Modern Vespa

Damn! Riding "All nature boy" in Oregon means everything is going to shrivel… even with sheepskin. Be careful!

Today was a big day - the trip across the bridge! And then up Glenada hill at WOT. She feels solid. Now to start the jetting process....


North side of the Siuslaw River bridge

South side of the bridge at Pritchard Wayside

Chris came over yesterday and brought a few goodies for the GL.

Black legshield badge with rivets
Headlight guard - looks bitchen
Piaggio legshield emblem
Fly screen - decided negative and left it off
Rectangular stadium legshield mirror

And donuts!

So we got all that installed, after making some mods to the headlight guard and went for a ride. We didn't get far when the throttle cable snapped on Chris.

After a big coast and a little uphill push, we were back in the garage 5 minutes after we started.

The throttle hasn't been working right this whole time. It had a huge amount of throttle, like 270 degrees of throttle. Upon inspection, it showed I put it together 180 degrees from how it should've been and now it's back to 90 degrees of turn, stops at both ends.

After putting in a new throttle cable, and adjusting the shifter cables, clutch cable,cand front brake, we went for a ride through town and got to compare the GL against Ruby, the P200.

A great day and it's one step closer to getting to Yachats.


Coffee, donuts, and grease, mmmmm

Headlight assembly...

Chris attaching the light guard after some adjustments

The three new additions in one pic

donuts and grease... stuff dreams are made of!

Chris got a performance exhaust (SIP Road 3) and a new seat, so I decided to pull the carb and carb box and flow accordingly.

I was rather surprised how much meat I could take off the box to match it to the engine inlet, then again, it always surprises me


I used the pick as a scribe and scribed where to grind on the bottom of the airbox

That's a big area to grind

Ground down, and polished.

Getting new gaskets for box to engine and carb to box. I'll lightly smear them with grease before installing. Saving that for tomorrow...

Wow cool trick with the pick scribe!

Thanks Hibbert - it works really well!

This exhaust crap just pisses me off.

Chris gets a SIP Road 3 exhaust. Cool!
I go to install it - the nut cage is welded too high for it to go through the swing arm and thread properly!

WTF SIP? Its not like your job is to make these things fit! AAARRRGGGGHHHH!

So now I've got to break the welds and weld the cage 3/8 of an inch down so the bolt can grab. So now I've gotta get my welding equipment set up to do this. It's gonna be an hour or an hour and a half of time to fix this fking thing.

Like I said - pisses me off!


Exhaust mount where the bolt goes into the swing arm

Bolt not lining up - grrrr

You can see the angle of the bolt is at a slight upward trajectory. 3/8 of an inch down and it would work great.

Same thing with my road 2. Wouldn't line up AT ALL. wtf. Shelved it and put the Polini on and haven't looked back.

Since I'm waiting to talk with Matt to see if the exhaust is just a bum one, or are they all like this, I decided to check if the carb float bowl was drilled out.

It was not...

So I drilled it out to 2.35mm and cleaned up the bowl itself. It had some ... buildup.


Hand drilled it - it worked great

The float bowl was scummy even after steel wool.

So I used the dremel

Much better

Installed and torqued to 11 ft lbs

Scott,

I had the same issue on the white P200 I built last year while the SS was getting painted. I don't weld…. So I ended up cutting the capture nut out and using a lock washer, red lock tite, and a wing nut. (Used long needle nose pliers to hold/tighten the wing nut.)

Lemonade outta lemons. Worked well… and a good option b.

Thanks for that Jeff - now that I've thought about it I have three options...

A) do like you did.
B) get everything fitted, then re-weld the nut holder
C) return for another (crap shoot) or something else...

Probably do option B, but it just sucks.

I keep recalling the hassles Whodat has had with fitting stuff....

I just automatically figure that ALL exhausts won't fit correctly right out of the box. Since i don't have high expectations, it means that i won't be disappointed. Having a welder keeps me sane.

-EGIG Superbanana exhaust bracket sucked enough that i made my own. I also had to weld up pin holes.

-JL Right. I had to make my own rear hanger for the silencer.

-every Sito+. Oval out the hole where the mounting bolt goes through.

-SIP Viper box. ummm...fix a slew of things.

I find that it's best if i just realize that no exhausts out there are going to fit perfectly. It keeps me from getting too frustrated.

Last edited by whodatschrome on Wed, 15 Mar 2023 05:31:34 +0000; edited 1 time

Thanks man - this actually helps with the disappointment factor. I'll oval out the hole and reweld the nut cage and quit whining. Ha!