Modern Vespa

Hopefully it's just chunks from the under side (which will need cutting and welding anyway). 🤞🤞

Let's take a positive out of this latest find, he's discovered he has a new looking and working beep beep, or surely that should be 'meep meep' if it sounds like Roadrunner?

He'll need an engine to go with the meep meep. If it sounds fast, it has to go fast too. 🏍

There is a technical term for vehicles in this condition. I think we all know what it is. Yep. It's called scrap. Oxford Dictionary defines scrap as a noun, with the meaning "a small piece or amount of something, especially one that is left over after the greater part has been used.". That is not the meaning I was hinting at. The second definition "discarded metal for reprocessing." fits considerably better.
But the verb of scrap "discard or remove from service (a redundant, old, or inoperative vehicle, vessel, or machine), especially so as to convert it to scrap metal." might be the best fitting description of them all.
But I have an ace up my sleeve, that I've been saving for rainy days.

The photos show what is probably the worstest piece of this Moderately High Speed Petrol Powered Mechanical Conveyance Device, or MHSPPMCD for short. Not so much for what they show, but rather for where it is that they show. Buried deep in the bowels of the chassis I discovered a bit of rust. Yep, you read that right. The brown flaky stuff that is not tasty chips, with paprika evenly sprinkled over with great care. Rust. The near lifeform of tinworm, that grows uncontrollably on unshielded metal in damp environment and positively thrives when you add salt to the mix.

Normally cutting out a rusted piece of sheet metal, and (using a welder) replace it with custom made parts from the 20 gauge metal shelf (that I borrowed at work) would be a manageable problem. A piece of cake. I'm partial to carrot cake, if you should feel the need to provide me with some. But in this case there is a lot of a bit of unblemished slightly blemished sheetmetal in the way.

Luckily (as I was wondering what I did with the near gallon of fuel that came out of the tank, and where to find a match) I happened to have a conversation with a friend of my father. The previously mentioned ace up my sleeve. He just happened to call me shortly after I "accidentally" e-mailed him lot of photos of the newly discovered rust chips and their surrounding area. That guy is a chip (not rust chip) of the old block. He is a architectural structural engineer (probably bad translation of his engineering degree) who made living designing steel structures, like bridges, etc. Who honed his art using a sliding rule, and design everything in his head, before putting it on a real piece of paper, blue in color. Unlike current crop of structural engineers, who put lines on virtual space inside a monitor, and depend on buggy software to tell them if the structure is safe to build it. Since retiring this guy has spent most of his time rebuilding old cars and buses. In his garage he has one of the nicest mid 70's 911's I've ever seen. He spent years rebuilding every screw and bodypanel on that 911 from a pile of trash. Currently he has a VW T1 bus that he is rebuilding. His caravan used to be a 60's Scania 50 seater bus that he gutted and put on a newer frame with a very nice engine. But I digress. He said this was not so bad. Maybe he was just being kind since I was quietly sobbing almost crying.

The explanation he gave was something like this. If you look at the photo below. The green stuff is missing. If I make a plate where the red rectangle is, and weld where the yellow lines are, it will (supposedly) be just as strong, or stronger, than the original. I still have doubts about the feasibility of such a repair, but depending on the rest it might be worth a try.

What about the underside I hear you asking. That will have to be found out later. It does not look too bad from a distance. It's not holy sorry, holey. But all will be revealed once I remove the paint from the top of it (or bottom, or top of the bottom, ah well, you'll see).

Is there supposed to be a rubber closing thingie, or some thingamabob, on that lower hole? Or plastic closing thingie? Or nothing? Asking for a friend. I have the feeling that this hole is the main culprit in allowing undesirable amount of water, with undesirable amount of Sodium Chloride mixed up in it, to get into places of the scooter where it has no business being in. With results I'm most displeased with.

This Italian Stallion project keeps hitting new obstacles. You could say it's on a "Rocky" road. I've decided, after some careful consideration, and close inspection of the chassis/frame bottom, to cut out parts of the bottom and fix it properly. Not saying that my fathers friends advice is not structurally sound. Had the bottom been in better shape I probably would have followed that. Most of the bottom is only mild surface rust, but there are 2 places, each the size of a playing card*, where the metal has gotten thin and I'd like to replace it.

This exponentially increases the odds of this project becoming too complicated for my local collection of tools, and ending as yet another UFO (Un Finished Objects) in my storage room. To be dumped when I next move house. Which would be a shame. Or,,. It could be an excuse to buy new tools. Which would be a shame for my wallet. I do have my eye on a nice TIG welder, with Plasma Cut option. Let's call that plan 42.

