Modern Vespa

Gotta help my brother scooter hackers out, man.


Not a genius. Enabler, maybe.

15/42's for the Buddy 50 project.

ordered via scooter mercato SIP order. the dollar to euro is good, it's about $96 today.

and yes, you're an enabler

looking sharp

great job John!

it's like the little ugly duckling that grew up to be a strong handsome son!

wait till I get those shiny mirrors you sent on there - and I still haven't even washed off the layer of greasy's yard dust!

bottle up that dust baby! that's where the real magic is!

hopefully the box of goodies was what ya needed. you got the number to the tech line, so just shout if you need me to get another box going or if you want to swap that rack with another one.

front racks, there seem to be 3ish types. any recommendations?

The faco one that makes you swap the horn cover:
https://www.scooterworks.com/Small-Front-Rack-Chrome-Vespa-ET2ET4

The cuppini that isn't clear if you have to drill or not (actually, it seems that you do not based on a few sites):
https://www.sip-scootershop.com/en/product/luggage-carrier-front-cuppini_CUP33

The notari that seems to require drilling, but it isn't clear, because there's no description:
https://www.sip-scootershop.com/en/product/luggage-carrier-front-notari_100012M

If any of you have one, post up a pic and tell me if you like it.

the faco one is practically useless. it's seriously tiny and the mounting is precarious at best.

the cuppini one requires the crash bars to attach. the flat bracket that the rack mounts to is threaded and attaches to the top of the bars and spans across the underside of the headset. it's a fairly firm attachment, but notorious for rubbing on the headset plastics. fiddly adjustment with the plastics and bending of the metal sometimes helps.

the notari mounts in a similar fashion using a top plate with straps that go under the horn cover and secure to the screws holding the glovebox frame. the bracket mounts up to the horn mounding tab and snakes thru the slots in the horn cover. so expect some modification to the horn cover to make it work (ie, trash a horn cover). this is probably the best of the worst.

the fitment of ALL aftermarket accessories are notoriously terrible. so expect them all to be clunky, need adjustment, and be prepared to live with the results.

the best one is the OEM front rack that mounts to the OEM bars. but good luck finding one of those.

oh snap.

apologies for being the bad news department.

however! I probably have an extra horn cover for you!

the reality of the front rack use case for me is holding a yoga mat in a fabric bag, but you get the size more or less. The Faco might work for that job, but I'm not sure. I'll grab a picture of how it works on the GTS on my way home. But if it sucks and isn't robust anyway, sounds like the Notari is the choice.

Here

Nice work! If you're onto front racks, it must be running now?! (I saw you buttoned it up, but not the confirmation of the satisfying first fire up.)

Nah I'm just brainstorming. The next up is transmission and primary gear swap plus oil change.

Believe me we will have a first start video and some pictures of the chock I build, etc.

What do you think? Use 'em?

Hell yeah!

Gettin jiggy with it

Will have to wait for my upgear kit to come from Germany to Mercato to me. Probably a good time to flush the front brake, delete the evap system, etc.

Brake flushed. New mirrors. Wash and wax.

OK so I got a fresh battery installed, all the electrical stuff works (including signals now!). Except - when I push the starter button I hear no starter actuation. Now there's no bendix in there and it's not going to turn anything, but I want to know the CDI is good and that it will start with the new engine.

When the button is pushed, I hear something happen (a click perhaps) and then nada. No 12V shows up on the starter wire. Should it? Where is the relay for the starter physically located? I'd like to check that. Other suggestions are welcome, I have some time to play with this while waiting for engine parts.

The FSM is almost impossible to decipher for the automatic starting device....

Actually the Spanish section makes way more sense than the English

Don't know where the starter relay is on the ET4s, but it's by the battery over the rear shock on an LX.

You've got a brake lever pulled in, and the brake light comes on?

Does this model have a kill switch, and is it misbehaving?

is the trans cover on? there's a small ground that goes from the frame to the engine that attaches to the trans cover on the LH side. you'll need that to be connected it's easy to miss.

after that, the other suggestions are spot on- the relay is under the battery cover. check to be sure that you've got a brake light and the kill switch is working.

assuming all that, have you checked the fuses. there's two right there at the battery box in the holder. the other two are under the LH front knee pad.

OK all, thanks for chiming in so fast. We have success!

I found the relay under the battery cover as mentioned. As noted in a few threads I found on search, sometimes it helps to whack the relay if it isn't cooperating .

Whacking commenced and yes - the starter will make appropriate noises when the relay functions. It's kind of hit and miss. I'm thinking a new relay is in order. But now I'm pretty happy to know it's likely to work.

The other thing I found out is today with a battery, the black key and the red key both work. So no need to go out and buy / code some new blue keys! Winning.

more good news...

Scooter Mercato sent the shipping e-mail for my upgear kit. The parts made it from Germany to the US and are on the way to me. Let the fun begin!

Fixed the evap system

No action shots but the Malossi spring is in. I had help so no stopping for photos on the way.

Post op notes:
-1 13/16" socket
-I saw a video of a guy using a wrench and banging it on the ground to free it up - that doesn't work or will take more attempts than I gave it
-Mark your starting point so you can return the nut to the same amount of rotation, since you won't be doing a torque on it
-This is a 2 man job. For disassembly you can use an air impact and hold pressure against the drive so it doesn't pop free and fly apart. On the way together, one can compress and the other start the nut. We tried using a strap wrench and a breaker bar to assemble like I'd seen on the net but ended up 45 degrees short of where it needed to stop. At that point the strap would give easier than the nut would move. So we marked where we were and where we wanted to be on the outer portion of the drive, and marked the socket with were we were. That way when the impact was used, we could watch it move towards where it needed to be and stop there.
-If you forget the loctite (ummm) then back it off a bit and drop some loctite down in the flats. Then tighten up - it will take it along for the ride.

Trip to the parts cleaner and now my carb is clean enough to disassemble. No ultrasonic for these carb bodies as the float pin is press fit in. Looks like carb clean shooting will have to do.

So my first crack at undoing the tough fasteners has them all moving except one of the diaphragm cover bolts. It wants to strip so now I have to take it home and find my impact screwdriver....

I think the answer is no, but do I want to *rejet anything in here for the 190 kit? I deleted the SAS if that matters. Maybe a bigger idle jet or a bigger main?

Last edited by sdjohn on Wed, 22 Mar 2023 03:00:14 +0000; edited 1 time

Couple of whacks with the impact screwdriver and all is well

Love this thing:

https://www.amazon.com/Vessel-No-240001-VESSEL-impact-driver/dp/B001WHKSS4


Hasn't failed me yet. Pairs nicely with a 2lb. engineer's hammer.

Yeah I have a harbor freight on mine. Biggest problem today was it was somehow set to tighten and I had to figure that out.

I suppose I should replace the cover screws.

If it's like the LX, the pin can be gently pressed out and then tapped back in. I think it works better from one side than the other, but I don't recall for sure.

All right I will check that out. Robot left it in his video but that's not really my style.

up above I had asked about rejetting my carb but typo'd it into do we need to reject, which didn't make sense. I fixed it now but is it OK to run the stock jets?

At around 11:00, it seems this video shows the pin being removed: (I didn't watch this video - I just skipped to the float removal part - so I don't vouch for it otherwise being good or not!)

my new favorite feature is watching at 1.25x. it's a huge timesaver.

it's a pretty good teardown video, thanks for the link. i watched that dude take out the evap system on Monday