Modern Vespa

That info is gold Rob! All the gold I've dug out of your posts over the years is invaluable, and I thank you for that!

I went with a seven spring LML clutch with the 23tooth DRT in the VNB2 rebuild. I did need a clutch cover spacer as well as a bit of grinding on the cover, and engine tab, to get it all to play nice.

Mattgyver talked me through it and I'm glad I went this way. I'm not particularly hard on clutches, but this engine (Pinasco 177 2 Port with 24/24 and road 2 pipe) is a torquey beast!

Well, I might be tearing into the clutch on the GL's motor tonight. It started dragging and now doesn't seem to want to engage correctly.

Which is even more annoying because I have no stand on it right now while the paint on the new center stand offset brackets dries.

Something has to wear, makes you want to rotate plates when you change tires.

Clutches are like brakes: depending on how and where you drive, they might last you 5,000 miles or they might last you 50.

The good news is that the GL's new clutch cable had just stretched. Once I re-adjusted it, I went for a ride and all was well. Just in the nick of time, too. Tomorrow morning is Nashville's Distinguished Gentleman's Ride, so I need a bike that's 100% solid. After all, if I'm going to be the lone(?) scooter weirdo, I better not make us look bad.

In other bits of fun, last night my fuel line sprung a hole right above the carb nozzle. With the fuel pump on the job, it was spraying out fuel like that little water pik thing they have at the dentist's office.

So I fixed that, but in the process left the section of line from the carb to the 90 degree elbow just a little bit too long, so the carb would eventually get knocked loose by that brass elbow hitting the frame on bumps.

Next, the clutch, which is now fixed.

And finally, I realized that my brake light wasn't working. The foot brake switch had A) broken; and B) The spring had compressed so it wouldn't open even when the pedal was removed.

Luckily, I had a spare brake switch in my dragon's hoard of spare parts, so I was able to get that resolved with only minimal profanity.

And, in the midst of all that, I got my center stand extensions finished and installed and they work great. The bike goes on and off them really nicely. Like Ray8 said, something about the difference in the geometry (or center of mass) makes getting both on and off the stand a breeze.

Looks good.

Getting back on topic, I determined that I definitely have a 65t primary lying around that I can put into the SprintVBB and then, while I was at it, measured the cog on the 23t versus a 21 or 22t (not marked, didn't count) and confirmed what y'all already knew--that the 23t is 2mm larger than the 21/22.

Now, just because I like nothing more than moving to the next problem before the current problem is fully sorted...

I'm pondering selling my SprintV because I never seem to ride it any more and the workshop is pretty full these days. If I did that, I'd convert the SprintVBB motor back to 10" and put it back in that bike.

That would leave me with my P200 motor on the bench, which also needs some TLC, but has a Malossi 210 on it. I only did the cylinder porting when I put the new top end on it. I didn't do the intake timings because the long-term plan was (still is) to go reeds, 62mm crank, the whole nine yards, so it has room for improvement even in its current state. I could see it being pretty interesting on 8"s in any case, though.

If you go 8" with a 200, you need to look into the 25/62 DRT primary. Otherwise you'll end up with a bike with a useless 1st and 2nd that is screaming when you try to get highway speeds out of it.

I'm not actually serious about putting the 200 on 8's, but if I did, it would definitely get longer gearing than it currently has.

I did the 7-spring clutch swap and, as pretty much expected at this point, it didn't fix the 3rd/4th gear issues on the VBB. So next step will be pulling the motor so I can split it on the bench and figuring out if I need gears. spacers. shifter box, or just a new cruciform. I already have the cruciform and a spare, new FA Italia shifter box. Everything else will have to be ordered. SM Dave is probably feeling a Good Disturbance in The Force right about now.

And then there's the GL's clutch...the dragging got progressively worse, so I pulled it off as long as I was playing with clutches and the plates have definitely seen better days.

