Modern Vespa

lots of dad joke energy there. love it.

^^^
Verily.


Again…Thanks for posting up such great details.
ET3s are fairly rare over here so there isn't a ton of info on the model specific differences. This is a great help.

My pleasure. Your build is pushing me to finish mine. I think I take up the ham bet!!

OK, it's been A minute… You know how it goes waiting on orders, exploding other bikes, hookers, blow… (Ok, ok I made up those last two for dramatic effect in case you were wondering.)

But seriously, to the matter at hand, I posted in the "today and Scooter bollocks thread" that I had finished cabling the headset when the selector cable outers decided to drop down the headset into the steering column. Multiple times no less.

After some great suggestions from other members, I decided to take a page from my kayaking days (lots of repairing rotomolded plastics) and got out a soldering gun with a trash tip and some shaved plastic slices from the outside of the cable guide assembly, so that I had some decent slivers of plastic. I heated them up and added them to the inside of the guide, where the cable outers just would not seat. With the extra plastic, the fit of the cable guide to the outers was much better, I shoved the outers up and into the plastic guide and so far they are holding in place.

For anyone searching in the future… There is a best practices as far as the order of assembly goes in these transitional headsets between the pre-P stuff and the P series stuff. What I found most efficient was to not insert the shifter tube into the headset… until after seating the outers into the plastic cable guide assembly. Then, drop the assembly down through the Speedo hole and into into place, and then insert your selector inner cables into the cable guide… and then finally inserting the gear selector tube back into the headset with all the requisite washers and retainer clip.

That's using your noggin' - better than my hot glue idea.

That was the inspiration. You, Malcolm, and Chandlerman and Greasy helped me down that path.
Gratzi.

I mainly commiserated and played cheerleader from the sidelines.

everybody had wayyyy better ideas than I had on the process.

Well... lots of progress after the last SIP shipment.

The 'ET3 complete' rubber kit lacked the one rubber I really needed, because of course. I ordered the kit for the little rubber guard that goes into the glovebox and cushions the routing of the HT wire and the stator wires to and from the CDI.

To solve, I went through all my miscellaneous vespa rubber (it was like a crackhead looking for his last rock in 70's shag carpeting) and finally found something suitable.

Engine is ready to go in... but the last bit of button up... I need to find the torque value for the Selector rod screw. The one that secures the spider.

https://www.sip-scootershop.com/en/product/screw-selector-rod-sip_98787000?usrc=Gear%20Box%20-%20Selector%20Box

I didn't see it on the smallie torqe settings. Or, I overlooked it...

I think 16NM? but not sure at all on that. Anybody?

I got nothin'. I've always just gone with "a little more than hand tight" on mine.

What do you mean by Selector rod screw? Is it the pin the holds the selector arm onto the mechanism. On mine it's a pin that gets hammered in.

[/url] https://www.sip-scootershop.com/en/product/selector-arm-fa_12135600[url] the thing for attaching the gear cables to.

You are getting ahead of me on getting you bike on the road. My engine is being timed at the shop as I couldn't get my strobe light to work and he has a lot of work on right now. [/url]

Sorry I think I understand now, it's the bolt that holds the mechanism in place on top of the case. Scooter centre says 17-22NM.

Excellent

TY!

What has 2 thumbs and had to drop the fork AGAIN?



So, I was all ready to put the engine into the ET2023... the last remaining bit of work up front was to put in the steering column bolt. And... of course it wouldn't go in.
%&*^^&!

Shined a light and it appears the pass through was blocked a tiny bit as if the lower race wasn't seated completely. (Stop me, if you've heard this one before.)

So... my ass grudgingly proceeds to drop the fork and bang out the lower race. By now I suspect I can beat anybody west of the Mississippi in a race of removing the lower race. In fact, I am putting this on my resume going forward.

Inspecting the lower race I found a design difference I was unaware of. I had 2 sets and put them side by side for comparison. Turns out the taper on the race I had used was longer/shorter than the other one?!? Both races measured 9.0 mm in total height, but there was a difference in the main wall height. See the pic below.

As we get further and further into the xerox, or copy of a copy on these repops I suspect this will be seen in more and more instances.

