Modern Vespa

There's a bit of a tale behind this. if it's tl;dr, skip to the bold bit.

A few months back, I made a questionable life choice and bought an Italjet Torpedo as a project scooter. I foolishly assumed it was similar to an older Piaggio Liberty (LT). Initially, the parts were easy to come by as it came with the Piaggio HiPER2 engine and anything that was broken was findable if I turned over enough rocks.

Then I hit a proper snag.

While dismantling the headset for the fork rebuild, I learned that the headlight housing was held together by the paint alone. removal of the screws allowed the tension of the headlight adjustment screw to drive the bits apart and crumble into small shards of ABS. I had considered getting a plastic repair kit, but determined it was as practical as gluing broken crisps back together. I kept looking for a replacement and sourced a part that was also broken and only fractionally more usable than what I had. As a result, the rebuild of the Italjet has been on hold since September.

Today, I called a parts supplier (and site sponsor) who's helped me with bits for several of my ill-conceived scooter projects, looking for ideas on how to find the Italjet bit. While I had tried several of the solutions proposed, one that I hadn't tried was checking auction sites in European countries. So after our call and my afternoon meetings, I put together a terribly specific search query and fired it off into the Web.

Imagine how gobsmacked I was when the dang part manifests on the first page of results.

The part I need is out there. Even in the right color. It's on eBay.de classifieds! And I can't register for the site because I can't authenticate with my 'murican credentials. Drat!

So that's the story. Now, for the request for help.

Would a forum member located in the EU be willing to help a hapless Yank procure the part he needs to put his Italjet back together? I'm willing to compensate you for time/effort and at this point, bribery is open for discussion. Please PM and I'll share the details on the part.

Thank you!

I couldn't help myself.

I'll sell ya a complete torpedo, it's silver, but it's all there and clean…

And comes with a hot rod motor…

Hit me up if you're interested.

I'm not located in the EU, but IT'S ABS. It dissolves in acetone. Two pieces of ABS can be "solvent welded " with acetone. You can reinforce with fiberglass or wire mesh, if necessary.
Get yourself some acetone. some 1/16 sheet ABS, some ABS to mix up with the acetone and make various consistency glues. Put that thing together.
Any curved surface can be approximated with triangles.
All connectors can be rebuilt from scratch.
You can make precision scores with a razor blade, and bend it to complete the cut.

For $20 of material, you can salvage one of those plastic pieces. And if you fail, you are only out $20. It's a handy skill to develop!

Bump. I hope someone from across the ocean turns up. Good luck!

Thank you for the recommendation. I may try this avenue still. Since the original piece and the damaged spare I got are broken in different places, I'd probably try blending the two together rather than stitching the bottom-of-the-Dorito-bag dregs from the original back together.

My big concern has been that the headlight lens mounts are molded-in ears and the beam adjustment puts the assembly in tension when it's adjusted up. Reinforcement will be a must and I'll avoid linear joints so it has a better shot of holding up under tension.

Sad bit is, I was way more eager to nab some body hammers and straighten a bent LX nose than I was to try and stitch this headset back together!

Well, you know how many of these little weedwhackers I've been wrenching on lately. Kinda need all of 'em up to snuff for the planned shenanigans!

I'll be up next week for the Super Fever ZX and the trailer y'all roped me into buying.

You should be able to log onto ebay.de with your us account or log into ebay usa and then go to ebay.de. If you can't get a German MV member to let you ship the parts to his address, here's another solution that works:
https://www.mbe.de/en
But make sure the receiver of the parts will mail them to you. UPS, DHL and Fedex are a lot more expensive and time consuming.

Oof! Yeah, plastics are a pain. I had a sun-aged Helix in otherwise great condition. When I initially took it apart, I found that all the front plastics were literally being held together by some reflective stickers. I didn't even bother futzing with it. Just replaced probably two-thirds of all the panels. That's got to be way more than a headache for a less common bike of the same age, though.

I always thought Italjets were pretty cool (especially the weird little Velocifero), but I never got to ride one. I'd be interested to see how your project progresses, when it does. I've got a soft spot for those big wheel scoots.

Giving this a request a bump. Still hoping for a good Samaritan!

I think the title might suggest that you are an EU based forum member looking for help. Something like "MV Member in Germany?" might catch more of the right interest.