It also has suddenly decided it doesn't want to idle, though it's fine above 1/4 throttle, so I'll probably check it for an air leak since the exhaust is already off and also clean the carb jets. Yesterday, it was idling like a top, but then the carb starting falling off every couple minutes, so it could have sucked up something off the bottom of the float bowl.

I'm still contemplating putting a 65t primary on the VBB. I'll have to see how I'm feeling about it once I get the cases opened up.

I tore into the VBB's motor tonight.

No play to speak of in the shifter box. The notches are a bit worn, but it was still going into gear with a nice solid feel, so I'll keep that, too.

I pulled the motor and put it on the bench to split the cases and there were some not-surprises, like a worn cruciform (no surprise at all) and excess gear play (.6mm). Meh. That's what replacement parts and spacers are for.

And maybe a dumb question, but is that an EFL 4th gear in my last picture? It matches a picture of 4th on SIP, but I thought the little ramps were an EFL thing and this is definitely a non-EFL gearbox (other gears all look right, the axle has the lip and not a circlip on the clutch side).

But what was surprising was that there was a HUGE gouge in the piston and a worn spot in the cylinder wall that I'd have thought would have had the bike barely running. Instead, t it was running fine, just wouldn't stay in gear under hard acceleration. I can't imagine that it wouldn't eventually start to produce significant blow-by and damage the piston over time, though, so it needs replacing. There must have been a bit of the venturi screw still in there that I missed when I cleaned out that mess.

Given that I have a BGM 177 in my hoard, I think it'll go on the bike. I'll match it up to the existing porting, which was originally for a Polini 177, and that should give me some nice zoom-zooms. Some people might consider that to be a bit overkill on this build, so it's a good thing I'm not Some People.

Not quite what I was expecting to encounter, but at least I'm relatively prepared.

And Mercato Dave feels the happy tingle of items going into my cart yet again...

No worries there. Definately pre-Lusso:

https://www.sip-scootershop.com/en/product/gear-cog-44-teeth-4th-gear_15279900

Yeah, that was the picture I referenced against, but still wanted to be sure.

And for the sake of God, guys, get Jack221's gloves!

My hands looked better than my wife's after 2 weeks:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08868CPFN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

Seems the biggest red flag is the excessive play…

Cruciform doesn't look too bad

Should be something else giving you problems too.

Well, if it is the shifter, I have a new FA Italia in the hoard, so I'll try that if I'm still having issues after I put it all back together. It'd be nice if there was a way to test this stuff on the bench.

Not sure about the shifter too.

You'd be able to tell if it was overly worn too…

That cruciform is toast. The hammered edges are no bueno. Replace it, shim the gears and you should be fine.

Cruciform is already replaced. I have the gear shim in my cart at SM. I'll hit Order in the morning, have it in the next couple days.

In the meantime, I'll get the BGM set up and the clutch back in the GL.

Motor is back together with new cruciform, a thicker gear spacer, and the BGM 177 in it. I need to either get a clutch cover spacer for the LML clutch cover I put on or dremel the six spring cover into working with the seven spring clutch.

I only rode it a little bit because I had to loosen up the clutch cover to get it to quit slipping, but a quick test ride tells me that all is now well gear-wise.

Obligatory first start video. This is with the same jetting as with the Malossi. The BGM definitely feels like it hits the performance trifecta of more power overall, broader power band, and more top end RPM's.

The motor originally had a Polini 177 on it, so I just matched the BGM to that porting and fixed the lip at the base of the exhaust at BDC.

0.8mm squish, TD124/ED174/BD24 or there abouts for port timing. Still running the SIP Road 2.0 for ground clearance reasons.

But the VBB is just about back!

I ground back the oil guide on the 6-spring cover and installed it today. Comparing the guide to the 7-spring cover, the guide is about as deep along the top after grinding as the 7-spring cover was before grinding. Which makes sense, given that they're the same diameter, but it still makes me feel a little better about having cut it back.

