Modern Vespa

Mambas a huge bitch! I'm taking it to the extreme now when it comes to metal removal. I'm imagining the rear shock being non existent and seeing where it rubs. Once this is all finished, I promise I'll take pictures of the travel with the owner on it so someone can use this for reference.

I wouldn't hesitate to reweld the spring mounts in another position if that made the install easier.

You should have a metal rod welded onto that little remaining section of the frame as a stiffener.

Frame is finished and took the weekend off. Stayed up to build the motor and had a first! Looks like the cases cracked where the kickstart quadrant is supported! Anyone ever seen this?

Are you sure it's a crack?? Grey smallie I did was the same. Casting was protruding. Probably early cases, later ones are flat…

I unfortunately didn't take any photos of that area to look back on so I'm not sure!?!??? I was gonna have it welded just to be safe unless I find otherwise.

I vote for casting mark

I have a stubborn intake manifold stud that won't budge so I'll send it to my friendly welder for a bit of persuasion. Since it's already going, I took the dremel to the quadrant casting to see if it truly was cracked and it's not. I'll have the welder put a bead around the area I ground down.

I'd remove the coil spring from the shock and cycle the suspension to check for clearance issues. Remember that the bumpstop rubber can probably compress about 50% of its thickness. That would be the best and safest way to go.


EDIT: Nevermind. I'm replying to a week old posting. I'm sure you got it sorted out by now.

I just pushed the shock aside and pivoted on the front bolt as far as it would go. Wherever the exhaust touched, I cut. Might be overkill, might not.

I bought an Egig super banana for my PK. The pipe was advertised as fitting a PK without any cutting. I was pretty darned bummed that i had to hack the holy heck out of my frame to get it to fit without rubbing. For my install, i found it easy enough to just remove the spring from the shock absorber. I didn't want to think about rubbing issues sometime in the future when i'm jumping off of curbs.

Took some time to enjoy the warm water and focus on surfing. Welder came through and while interesting to look at, I don't think these cases will ever break at his welds!

Malossi manifold is interesting. Looks like it's flat but didn't match up well against the cases. McMaster-Carr stainless studs rolled on the table flat enough so a little sanding work later, I think with goop this manifold won't cause any problems.

Gonna swap cables and install tonight. Tomorrow morning is hopefully start up.

Good to see the progress!

That manifold looks terrible, though. Malossi's apparently been hiring their machinists down at the School For the Blind.

That is the saddest thing I have seen in awhile. Yeeesh.

Why not true it with a file?

I did as best I could after that pic. Still see some daylight but I'm not too worried.

Best to have it milled. you will never get close with a file on that thing.

of course a mill is the correct answer, but most of us don't have one - and getting someone to mill it may cost as much as the part. but maybe I'm overestimating. what would you charge to make that flat if someone sent it to you?

you are not wrong based on what that might cost. the funny thing is, setting it up on a mill takes longer than milling the surface. probably somewhere around $30-50. that being said, when it's done, it's flat, true, and right as the day is long. Regional pricing will be different; Californian pricing is always higher. The OP could always send it back to the retail shop and make them deal with it.

that's not crazy, if I had a local that I knew and trusted, I'd do that vs. wager expensive top ends against a possible air leak.

When is it *not* true that the setup/prep takes longer than the actual work?

I'm trying to come up with a counterexample and it's all like: "cylinder setup? Nope." "welding? Nope." "bodywork? Oh, hell naw!"

10 seconds on a belt sander would get it pretty darn flat. And if you don't have a belt sander, then i would use a piece of sandpaper on a flat surface (using the same technique for a cylinder head).

Socalguy loves those belt sanders too

This is true. But never again on a cast iron cylinder. Shoulders still sore.

Reached out to my parts supplier and here's what was said:

"…sip won't do anything and the only recourse is to contact Malossi directly which never responds. So it's pretty much on us as a shop. So if you want to return it, you're more than welcome."

And

"Yeah I pretty much eat about $5k-$8k yearly on that stuff"

While on the topic, the BGM universal gear cable kit I installed last night came with one gear cable and one clutch cable inner/outer. 🤷🏻‍♂️ So, owner gets a free clutch cable swap and I installed a new p200 gear cable outer I had in my collection.