Modern Vespa

The circa 1970, SE Asian, restored Vespa actually belongs to my friend. He's storing it in my garage for the winter and during that time we'd like to diagnose and repair the problem.

He bought the Vespa early this summer and used it as his primary commuter for the riding season, during which he had no problems aside from a broken clutch cable. On the way to my house to store it, it stalled a few blocks away and would not restart so he pushed it the rest of the way. At my house, it still would not start and, in fact, has tremendous resistance when we try to cycle the engine.

Any guesses? Any known problems that might cause something like this?

Thanks.

tremendous resistance? Could have seized....

When you push down on the kickstart, and it slowly moves towards the ground .... does the flywheel move at all ? ( can you see it rotating ? )

If the kickstart lever is going down, and the flywheel is not rotating, you probably hard-seized your topend.

Typically, though, when you hard-seize your bike just kinda locks up the rear wheel.... you don't coast to a stop.


another possibility is that the flywheel nut came loose, and the flywheel got stuck on a coil or something. This just happened to me a month ago.

One quick check would be to see the engine's "resistance" to kick starting with the spark plug removed. If there is significant resistance, then something is problematic in the "moving parts" of the engine. Further diagnostics would be based on this first "quick test".

Al

shelling, napalm, small arms fire.

I considered this while talking with him today and we'll try that, as well as the other suggestions.

Thanks for the responses so far.