Modern Vespa

That's perfect!

Brilliant! Didn't actually think of that. Work well?

It actually did. Whole house smelled like gasoline for a day, though, so don't do it if your Significant Other is in town unless you're into pain.

Peace in the house is generally preferred.

Not a fan of showdowns with the war department.

At the time, I lived in a womanless household with my 2 sons. The dishwasher doesn't work that well really, though it was a powerful affirmation of my masculinity, lol.

Over the summer, my fiancé and I bought a house and moved in together. She has been unexpectedly tolerant of my hobbies…except for smells. I also have a budgie and fumes can be lethal to them.

I usually wait until no one is around to epoxy prime…mostly because I always get interrupted when I'm all masked up ready to shoot it, but also to keep the peace. 2-3 hours after spraying it, there is no smell and I can take the parts into the house.

The one I often forget is the hairdryer. I'll borrow it for something I need to dry quickly and then forget to put it back. Only to remember the next day when you hear "have you see my hairdryer" shit, shit, shit! I never mention that's it's on the garage floor somewhere 😂 just quickly go and get it, dust if off and give it back 😄

Get yourself a heat gun. They're not expensive and anything a hair dryer will do, it'll do, plus a whole lot more

And if the heat gun won't do it, a propane or butane torch or a welder will.

I know I really should but it works so well for medium heat 😄

Slow progress the last couple of days with other things taking up my time and every job taking longer than expected on the bike but I guess that's just the way it is on your first restore.

I did finally get the floor on (well half on) though 😃

I'm super slow at welding at the moment but the joins are good and solid so that's the main thing.

Needs some clean up at the edges with some manipulation of the rolled beading and to sort the other side, then on to the spot welds!

The seam looks good!

Be sure to put bolts for the center stand. Those are there to position.

For the spot welds, are you putting them at the top? Don't see the holes for them.


The bolts for positioning

That's a good point. They are slightly off so I need to patch and drill them. Yes, from the top all ready to go.

One thing I forgot to do was get some epoxy primer inside the supports. What's the best way to achieve this anyway?

There's not much room. They're probably fine.

My original ones weren't rusted inside. I don't know if the factory had any rust prevention on them.

The panels have some kind of grease or wax coating

Only tiny holes to get something inside. Yes, some kind of oil coating which I washed off for applying epoxy on one side already. Would be nice to get it protection inside those supports. I'll have a think about that.

The originals had the same protection the rest of the bike had which was a black e coating.

So, I've spent a lot more time finishing up the floor than I care to admit! My lack of welding experience is evident and I have to redo areas more than once to get a decent weld. How perfect should the weld be? This is my only (what I consider) problem area now.

The issue I have is that I keep going from top to bottom of the floor. Fix the visible side and then the bottom side needs sorting and vice versa. Maybe I just spent too long on it today and need a break.

So to the welders, is this good enough or do I hit it again until all the little indents and imperfections are gone? It is even and structurally sound as far as I can tell but I don't want to grind off any more than I have to of this already thin metal.

Also is there any kind of special filler/bondo I should use where the welds are along the seam here?

When you weld a seam using a butt weld, there is always shrinkage of the surrounding metal and even more with the filler metal. This often creates a slight trough along the seam. You can't grind it flush without thinning the surrounding metal, so I wouldn't try to grind it flush. I often put a light behind the weld so I can see any voids or pinholes and mark it with a sharpie and fill them with weld material.

I only hammer and dolly to get the contours right so I don't have to use a lot of filler. If all you need is a skim of filler, yer good. You can end up picking at welds forever.

I would also slop some paint over the backside of the weld if you can. You can use a metallic filler like USC all metal, but it's a bitch to sand and not really necessary.

Gents - following along - nothing to add - but impressed by it all.
Great stuff along the way - from OP/hjo/Orwell. Am sure I will utilize at some point.
Thanks for documenting.

Orwell, thanks man, you may have just saved me from going insane trying make every join perfect. You hit the nail on the head about exactly what was happening with shrinkage and I was definitely "picking at welds forever" 🙈

Wish I knew this before but always learn a lot the first time doing something. I almost definitely made a couple of the joins thinner than the original metal width so may need to add some metal filler back in there? Whats the best way to tackle it?

Thanks, yeah really is a great community here with loads of knowledgeable people to learn from 👍

You can always build up thin areas with weld material if you have really thinned it. With MiG welding, I move the gun very quickly back and forth to leave a wide flat bead. I also use this technique to fill deep pitting from rust. If you have just thinned it a little, I wouldn't make more work for yourself.

I use a dremel cutting disk to grind down welds as close to the surrounding metal as possible. Then I use something like a a 100-200 grit flap wheel that goes on a drill. This removes material slowly and smooths and blends the weld. The little voids or "inclusions" in the welds end up getting filled with body filler. I only fill the pinholes that go all the way through.

Ground down welds often look like ass. It's the light hitting all those angles of scores and scratches. If you hit it with a sandblaster, the uniform texture would make it look a lot better. Not that you need to. Just making a point why it may look horrible at first.

Build up thin spots only if they are really thin. Otherwise, mud it and move on. I should have led with that…

I've been watching some of this guy.
He talks about but welding sheet metal here: His trick is, after he makes a tack, and the two pieces start to pull together, he will hammer & dolly the tack itself - just a hit or two - to relax it - before making the next tack.