I have been informed of the most likely reason for the state of the exhaust mounts on the engine. Apparently it's not uncommon for the exhaust to hit the ground with some force when those speed machines are sped from the sidewalk to the street, especially with a "well built" passenger on board. Seeing couple of complete engines for sale with the same fault (while looking for parts) confirms the "not uncommon" part of the story.

I'll be taking a break from posting until I have better idea of the ideal path to take.

* A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front and back of each card has a finish to make handling easier. Standard size is about 3.5 x 2.5 inches. Your grandparents used to play games with playing cards, they were sort of predecessor to the games in your smartphone. There are 52 cards in a deck of cards which allows many different games to be played with them.

I do occasionally like to watch a real basket-case project right from the beginning, but to be completely honest, what I'm really enjoying here the most is the way you write! Looking forward to the next updates.

It will be the same as the GTS, there's no bung or cover to go over that lower hole.

At least it didn't go in the worst possible way. My ex-mother-in-law didn't descend from heaven to criticize my work method. Heaven, hehe, sigh.
Next step. Make replacement metal pieces. It's a bit difficult to make pattern for new pieces with the old pieces like this.
Next next step. See if the welder works.

Is chicken fat a good rust inhibitor?

The cut out pieces were in puzzle form. With me being a little lazy at the moment I figured that a more feasible way to fashion the replacement pieces was to use the tried and tested CAD (Cardboard Aided Design) template technique. Alas, cardboard with suitable template characteristics was not in my collection of tools. Someone (who shall remain unnamed) had taken said cardboard collection to the recycle bin. Talking about lack of foresight. So I was forced to make do with slightly less ideal PAD (Paper Aided Design) template technique. Since the method is the same, and only the template material is slightly different, it was not that much setback.

Due to complicated technical reasons (that I will not cover here) it is practically impossible to weld the CAD or PAD template directly to the chassis. The physical issue at hand is akin to the fact that if you throw a square brick into pool of water it makes round waves. Throw it through a window might give you a star shape. Throw it through a mirror will give you 7 years of bad luck. It's a better solution to transfer that PAD template to a metal plate. Cut it to the same shape, then weld that metal plate into the hole.

The shiny stuff in the photos is bear beer bare metal. The brown stuff is tinworm. The black stuff is remains of tinworm that has been converted to inert state with application of roestomvoermer. Local merchant assured me that this would be ideal solution, and at a very special price for me. Some days you just get lucky, I guess. The orange stuff is the PAD template. The white stuff is rust inhibiting primer. The grey stuff is original paint. The chrome clip comes from my office supplies.

Show Us Your Cans

That will keep the purists happy.....

Looks promising.

Hope you manage to find a donor engine case (or if you know a skilled tig welder, even better).

Most of the other parts can be considered consumables (I ended up changing suspension, brake system, tyres, belt, variator etc on my 21 year old machine despite garage storage and 7400km in the clock).

It'll be fabulous once it's done. 👍👍

Here are some more template and weld-in-piece making photos. Since the weld-in-piece is black, it has a tendency disappear in pictures. I tried taking a picture of it in the dark, but that did not improve anything.

Well - hows it looking now? You can't leave us hangin' like that...

🍿🥤

Sorry for the delay in posting. Unfortunate events have reactivated the injuries suffered in this minor fall here. It took me about 3 months to fully recover from this. Broken ribs suck.

This, along with the onset of winter, and the accompanying blatant daylight robbery of, well, daylight, have greatly reduced the hours possible to work on the grey steely steed, causing clearly visible slow down of the process. At least it would be clearly visible if the light was better.

Thankfully my friends have been full of support and kind words of encouragement. Helped me look at the positives of life.
"Why on earth were you doing this?" followed by,
"You're certifiable." and,
"What were you thinking." and,
"Think before you act." and,
"You should've used your head. You wouldn't have injured that." and,
"At least you didn't break your hip, you old fossil."
This sort of makes me look at biking in a new light. With advancing age it's taking longer to bounce back from injuries. I wonder how many here have stopped riding for safety concerns.

