 lights are plenty bright enough for 60mph on back country roads...even when the pavement is a darker black when it's rainy out.

2005 PX150 DC conversion

PK125 XL disc brake and LED headlight conversion

I'm experimenting with different M10 pinch bolts for clamping my header to the fork stem. The original hex head bolt head height is tall enough that the wire harness rubs against it. I can see it slowly wearing through the harness sheathing. Here's some pics of different M10 bolts that i tried. But first off, just to be clear, i had already sanded down about 1/3" of the height of the polished original hex bolt. Even after that, the other bolt heads were a lower profile. Ideally i would have drilled a countersunk hole in the headset's mounting bracket, then i could have used a flat head screw as the pinch bolt. There would have been MUCH more space for the harness. At the end of the day i decided to go with a button head bolt. It provides a smooth transition for the wire harness to rub against.

You're the best! Not only do you give me the low down on the light but you have a great build for the disc brake conversion that rocks!!
That's a real bummer your friends went down on the KTM. Glad they're OK.

Yeah, they're pretty lucky to be alive. If the deer had jumped up a little higher, it would have probably broke my friend's neck. They're also lucky they didn't get run over from behind from the car that was following them...or the oncoming traffic when both the riders and the bike went sliding into the oncoming lane! Yes the deer was killed. And yes the deer is now located in his freezer.

And i had just gone through his KTM last summer with a hole slew of mods to make the bike better...as in lighter weight and longer suspension travel (new forks and shocks with different valving and heavier springs). My friend and his family (wife and kids) are currently on vacation in germany. When he gets back home we'll put our two heads together to figure out what will be the best outcome monetarily wise with the insurance company. He plans to keep the bike. It's currently in my shop and i have it all torn down and photographed all the damage for the insurance company. I'm not sure what his plan is for his bike, but my plan is for him to give me a bank check so that i can rebuild it for him...but even better than the last time. I'd like to see if i can't shed another 20lbs of weight from the bike. I also want to thin down his whole wire harness. I should be able to remove about 10 different wires from the ECU, then program a different MAP from TuneECU. This will probably be a winter time project for me.

I started running the hydro brake line. I had Speigler build the line for me. I chose the Rizzla blue color because i wanted a little bit of flash, but hindsight i should have went with a boring grey color. I mean it doesn't look too too bad, so i can live with the blue.

It's definitely a very tight fit to stuff everything under the Allstate's split head cover. In fact i still haven't been able to successfully fit the speedometer just yet. The order of events to fit everything are...
-install speedo in headset.
-install headset cover, while pulling the hydro hose out of the way of the headset cover clamp.
-install LED headlight.
-install headlight ring.

I'm still trying to decide which brake caliper to use. I'm thinking either a standard Grimeca 30mm caliper, SIP 31.5mm black caliper, or a SIP 32.5mm blue anodized caliper.

https://www.sip-scootershop.com/en/product/brake-calliper-sip-grimeca-classic-grimeca-98-my-front_56408000