Looks easy... on YouTube...

Thanks Orwell, great info as always 👍 Will revisit those seems tomorrow.

I'm getting there with the with rest of the floor. I'm about 80% done. Got most the spot welds done. A couple need redoing as they just didn't take but instead kinda mushroomed between the seem even with multi clamps on. Bit odd but must be lack of experience on my part.

Charlie, yeah have been doing that as picked up the top from another YT video

Well the floor is pretty much done, it did fight me most of the way! Purely my lack of experience and skill with the welder. A fair bit of frustration and swearing at various times 😂

Next is the small piece of metal I cut out at the back but that shouldn't be too tricky.

I need to put some more thought in to paint now. Still need to strip the old paint, epoxy everything and then fill and sand etc which could take me another couple of weeks as I only get a couple of hours a day to work on it but would be nice to have a plan.

2K Paint seems to be the favoured thing to use. There appears to be a few different types. Acrylic, Polyurethane or some say they are a mixture of both?

Looks really good. The mushrooming or pillowing thing is the sort of pincushion effect that spot welding gives. You see it more on a Vespa because there are fewer spot welds and a thin sheet is being welded to a thick flange. They are all over a Vespa. Some fill them, but I think they are a dead giveaway that the bike is metal and not plastic.

For paint I use 2k acrylic urethane. It's more durable and fade resistant than acrylic enamel.

Thanks. Something kept bothering me about the seam. I just wasn't happy with the amount of metal I had removed trying to (in error) blend it when I should have left it as a strong joint and used filler after for the gap that welding had created by shrinking the metal around it. A good lesson learned.

I kept going back and forth looking at it and feeling it and knew I'd made it too thin. My hunch was correct when I decided to lay a couple of beeds of metal down as some areas just melted away, where as other areas stayed in tact at the same amps. Really glad I did it as it feels so much stonger now. Still a bit of blending to do but minimal!

This is the paint I've found, look correct to you?

https://www.jawel.co.uk/product-category/2k-acrylic-products/2k-acrylic-paint/

I have done that too in areas that I have accidentally thinned.

I would guess that the paint you linked is 2k acrylic enamel. I would imagine that urethane paints are restricted in the UK due to their toxicity.

2k acrylic enamel is still quite good. It tends to fade somewhat, but no more than the original factory paint. Scooters also aren't exposed to the elements as much as a car, so it should be fine.

Ahh ok, found another company that is Urethane. Thanks for the tip on that.

https://www.advancedpaints.co.uk/product/aircraft-blue-108/

2K Acrylic – Cobra 2K

Commercial grade 2K acrylic-urethane, high solid Paint with exceptional coverage and durability.

That should work. I have used paints that are fairly inexpensive and been happy with the end result.

So for any one else attempting a floor swap with limited welding experience, my tips are as follows.

Clamps around any area you are welding multiple layers of metal. REALLY tight or you get all sorts of issues! I put one either side of my spot welds in the end.

Clean your joins really well.

When offering up the floor with the frame, get this as dead on straight as possible with no gaps. I didn't do this well enough and the welds were so much easier when the seams met perfectly vs small gaps.

Adjust yours amps as needed and don't get stuck on a predetermined amount. What ever works, works. Annoyingly this means you may have to stop and start a lot. I went all the way from 25 to 50 on a Tig welder.

Expect to go through a lot more tungsten and gas than you expect!

Don't get hung up on perfect blending or you will end up reducing the metal to paper thin again. See my post above!

it looks like you're using a really rough grind disc. It's easier to be more precise with 120 grit. Also small disc.

It's so easy to grind through the metal or make it very thin.

For the paint, Glasurit has the original paint codes, if you're using an original Piaggio one.

Just need to find the name/code.

https://coloronline.glasurit.com/CCC/html/index.php

It's looking really nice!!


I got one of these things and 3m discs, it was so easy to work with.

The mini belt sander worked really well, too.

And the seams weren't perfect, but a skim coat of filler.

Yes you are right. At first I was but then moved to some Dremel attachments which work a lot better. The mini belt sander looks great.

I was thinking of a blue of some kind. My son wants it to be a deep red wine colour.

The mini belt sander is pretty good. Good to have a selection of grinding tools.

At some point I would like to write up some welding and metal work tips. I'm not that good at it, but I have learned a lot over the years.

There was a thread here about this.

The "getting started with welding" thread

I thought there was. Maybe I will just add on.

Yes, I did read that thread. I've learnt a lot and I'm pretty happy with my welds now. They may take me a lot longer than some and might not be as pretty but they are stong and functional and once blended and filled no one should be able to tell. I really prefer TIG now that I've got ok at it. Seems more controllable and less dramatic than MIG.

At the risk of sounding like a big head 🙈 I do feel like I've started with relatively hard things to weld when learning TIG. 1-1.5mm sheet metal (at best!) with the parent metal melting like butter if the tungsten even looks at it the wrong way 😂

Give me some decent 5mm metal with a standard butt or filler join and I'd like to think I'd be flying along! 😃

The thin metal is not easy!

I had to practice for a couple of months before I felt confident enough to try welding it.

And I initially was planning to have a welding shop do it, but the only shops I could find that could/would do it were very high end car restoration places, that would cost a fortune.