The one bit of strangeness was that when I went to start it, the clutch slipped when I tried to kick it over, even though the clutch seemed to be set correctly by turning the wheel. I was pretty damn unhappy at the prospect of splitting the cases to deal with a misbehaving starter gear, so I decided to bump start it and see how it rode before I tore it apart. After I rode it around a little while, I stopped, went to the grocery store, came back and it kicked over like nothing was wrong, first kick start. It seems to be doing fine now, so hopefully it was an anomaly as things settled into place.

After that little misadventure, I got out and rode a little this afternoon when it was like 95 degrees and humid, so I didn't ride much, but I did ride enough to determine the jetting was too lean.

Yes, I cheated and put the AFR on, but readings went from 12.0 (i.e. a bit too rich) with the Malossi all the way up the 13-14, so I richened up the atomizer & main. Jet stack was 120/BE1/120 with the Malossi. Now it's 120/BE4/125. It revs right up, but as soon as you let off the throttle, it falls right back down to idle, smooth as can be.

Temps were good. It never got over 250, and that was with me pushing it harder than I should have on a new top end. I didn't go over 8,000 RPM's, but I did do a few miles at 50+ and it was happy as could be. I'd forgotten how it likes to settle in at those speeds and actually feels a little more stable than at 35.

I'm calling it a win.

Looking awesome!

I even finished the floor rail rubber and added a Vespa Club of Ukraine sticker yesterday.

Now, I guess I should do something about the speedo. That's still just a hole with a bunch of wires in it.

Grabbed a quick GSF Dyno this morning while running and errand. 17 HP, but the peak is too low.

Also, I put the TSR seat from the GL on it to see how it looked. I like it. Most seats are too wide at the front and don't fit the early frames well.

And I'm going to throw another cheapie GPS speedo in it for now. Just like the GL's cheapie GPS speedo was a "for now," too, I bet.

I hate that all the good speedo's are 85mm and you can only fit a 52mm into the Vespa headset. I really just want a 52mm analog GPS speedo, and that doesn't seem to exist

Last night I must have been feeling masochistic, because I pulled the SIP Road2 off and put an SIP RoadXL on the VBB. Which doesn't fit with the centerstand spring, so I currently have to hold the centerstand up with a wood clamp. Dead classy.

Since that pipe has an AFR bung on it, I threw the AFR on it to see what would happen and what I saw was that it was way rich on the same jetting (like 10-11) and while the power hung in a lot longer, there was a lot less of it. Only 14 HP, but it also wasn't really revving out cleanly it was so rich, so that number is a little unfair to the RoadXL.

Who knows what tonight will hold. The heat index is barely over a hundred, so positively chilly. Maybe I'll try cleaning up the jetting and re-testing the RoadXL. Or maybe I'll throw one of my knockoff JL Leftie's on it for giggles. Maybe I'll just put it back to the Road 2.0.

Whatever I do, there's never a dull moment in my workshop, even when I'm not breaking scooters or myself.

Full-size version here for those like me who hate the fact that dyno images are always damn near illegible.

Why so low power peak? Timing a bit off? That peak is lower than my P225 Pinasco motor.

That road XL power curve is just wrong, doesn't make since to me how flat it is. Got to be how rich it's running.

I swapped the jets to a 140AC/BE1 or 5/120MJ and it ran MUCH better. AFR said it was at about 13.2 through most of the range, so I'll try a 122 main, but it revved out nicely through 8,200 RPM's and was cruising along at 65 MPH on an uphill stretch, which is certainly a fair ask from an 8" bike.

I tried to get a recording for GSF Dyno but it didn't want to behave, so no graph, wound up with a bunch of spaghetti around 6,000 RPM's. I'll try again tomorrow after I put the 122 in.

