Modern Vespa

This would also cover early Vespa; 1950-1954.

These have to be my favorite front ends to build. The Allstate 100 and 101 come with a button zerk fitting as well. I figured I would share as very few people see these in the USA let alone on this site. Enjoy!

This one is from a Sears Allstate 102, roughly 1952-1953.

Early differences-
Brass trunnion has a rod and the upper a tube- acts as a primitive damper.

Spring is different.

Front axle has no gearing as the bikes have no speedometer; headset designed for no speedo - not even a blanking plate. Same headset as the Vespa U model.

Collared nuts are brass

Very cool. Thanks for that !

Crazy cool.

Thanks for posting it up.

Is the internal "damper" just a friction device?

I can't imagine it would work well or for very long. Must be a reason they quit making them like that.

Friction. To be fair, 32 mph is about all you get out of a single port, 125cc.

I like to see how scooters evolved over time. The Italian scooter companies made great strides post war right up to the mid 70's IMO. Engine design and manufacturing techniques advanced greatly. After that not so much. I believe Vespa topped out in the 60's with the GS160 and the SS180. After those models it seems the bean counters started to drive decisions, not the engineers. Yes, some things got improved but on the whole, quality declined. Just my opinion.

I do like the style and somewhat crudeness of the early models but for everyday use, reliability and sustainability the GS and SS are way ahead. Amazingly solid machines that can last a very long time (if not forever) with basic care. Sadly, the world seems to have lost those qualities today.

well written, thank you.

i read years ago the evolution of the scooter collector/rider. the final stage was something like getting into early bikes and preserving the nuances of those models. The early evolution Vespa and Sears Allstate is fascinating.

Agreed.

A book could be written on the evolution of Italian scooter manufacturing. It is fascinating.

Years ago I got a bunch of factory service manuals for Vespas and Lambrettas. I read through them and learned so much. I have also worked on many. One thing I noticed was that Piaggio usually made solid advances but Innocenti sometimes made "mistakes". Early lambrettas were relatively complex compared to Vespas. The beauty of the Piaggio designs was their elegant simplicity. It took a while for Innocenti to get there.

For example the kickstart mechanism for the D and LD models had many revisions in a short period time. This probably arose from the complex design of their engines. Shaft drive with 3 different bevel gear sets is crazy! Crank to clutch, clutch to kickstart and drive shaft to final drive. Add the tubular frames and all the cast fittings - including the torsion bar rear suspension and enclosed front fork suspension pivots. The D range was VERY labor intensive to produce. Innocenti did an impressive job and they worked well but they were getting killed by production costs. They moved to the Series 3 designs to simplify things and lower production costs and it worked - for a while.

Wow that is nice