Modern Vespa

Hey all,

I inherited a 2005 Stella from a buddy whose son trashed it cosmetically. It sat for several years so I did a rebuild on the engine/carb, fixed things mechanically, and it's good to go. Took it out for a run today and all is well.

What I'm looking for, and seemly can't find so far (maybe not looking hard enough), is a video reference of an absolute tear down of a Stella down to the bare frame. Not an engine or carb rebuild, but to strip it down to do a complete rehab / body work.

I have the owners, service, and parts manuals and while they give some bread crumbs as a combined reference they really don't offer anything specific. If there is nothing out there, so be it. I'll wing it but thought I'd ask first.

This is a long term project along with a Victory Kingpin I'm going to be rebuilding to pass down to my kids/grandkids. Any help would be appreciated.

Walks

Well, there ya go. As soon as you ask a question you find something you're looking for.

Rebuild a monster from Paris

Still, any other threads or links to videos would be greatly appreciated.

That's a modern bike, which is very different from Vintage.

That being said, the Stella is largely a match with a P-series Vespa, so if you look for teardown and rebuilds of those (there are several on here). ScooterWest's youtube channel has Robot doing teardowns on some of the Stella-specific bits like the front brake, IIRC, along with a lot of good p-series info that will also translate.

The biggest differences are in the electrical system, which was pretty sketchy on the Stellas for a number of reasons (poor manufacturing quality, poor wiring quality, trying to fit too much wire into small areas), and the disc brake. In general, these things are REALLY simple to work on, even a bare metal teardown.

Most of the fundamental engineering has been unchanged since the 1960's, too, so don't assume that examples from non-P range bikes are necessarily wrong, either (offer does not include Smallframes or wideframes. YMMV. Tax, title, and destination fees extra).

Start a project thread in here and post pictures and questions and you'll generally get good, detailed answers almost immediately.

Thanks! It won't start until this winter. Just trying to gather up as much understanding of what I need to do. Yep, I will start a project thread when the time comes

Go check out Orwell's P200 thread. He's into final reassembly now and has lots of detailed write-ups and pictures, plus he's super detail-oriented.

Where in Chicagoland are you? I lived there for 25 years and have only been in Nashville for four.

Geneva. Moved here three years ago from Lake in the Hills. We were all set to move out of Illinois and follow the grandkids to CO but they moved to St Charles. So, here we are!

Funny how that works!

My wife wanted to move to Nashville for years. We'd moved from the city (North Side) to Evanston for high school. After our daughter was out of the house, we started looking at downsizing options and they were all more expensive than staying put, so we moved to Nashville instead.

It's like anywhere else: pluses and minuses, but the more-or-less year-round riding weather definitely doesn't suck.