Modern Vespa

The green one is in Houston, the black one in San Antonio. Anyone know about these? They have been on the market for a long time.
Thanks!

links? more pics and info?

the green one looks like one that was owned by a member here. the black one looks like it's ready for lift off-- so probably a 10" stand on a 8" bike.

both are likely Bajaj or SEA imports. but more info needed.

[Spring Texas] Vintage Vespa vbb 150cc restored Clean title

probably this one...

Yes they are both on FB marketplace. The green one is listed for 2850 which seems low, wonder what is wrong.
I don't want to drive hours and hours to look at them, and I can't tell from the pics, so I hoped someone would have seen them up close. I am sort of in the hunt for a VBB.

post up the links and you'll get input. we all love to get our anoraks out of the closet and geek out on the minutiae.

you're looking for bikes that hover in that danger zone of being crappy restorations and poorly built bodges that have been imported. do your homework before parting with hard earned cash.

original and faded paint is better than new and shiny.

ask for vin and engine numbers, always.

Ah I remember…

to add: the green one, if you click thru the link and follow the seller's other threads you'll get more of an idea of what that bike is or could be.

basically, he said he picked it up from somebody who had passed. it'd reportedly been restored "4~5 years prior" and sat. said it's a 72 (it's not) then corrected to a 62, which again it's not. got it running and repaired a few little things and then put it up for sale.

without any further info, I'd guess that it's an overseas resto from probably Indonesia or maybe Thailand. but it could be a legit US market bike that just got sprayed that color and slapped together with crappy parts. could it be worth asking? maybe. depends on what it actually is.

on that black one, after looking closer at the one pic, it's definitely SEA resto. it's got a PX floor mat, wacky horn and fender script, kick lever looks all fubar.

I instantly knew the bike, but it took some digging to find the threads. for the life of me I couldn't remember the guy's name. which led to a bunch of searches with "Joe" in them, so naturally "Joe from the future" came up. and, well... IYKYK...

I went down the rabbit hole dissecting the green one, because I'm Like That and enjoy the investigation process. Plus he was kind enough to make a video, which gave me a lot to pore through.

It looks kind've like my VBB, only green instead of orange, so I dig its style at a macro level.

TL;DR: It's not worth $4k and definitely shouldn't be bought unless it's been looked over closely by someone who knows these bikes well.

I'll guess it's going to need a wear parts rebuild of the motor sooner than later, and you'd want to do a new ignition along with a 12V conversion, so either a re-working or replacement of the wiring harness at the same time. That's a few hundred bucks in parts right there.

I don't think it's a SEA bodge, but it's no $4k bike, either. It's a flip of a bike that's been sitting in a garage for 5+ years by a guy who doesn't know Vespas by his own admission.

Most of the still pictures are from some time earlier in the bike's life. By the time he gets it, there's a lot of chipped paint around the top of the tunnel by the headset, plus the missing paint spot on the floorboard and some metal was patched around the Piaggio logo on the legshield at some point. My VBB had the same issues and I had to weld cracks through there and was unable to get it all "just right," too. It's just a tough area to work on. And the glovebox is definitely dented in one photo. I have no idea what's up with that.

In one picture, the front wheel isn't centered under the mudguard, so something funky is going on there. In one of the pictures, it looks like the wheel is turned too far to the left, so the fork stops are probably bent out of place. That's not uncommon, but along with the front fork/wheel alignment strangeness makes me wonder what else is going on there.

In some of the pictures, there seems to be a big ass dent in the glovebox, but not in the video. In the video he says it was stored covered in a garage, so maybe it's just an artifact in the images or maybe it got backed into or something at some point and he hammered it out.

The paint job looks nice enough if green metal flake is your thing, but it has some weird details you can see in the video, like the backs of the legshield you can see that it was attached with pop rivets, which were then painted over.

There's a spot on the floorboard at 3:40 where you can see a big patch of body filler. I'd guess the entire bike was coated in that stuff and then blocked down to paint. There are several areas where you can see the paint is chipped of to reveal rusted sheet metal, meaning rust is under the paint, but it wasn't properly acid etched/galvanized prior to painting.

Cap nuts on the legshield ends, not rivets. That's a bit of a pet peeve of mine for whatever reason.

No headlight, which is going to be an issue to sort out since it's still on points and 6V electricals, which means Balanced AC. There are two kinds of people when it comes to Balanced AC: Those who hate it and those who have never worked on it.

The levers are for a later model bike and are missing the washers, as you can see them vibrating like crazy in the video when the motor is running. That's no biggie, just noting.

He has it idling and revs it a little bit in the video, but not enough to get a good feel for the state of the motor. He also never removes the cowl to show us what it looks like. That bugs me, but I don't think it's deliberate, I think he just doesn't know enough about these bikes to understand that's an important thing to see.

The listing says it's a 1962, but the title of the picture says '64, and it's a squaretail, which would make it a Not '62. Again, minor detail, but worth noting.

And since it sat for five years or more and hasn't been rebuilt, so it may or may not run right for more than a few weeks, depending on how the seals held up and whether they're ethanol resistant.

As to the motor, it might have done 60 indicated, but I seriously doubt it did 60 on GPS unless he meant KM/h. 60 on 8's is not something that Just Happens without a fair amount of effort, as others on here will testify.

As to the black one, that's a run--don't walk--away from it as fast as your little legs will carry you. Bad cable routing. PX floormat. That weird, uniquely SEA shade of black paint. The rusty bolt-on chrome legshield trim. It screams "Bad Decision" all day long.

succinct. love it CM.

I try.

The green one, in Spring, Tx. has been listed for several months for 2850.

if you're asking if that's a good price, I think that's high for what it is.

Agreed.

If you figure that you're going to need a soft parts rebuild ($100-200, depending on what you find), 12V ignition ($200), wiring harness, horn, and switch ($100), and new tires and tubes ($120) within the first 0-6 months, I'd go $2k MAX, assuming there are no gremlins lurking inside the frame if you pull the tank or obvious disasters under the engine cowl.

That's also assuming you can do all the work yourself. If you need someone else to do that, figure in an extra $1k+ for labor and $100 for parts markup, assuming you can even find anyone local and competent.

And while I love my 8"s, most people find gets pretty sketchy to ride over about 45-50 MPH. That is, perhaps not coincidentally, what you're going to see top speed-wise unless it's had some nontrivial tuning work done, but I don't think it has.

If you decide you want to Go Plaid and get your 60 on 8"s sticker without needing to buy new pants, figure another $750 worth of suspension and motor upgrades, too.

I'm just in the hunt for a straight VBB that is not someone's "project" they gave up on.
I have a 05 Stella 2t that I have done a bunch of work on and is a daily runner.
Now I'd like a bit more vintage with round cowls, no signals, just head and tail lights, stop light and horn. 45mph is as fast as I care to go.