Modern Vespa

Do I really need to lower the engine to replace the water pump?

I have a number of things to do to Tethys - install water pump, install new shocks front and back, and install rear crash bars. I'm thinking the best order is the way I listed them:
1. Water pump (part of which involves unfastening the rear shocks
2. Rear shocks
3. rear crash bars
4. reattach plastics

front shock can be done at any point.

Do I really need to lower the engine to replace the water pump?

Is your maintenance up to date? With the engine lowered it would be a good time to check the valves and replace the plug if it is needed.

I will be looking for your front shock replacement story when you get around to it. It might be easy on the bigger scooters but man was that a tough gig for me on the 50! I kept thinking, What is the trick to make this easier! lol

I use a couple of aluminum tubes to align the top of the shocks. With the engine dropped I first attach the bottom of the shocks, then I insert the tubes through the holes under the saddle, and over the screwed threads at the top of the shocks. Then lift the engine and everything is in place ready for the bushes, nuts, etc. Don't need three hands!

Remove exhaust, exhaust carrier

Valves! Baby steps, baby steps.

Wait, just re-read this. What is the exhaust carrier?

swingarm. that big chunky aluminum thing.

Ok, swingarm - I know what that is. Even if it isn't really.

But it isn't a swingarm!

I'll allow you "exhaust bracket" or "suspension arm" - but this is the swing-arm, at least according to Piaggio:

(OK, this is MV so you can make your own definitions of course. )

That's the swingarm arm. The unit construction of the engine, transmission, and rear axle is, as I understand the term, the swingarm.

So confusion shall continue to lurk in the shadows.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the parts diagram was a questionable translation from Vulgar Latin.

My vote would be not to use the phrase "swing arm" at all. I try not to, but don't normally make a fuss when others do.

*runs over to jim with a good dark beer*
*smooths feathers*

shhh... shhh... I know man. I know.

Thanks for the beer and feather-smoothing Greasy.

because I say so.

That’s fair, but then you have to come up with a better name for the various pieces.

You know, terminology that ignores the fact that it more or less resembles an arm that, well, swings.

the parts manual calls that plate the "suspension arm" and that seems a reasonable description to me.

FFS, will you buggers stop using that term!

Reasonable treasonable.

FFS, will you buggers stop using that term!

It is the exhaust bracket it always has been and always will be.

Wait, which term are you admonishing us for now?

I have no argument with *that*. There are loads of very competent linguists who do commercial translations - unfortunately almost all of them have zero technical background. Engineers who are fluent in two or more languages are few and far between (but there are some on this forum) and they almost never get asked to do the paperwork translations.

While at work I was thinking about this same lack of care in the digital computer manuals I was editing. Writing and editing technical
manuals is what I do for a living the other eleven months of the year and I knew they were full of errors, ambiguities, omissions and
information so completely screwed up you had to read them six times to make any sense out of them. But what struck me for the first
time was the agreement of these manuals with the spectator attitude I had seen in the shop. These were spectator manuals. It was built
into the format of them. Implicit in every line is the idea that "Here is the machine, isolated in time and in space from everything else in
the universe. It has no relationship to you, you have no relationship to it, other than to turn certain switches, maintain voltage levels,
check for error conditions—" and so on. That’s it. The mechanics in their attitude toward the machine were really taking no different
attitude from the manual’s toward the machine, or from the attitude I had when I brought it in there. We were all spectators. And it
occurred to me there is no manual that deals with the real business of motorcycle maintenance, the most important aspect of all. Caring
about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.

Reminded me of this :

Is that from ZAMM?