And I have a speedo again. Another 52mm GPS Amazon special, but this one is going to fit better into a blanking plate for the housing and is a lot more readable in direct sun than the one in the GL. I have more than a sneaking suspicion I could chop a half inch or more off the base of it, too, without hurting anything, but I'm going to try to avoid anything extreme like that, at least for now.

I also went ahead and put the side stand on and am going to keep the XL on it for a while. I still don't trust the side stand. I need to bend it to give it a little more lean, but it's like 3/16" steel, so that's going to take a little doing.

I'm seeing sandwiching it between a board and a steel plate, parking a car on that, and then levering it from there. That or I can get a 4x4 block and just stick that under the motor side floorboard whenever I park it. Whichever.

The evening's tuning update. I put the 122 main in and that improved things, but was still lean in the mid-range, so I just said to heck with it and put the 120 AC back on, so the stack is now 120AC/BE1/122. Main jet is damn near perfect and it pulls like a truck. It's still lean in the mid-range, so I'm going to swap to a BE5.

What's really funny is that this thing is winding up right back where I started, but when I started, it was horribly rich. Go figure.

It cruises quite happily at 60+, including uphill.

And speaking of uphill, I got a good, clean dyno recording of the new setup, but I did it on an uphill section of road, so the power output is going to be a little low, but the overall curve looks right (full-size).

This machine is just a joy to ride now. I should probably get some tubeless rims & tires for it since it's definitely won a long-term slot in my herd. Not as tuned as the GL by any means, but certainly gets the job done and is lots of fun while doing it.

That thing looks badass my friend! Great job!

It does look cool. BE5 may rev nice but is too lean. Put the BE4 back in and do the rest with the pilot jet. Do a plug chop to check the 122 is correct.

Is SIP road XL power band closer to your cruising rpm?

Also you can label each run to make it easier to identify run. Blue is older SIP road 2 and orange road XL?

Christopher, Blue is the Road 2.0. Orange is the RoadXL.

The wide power band is necessary here because it's all hills, with lots of variations over short distances. there are a couple of roads near me that run parallel to the river that are the only truly flat places to get a good dyno run. I was just doing them on a stretch of relatively flat road near my house, which also has some bumps and a curve in it.

Jack, I'll go straight to the BE4 and see how it does. The idle is still a tad leaner than I'd like. It's at about 1 3/4 turns out, I think, and I have no idea what the jet is. I'll pull it and look when I swap in the BE4.

I'll try a 125 with the BE4, which would have me back where I started jetting-wise (120AC-BE4-125) when it was running pig-rich.

I was pretty surprised that the XL would want leaner jetting than the 2.0, and now it seems that's no longer the case. I wonder if there were cobwebs in the XL from sitting that needed to get blown out or something.

Nice work, buddy. That thing looks great. Nothing like a spunky 8" scoot. Just wait until you get it on some twisty roads, you'll love it even more.

yeah man for real, you built a rockin rad scooter. Looks Ace. Seems like it goes well. I need to build one of these 8"ers....

Thanks, Gents!

I'm really pleased with how it's come together.

One last round of carb tweaking, then I'm going to get it out this weekend, stupid-hot or not, and thrash it around a little bit.

There are some good winding roads not far too far from me. Just the thing to put it through its paces.

So the last 24 hours of scootering have gone like this:

Awesome->Terrible->Worse->Good

Wow, you're thinking, that's a lot of up n' down for 24 hours, and you're correct, so lemme fill in the details.

Awesome:
Yesterday, I took the VBB out to get some miles on it, thrash it around a little, and just enjoy riding. I had covered probably 20 miles, most of it on two-lane roads where I couldn't see another vehicle in the area northwest of me, which is pretty mountainous, so not much out there. Great riding. I should do it more.

Terrible:
I was heading back toward the house, doing about 55, when I hear a sudden grinding and the motor loses compression. Not like a seize, other than the part where the motor dies and won't start, but something mechanical. A sound I feel I've become all-too-accustomed to.

