Modern Vespa

As some of you may recall, we took our 2020 HPE Supertech up to the dealership for repairs due to a push-over in a parking lot, and brought back home a 2022 300 GTS Touring. We have not had much time to ride it yet, just running it round the neighborhood a few miles at a time. My initial impression was that it rides a bit rough. My wife has lots Vespa experience, owning several over the years, she rode it and says that it rides like crap. So last night I jacked it up and checked the tires for "roundness". I didn't put an indicator on the tire, I just set up a ruler and took a quick video. The rear tire looked perfect. The front tire looks like there is about '060" to .080" runout. I searched online for information but didn't find anything "official" about runout. While .060" to .080" seems rather small, I would imagine that while under load at speed this would be amplified.

Does anyone know what the acceptable runout is for a 12" tire?

I'd think that balance would have more effect than "runout", though a tire that's out of round could certainly be unbalanced as well. Have the tires been balanced?

Since the scooter is brand new with less than 20 miles on it, we have not had the tires checked for balance. Unfortunately the Vespa dealership is over 100 miles away, so we will have to find a local shop to do this....

Try adjusting the rear suspension pre-load, this can change the 'feel' of how the scooter handles.

I assume you mean that I should lower the "pre-load" on the rear spring? Is there a special tool needed to do this?

There's a tool in the Vespa toolkit for that (at least there was until recently.) Though it's not that difficult to rotate for adjustment even without the tool.

Adjusting in this case means adjusting the sag according to the load on the scooter. That could mean increasing our decreasing pre-load depending on your circumstances.

I would also check the air pressure. The wrong pressure can affect the ride quality.

When mine was new it bounced me around a lot too. Now it's got 3000 miles I think the shocks are broken in a little and the ride is A LOT smoother.

Check the adjustment of the rear shock absorbers and harden to try.
Check tire pressure and possibly overinflate very slightly.
Try, then adjust.
I find the Vespa 300s extremely easy and obvious to drive, they are naturally guided at your fingertips; If not, there must be something wrong...
In short, same opinion as my comrades

Just a quick update for y'all....tire pressures are 25psi front, 29pis rear.

I will look at adjusting pressures up / down...etc....

Check the tire pressure sticker inside the glove box, it should be 26 psi in front.

Rear-shock preload and tire pressure are, as Ron Burgundy would put it, kind of a big deal: I've had the rear shocks start to bottom on both my old GTS and the new one after a few hundred miles at the lowest preload setting (which is how they came from the dealer), and bottoming-out will definitely make for a rough ride. As a reference, I'm 5'8 and a hair over 190lbs, and I notch the preload to 3, which just about does it.