Modern Vespa

Took a day off work to play scooters and day drink...

Lots of progress on the ghost P200.

Treated the rust on the floor and air brushed in paint. The match should wear OK with a little 2 stroke soot and grime to hide the edges. Also, worked on the front end.
This weekend will do cables and then start reassembly.


Acid and Saran Wrap

Coming down

No regrets... mostly

dirty silverware

ready for dinner

nice work!! good inspiration for my PX floors

Pretty work my man! Looks awesome!

(Yes I'm still digging for your parts, text you later)

I got tired of trying to blend and distress one side of the fender so it matched the other. Went ahead and painted the whole thing. 6 one way half a dozen hours the other… or something like that.


Starting to look like a scoot again.
*if* I have the engine mounting bolts will have a roller by then weekend. Hoping they are boxed up with the rebuilt engine. (I suspect I will need to order.)




Started here for reference

Other side after paint.

Very Nice!

Looking good!

Patina is overrated

Looks the business!

Top marks all around!

Good day in the garage….
Baseball on the radio and ran all the handlebar—switch looms… and finished soldering all the cut headset wires. Continuity test looks good.

Getting close.


Glad to have this bit done.

NICE!

Alright boys… we gotta roller.


Well… as soon as I mount the back wheel.

Nice, I'm coming to you with my fork drop / install questions. First one - what's with the gloves on the grips?

Ha! That was all my better half.

My wife Lenny came out to place the big engine mount screw whilst I heaved the engine into place. She used gloves as the bolt was all oily/greasy....
she festooned them on the handle bars when she made her exit… muttering something about "Vespa Jazz Hands"

Colors…

Stoked to see this! ....especially after having to solder/repair all the cut head set wires, rewire the kill switch, and run a new green nose to tail.

All we need now is to attach exhaust, add gas, and it''l be time to kick it over.

Faux reindeer? You may have the makings of a unique Christmas decoration there with a few ribbons, a pair of big eyes and some kind of red nose. According to the TV set, 'tis already the season so it's nice to be ready. Kudos to Mrs. 'nest.

Welcome Back Kotter…

Prior to starting the scoot above I had to fuss with the PX flywheel a tiny bit.
Info here:
PX flywheel on a P200

I spent some time yesterday dialing in the carb and test riding. Fun bike!

Two issues to work on now.

1. Left side signal lights are on constantly. Headlight on. No tail light. Turn signal switch/toggle does not do anything. (New flasher). Opened up the headset thinking their may be a wire shorting somewhere... so far no luck. Gonna open up the wire junction by the horn next and see if anything jumps out. Any suggestions here would be welcome.

2. US style headlight. Brackets that hold the headlight unit keep getting loose causing quite a rattle. This should be an easy fix with some locktight I suppose. But, again, any suggestions here would be welcome.

w00T! First Start! Always awesome to see. Figure that if it's just the left side turn signals (both front & rear, I assume), then you have either wires rubbed through and touching somewhere, probably inside the bundle, or something just flat-out mis-wired. Figure out which circuit is powering them and work your way back from there. Try toothed washers on them if you don't already have them. That's how my Stella shipped and they held for years.

Awesome video- sounds excellent!

I got the directors cut earlier and thoroughly rounded birds for his wardrobe.

but, I got the 60fps slow mo version of the street roll. and some doggo pics, so I'm good!

pretty work my dude. that thing looks awesome. you've done amazing work!

Hey hey..... it was hot.

Awesomeness.
Sounded a hair rich... but hey - damn it feels good to be a gangsta.
Will you have to re-jet or is she good to roll?

Thankee thankee... first vid was completely un-tuned, first-start with choke out and a wonky throttle slide/idle screw.

After dialing that in I Jetted at 120 on the main and it sounds pretty good. Nice pull through the range. Will get a temp gauge on it and check the plug here in the next few weeks. But it seems pretty happy and well dialed in on the the first 10 miles of riding.

________________

On the electrical... I had two wires touching causing the left side flashers to be on.
Cleared that and now have no flashers and no brake/running light. :-/ Checking all the connects that I can access so far and not seeing anything yet. Will make a stepwise plan and begin the search in earnest ASAP.

Wasn't expecting that video to make me smile so much. Perfect soundtrack for a slow mo scooter video!

I mean!

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OK, interesting development. Whilst putting some more higher rev miles on the engine it started feeling lean. This was getting up in the 50mph range for the first time. Shrugged and figured upjetting the main some more would help. Went from a 120 to a 125.

No difference at all... :-/ I may have a 128 somewhere will dig, but concerned I may have an air-leak somewhere.