At the time it happened, my CHT had just broken 300f for the first time all day. I'd been pushing it 55-65. I was at WOT, but not full speed, so it wasn't the typical "roll off WOT and seize," either.

So I push the scooter down where there's a store with a parking lot I can leave it in, probably half a mile or more, then get an Uber home, get the car, get the scooter, bring it back, pull the head and...don't see anything that looks like evidence of a seize.

By this point, I'm too worn out to contemplate pulling the cylinder to find out what happened, so I decided I would let it go until today, and that in the meantime I would deal with the idle issues on the GL.

So I pull the reed block and discover two things. First was that the existing reeds looked fine. Second was that the replacement reeds were the wrong size, so I put it all back together and decided to see if it was still misbehaving.

Worse:
Kick it over a few times and it fires, stumbles, will rev just fine, but still nothing on the low end. Then, it seems to clear up a little, but idling too slowing to keep running, so I rev it a little and turn in the idle screw a little bit, at which point it runs away and starts dieseling, RPM's right past 10k and then the motor died and seemed to have lost compression.

At that point, I just said, Fuck it, and went back into the house.

Good:
This morning, rejuvenated and expecting the worst, I pulled the cylinder off the VBB and found that it was fine. The piston was also mostly fine, but a tiny bit of metal. Swarf? a piece of aluminum can sucked into the intake? Something summoned by one of you with a voodoo doll for some perceived slight?

Whatever it was, it was smeared across the rings and had killed compression. Refusing to be denied my rightful Father's Day scootering, I got the rings off the piston, cleaned up the ring channels and the piston a little bit, put it all back together and am back up n' running.

The spark plug was looking paler than it should have, and the piston wash wasn't all the way to the ports, so I upped the main from 122 to 128 (so current stack: 120AC-BE4-128MJ) and it's running great again. It has a little bit of a rattle from something at idle, but it had that when I first built it, then it went away, so I'll see if it goes away again.

There's also something loose that rattles inside the exhaust that I can't get out, so it might be that. Oh, well.

I still haven't dug into the GL, but I'll get to it. For now, I'm going to chill out a bit and then maybe take the VBB out for another hopefully-not-ill-fated ride.

So...ahhh...No visible piston or cylinder damage, but I think I found why I lost compression on the GL...

Looks like it's about to be Spool Gun Time again.

Umm that's a hole, what happened there?

I'd filled in where I broke through the transfers with JBWeld. Now that I have welding gear, I can do it right, but it's still going to require splitting the cases so I can get it all cleaned up and make it happen.

I was expecting piston carnage, so while this'll be a lot of work, at least it won't cost me an arm and a leg.

That sucks bad…

Glad rider is ok…

Happy to know the scoot fits in the back of a Tesla… and that CM is super strong… how the hell you get it in there??

What's funny is that once it's fixed, the suckage is largely forgotten until the next time, when it all comes rushing back.

There's a certain Zen to pushing a scooter along the side of the road, mentally comparing this breakdown to past breakdowns and rating it for temperature misery, elevation change, expected damage/cost, avoidability, etc.)

Then, once it fired back up and I've ridden it around some, the misery is pretty much forgotten. If anything, it makes the recovery that much more satisfying, which is weird and masochistic, but I guess it's how many people's (but, strangely, not mine) relationships work: fight, then make up, right?. Practice?

The VBB is not bad to load up. It's low-profile w/ the 8" wheels and relatively light, like 180 lbs, compared to 230 for a Stella or P, which are also a lot larger physically. I've had the Stella in the back as well. I got a grease stain on the headliner and my wife was NOT pleased. Plus, it's her car, I just drive it when I can't use a scooter.

To load, I pick up the back end and set the wheel inside, then repeat with the front end. Lean it over once it's mostly in and it'll slide back on the blankets.

If it hadn't quite wanted to fit, I could have removed the front tire and bought myself a few more inches of clearance.