Kyle (Captcha here on MV) stopped by, picked up a part I had ordered for him and helped with the fork wrangling. Made life much easier! We put the other race (small wall height) into the scoot and buttoned it up. Problem solved... mostly. Turns out the steering column needs the other steering column bolt, not the one I had on hand. FML. *Sighs... places another order.*

Anyway... mad thanks to Kyle for his help!

Aargh I feel your pain, and I will check that myself.

I think I bet for you finishing, but I can't remember what side my ham is on.

You'd better get cracking, that all star game is coming.....

We have a roller!!!

Stand boots need to be installed correctly…

^^^^
Noted.😊
Thanks.
——

Sunday Funday!!!!

"Many hands make light work."

Especially true loading an engine into the frame!

Thanks Mark!

SUHWEET!!!!!

Installed carpet today…

In a vespa…

Didn't know that was a thing until I bought this ET3.

I'm down to all the little tasks. Need to install the fuelline, button up some wiring, adjust cables and we should be close.

Last 10% is about 50% done.

Twenty four days left? I'd call that a comfy margin.

I like your optimism! Especially with my glacial pace considered.

Working on fitting the VR/shunt. Trying out the suggestion to mount it under the seat. Seems like a decent spot and no drilling into frame required.

Wow, beautiful!

Looking great

Mannnnnnnnnnnnnn that thing is slicker than snot on a brass doorknob!!!!! Well done sir!

That does look good! I'm liking the way the ET3 badge looks too. Nice touch on the carpet, giving me ideas.

Anyone have a pic of where the cdi gets grounded in an ET3 glovebox?

Cdi earth goes to the mount bolt and there is a ground wire to the wiring harness on the other side.

Thank you. Earth/Ground inside the tank goes from that bolt on the cdi bracket to one of the seat bolts? Or?

The black wire is part of wiring harness, so it grounds to the ignition switch, stator and rear light assembly via the harness is my understanding.

See https://www.scooterhelp.com/electrics/wiring/VMB1T.pdf


For the Cdi unit as long as you ground it the to engine case in some way it completes the circuit. I have been getting my et3 engine timed and all we did was attach the Cdi and ground wire to the casing.


I hope this helps.

Hmmm. I dont think my repop harness does has that ground wire extension. Maybe it's hiding from me! So, I was just gonna pigtail a ground somewhere.

Thanks again for the pics! Will investigate.

Actually now I think of it. That black wire came part of harness but it is a single wire that attaches to the black wire on the terminal on the engine. So you just need to put a loop terminal on one end of a black wire and connect it to the black wire terminal along with the stator and the other black wire off the harness.


Sorry I am not near the bike right now so forgot.

A quick note on more weird design features of the ET3:

Above we were talking about managing the CDI which is in the glovebox.
I think if you ponder a large frame set up it kinda makes sense? (Battery , VR etc.) But, in a non battery small frame it is just mondo bizarro. The piaggio designers where just high AF the day they drew this up. Not Cosa high.. but close. The CDI wires from the stator have to cross to the glove box somewhere and the HT wire from the CDI has to cross back over to the jug. So where to run them? Why across the swing arm of course!
There is a little specialty bracket to help route the wires that attaches too?

.... the exhaust mount. *Brilliant*!

Luckily SIP has a wafer thin repop of said bracket.
Also lucky that Malcom grabbed some snaps of it for me mounted on his ET3.
Thanks MJ!

Montgomery Burns Voice -
*excellent*


https://youtube.com/shorts/-FTmiwGbBr4?si=4W9mZCPrmPBy4Hra

Fire in the Hole!! Really fantastic work all around on this ET3. Top ranks for the home stretch

Obviously not your working-on-the-scooter shoes. I don't think I ever owned a pair that stayed that clean after 10 minutes out of the box.

yessss!!

we have spark!

Welp... I was hoping to post a start video, but spent all weekend mussing about with cables.

Only to determine something may be sideways in the case?!?! IDK.

I can get through all four gears, but nigh on impossible to get it back in neutral and it is a hella big fight to down shift.

Scooters are stupid.

watch out, my vbb build is sneaking up on you - i can actually ride it now! no lights or speedo and needs the choke to idle, but I'm in the home stretch.

t-15 days and counting.....

Johnny Mule laying it down!