1 up Over-boar
SIP Road 2

Also annoying - leaking out the back of the carb box bad... and its a BRAND NEW carb! C'mon Spaco. *snorts and spits*

Sooo annoying. And you're sure the carb box leak and potential air box leak aren't one and the same?

If by "pressure test" you mean adding fuel, oil, and then kicking the kickstart lever... then yes, pressure tested multiple times.

Will do a cheap compression test this evening.

(Oh and yes... checked airbox and carb seem staright and good.)

Pressure test OK
Held 120psi…




In other news….we have brake lights!

Couldn't find a short and everything had continuity. Ended up looking at the connectors in the tail light and they had a ton of rust, dirt, muck. Cleaned em all up and boom… tail light/brake light.

LOve the vids in this thread. The first start and first ride are totally inspirational! Crustoration and subsequent flawless paint job was really good, too. Quite amazing to see your progress. Nice work, Bird!

Thanks thanks!

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Got the turn signals sorted. Finally. I believe there was a frayed wire in the handlebar switch that was shorting out the turn signals. Added some tape and then Hollywood Holted the thing…. ("Jiggled the cord") and we have turn signals. Dig.

On the jetting side. Something is still off.
The set up-
24/24
1st oversized
Sip Road 2
T5 air box

Currently on 125 main and still will not rev out.
Flat spot starts at about 2/3 to 3/4 throttle.

Richened up the air mix from a BE3 to a BE1 and still won't rev out. Great low end torque, but max speed is mid/upper 50s

Thoughts? Bigger main? Richer air mix?

TIA

90% of carb problems are electrical….

so you're good a idle, 1/4 and half throttle, but once you go up to 3/4 to WOT, it loses it?

I'm with John that it could easily be electrical. Will it rev out on the stand and just not under load, or will it not rev out at all?

Have you checked what it looks like on a timing light? Made sure it's not misfiring or the timing is jumping around?

Yep. Exactly this. It just peaks out and gets flat.

It could very well be the Stator ... it was suspect at one point in its prior life... Will time it out and check gap, etc

The horrendous Vespa Kablooie...

Alex I'll take - "What happens when you eyeball and guess without proper tools." for 800.

Using the highly accurate: 1mm or stator radius to 1 degree of timing metric, I adjusted my stator to close to 19 or 18 or 17 degrees BTDC. It was set at 19 or 20 or 21 degrees BTDC (AKA -Factory timing mark.) Anyhoo...
Fired her up for a minute and she struggled to idle... started backfiring, headlight blew out.. dogs scattered to the hills (read - ran inside to the couch with haste) and the scoot died with one emphatic POP of a backfire.

The smell of burnt fuel and defeat hung thick in the air. The wife walked outside from her home office and said "That didnt sound right." And trust me the tone of voice was perfected through 7 years of marriage to inflict as much pain and snark as possible. (Geez I love her.)

I rolled the scoot into the garage and poured a double.
______________

Need to grab the multi-meter and test the stator coils- if I can get it to idle again that is. Not sure why the headlight blew out, but I suspect the stator at this point for sure.

I'm going to guess that you have wires in the harness shorting to one another, at a minimum. You caught a bit of spark into the lighting circuit and...well...light bulbs ain't spark plugs, y'know. Or maybe they are, so long as you only want it to spark once.

Anyways, I'd say look for wires that have rubbed through and go from there since you seem to have managed to move them from "gets a little bit of arc'ing grounding when vibrating due to higher RPM" to "touching the circuit and going all Godzilla on the rest of the harness" when you tweaked the timing.

^^Yep yep good call.

Regretting not pulling a new harness when I had the scoot completely apart.

My guess is that it's going to be the wiring from the stator to the junction box.

I decided from my GL that I'm going to do complete harness replacement to all my full teardown projects going forward because it's cheap, not hard, and avoids so many unpleasant surprises down the road.

^ This right here. Just dealt with this very issue. You'd think we'd all know by now the wires encased in plastic where they exit the stator are notorious for deteriorating and shorting, either to each other or to ground. Result = hard starts and nasty backfires. 'Course if you're like me you're eternally hopeful and avoid dealing with electrical monkey business until you absolutely have to.

Indeed Mike… I am pretty hopeless with almost all things electrical.
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Update:
Found a sheared woodruff key…

No obvious worn wires, but still need to pull the stator and investigate further.

Put the timing back to factory and kicked it over…it ran well. Will do a proper deep dive over the weekend.

Oh no, what a scare but glad you quickly got it sorted and must no longer fear dealing with spousal derision ( ). Which you richly deserved because it was after this was posted in your recent NSM-isms or The thread of vintage truths. thread too!
Now I feel bad, I SHOULD HAVE POSTED IN BOLD RED CAPS, sorry about that.

Tsk tsk tsk...