I see you have the all important mounting holes on that.... not as pretty as a red ribbon but a bit more practical. 🤣

Hope you feel better soon. 🤞

When all this started this speedmachine was matt grey in colour. Almost exactly the same colour as a clean elephant. Which shows you how important it is not to judge anything by its colour. Elephant would not be as rusty as this. Besides, they're afraid of mice. I'm wondering what colour I should select for it after the fixing of the bodyshell (look at me being all optimistic here, haha). I like the creamy yellow orang(ish) colour used by Ferrari in the late eighties. Being Italian it would tie in nicely with the national history of the little speedster. I could even add a little prancing horse. Unfortunately the road authorities don't like people to have free will in vehicle colouring. You can only freely select the vehicle (Wee-Hikkl, like a tiny hikkl, or peeing hikkl, or Wee Free Men (English is weird, man)) colour you like when you're filling in the pages of a colouring book. So I guess I'll have to keep it grey/gray.
But that is far in the future. I estimate up to, or maybe over, hundred working hours in the future. Or like Leo has said about Tally Ho for the last 5 years. "It will be finished in 2 years." And sooner or later he will be right. ("SampsonBoatCo" on Youtube, nice channel.)
No worry, I'm not in a hurry.

Nothing much has been going on here. But there are some news. I guess you'd like the good news first.
The good news is my ribs are healing at a rate that exceeds my highest hopes. I was expecting to be good by Christmas. It's relatively pain free already. I've stopped using painkillers. As long as I move carefully I can now manhandle the chassis again.
Alas, there are also some negative news. Some would have said "bad news", but I'm made of sterner stuff than that. Or so I'd like to think.
I've been doing some welding. (I hear cheering in my mind at this statement. Maybe it's just my mind.) The weld in the bottom of the chassis (see orange in the photo below) has kept "running away" from the weld area. This was always a possible outcome after tinworm had gone grazing there. So that method has been put on hold, and it's on to plan F. Continue welding, but with different method. Let's see how that works. Plan G (suggested by my fathers friend, see photos) is close behind, but while it's a fine solution, and structurally solid, and easily accomplished with lower quality equipment, it's a bit of a fudge. So I'd like to fully try the other possible solutions first. The expensive plan 42 is not there yet, but it's getting closer. Plan 43 is guaranteed, but is the most expensive solution. It's of course a new chassis.
The bad negative news is that I somehow omitted to make a pattern for the holes in the bottom before cutting them out from the chassis. Or to put it differently. Making a large hole where the small hole was, thereby fudging the original location, and dimensions, of said small hole. This was a major oversight, which has now come around to bite my butt. I have to guess both where to put it and what exact size it was. I do have some photos to make guesswork from, but it's still less than ideal.

Procrastination is a powerful force. I'll deal with that later. Huge effort goes into gathering up the courage to attack the next step of the process. That's where I am now.

For now let's have in no specific order 10 of the best movies ever.
"Spaceballs"
"Robin Hood, Men In Tights"
"Princess Bride"
"Brain Donors"
"The Mask"
"Weekend At Bernies"
"A Fish Called Wanda"
"Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"
"Young Frankenstein"
"Airplane"

Procrastination is also the thief of time.

How about creating another list, 'The 10 most challenging jobs in restoring a Vespa S50 Sport'?

"The 10 most challenging jobs in restoring a Vespa S50 Sport"

Number 1.
Figuring out if it's "Meep, meep." or "Beep, beep."
- According to the always correct internet, Warner Brothers has both versions copyrighted.
- The original handwritten script from Chuck Jones has the "Beep, beep" spelling.
- Wikipedia has a page for "Beep, beep." but not for "Meep, meep."
- When the sound is typed in the cartoon it's always "Beep, beep."
However, the issue a bit more complicated.
- Chuck Jones put the "Beep, beep." into the script after hearing Paul Julian, a (then) prop painter who voiced the roadrunner for 40 years say "Beep, beep.", as Paul was moving large props around backstage, and couldn't see if someone was behind the props.
- Paul Julian's voice sounds more like "Meep, meep."
- Paul Julian wanted to spell it "Mweep, mweep."
- Coyotes run faster than Road Runners! So Wile E didn't need all those ACME gadgets that always backfired.

I wish I could just pick up the phone and order all sorts of nice ACME stuff, with seemingly unending credit.

So - dare I ask how far you've got with the restoration?

My 22 year old is still running well and passing MOTs (annual inspections)… but it's been garaged for 21 years. Slightly different circumstances. 😇

Yeah, it's not looking good, is it?

That unexpected "patina" really threw a spanner in the works. I must admit though that there were also some other issues affecting "Project Worthless" (Named after "Mad" Amos Malone's sturdy steed). Currently there are few things that have to fall into place to allow project continuance. The current plan is to get restarted on the improving the chassis structural integrity to the original level at the end of September, or October (this year). Hopefully that will only take couple of weeks. Then a little bit of paint, etc.
Then I can concentrate on fixing the original issue, hehe.

Just to think. I could have used a little bit of body filler and paint. Then fixed the engine and sold it for a profit. As a businessman I suck.

I hope that with good care this little angel of mine will be running after reaching 22 years.