Modern Vespa

Howdy all

I thought I would post some pics of my first rebuild of a 1965 Sportique. The engine was toast so I found as rebuild P200, replaced the floor board and upgrade the front wheel to an 10" w/ a GS 150 rim. The body has been repaired and painted by Atois.

Today we spent all day hand peening the floor rails with aircraft rivets. My friend is a pilot and also works for Boeing so we decided to give it a try. We added some chips and dents but nothing too bad plus Atois can fix them.

Jaxs

wow cool white and nice tips with the aircraft rivets keep the pics coming i want to see more

Thanks for the comments. The plan this weekend is to run all control cables and attach the center stand. We already ran the wire harness which wasn't too bad as we used very thin but firm wire through the frame. Afterwards we will reassemble the fork as we finished painting the fork last weekend. More pics to come

Looks great. Did you get a custom wiring harness?

Yes, the harness is a 12 volt conversion from Scooter Works plus i'm not going to use a battery since there are no turn signals. The P200 engine is oil injected so I got a modern oil tank from Motorsport Scooter (thanks Alex) which we are going to mount in the left cowl.

oooh very nice planning to do one myself. I don't know whether to restore it back to the original colour scheme or whether to paint it something outrageous... but keep us posted on how it goes

So we spent about 8 hours in which we managed to run all cables, rebuild the front fork, pressed the front upper and lower races (for the fork bearings) and finally mounted the front fork. I'll post pictures soon.

Managed to run all cables, rebuilt the front fork and mounted the front fork.

It looks like your front wheel is mounted backwards? Every other bolt should be the stud backer, alternating with the nut, like this:




Your bike is going to be beautiful!

I would agree, given the side the nuts are on, but check out the direction of the "deep" part of the the rims vs the "shallow" part (if that makes sense). He'd want the deep part to be swingarm-side so the center of the wheel sits directly under the center of the fork... and he's done that. If he rotated the wheel then it would stick off to the side.

I wonder why the nuts are on the wrong side, though, as you noticed?

It's easy to see when you look at the front wheel from dead ahead, the wheel will not be centered in the mudguard. You also want to be able to have the valve stem on the outside open side of the wheel, not on the fork side.

I bought a GL to restore, and it had been sitting for quite some time, with the front wheel rusted tight. The wheel was installed backwards, and someone had been probably been riding it that way without noticing it...though it must have felt odd to say the least.

Hm, something seems strange to me then, because it really does look like the deep side of the rim is on the correct side from the shots they took, despite the valve stem and nuts saying otherwise. Is it just an optical illusion getting me? I think the rims used here might be strange... My rims do look/work like yours, Cafe.

Action, check your front wheel from straight on as Cafe suggests, and make sure it isn't off center.

Thanks for the infomation on the front wheel.

Now please remember that I am using a 10" GS 150 rim on an 8" fork so the wheel is both centered on the frame and under the fender. Yet I will double check it tomorrow .

Now I will move the stem to the left and alternate the nuts, but since the tire is directional, I will have to unmount the tire .

Thanks again

Ah, that probably explains it. But if it is correctly centered under the frame and fender I wouldn't change it... that's the important thing for balance and handling, after all. The side of the nuts and valvestem were just throwing us off on whether it was mounted in a manner in which the wheel WOULD be centered.

Since the original VBB case was shot, I found a rebuilt P200 engine for $600. At that point I could have changed the rear hub to an 8" which would have been scary so I decided to do a 10" up front. I could have changed the fork but it was original from Douglas (per Alex) so in talking to Kristian at Bar Italia & Alex at Motosport Scooters, they suggested the GS 150 rim solution.

BTW here is my other future project:

https://modernvespa.com/forum/post693647

Thanks again for the help

i like what u do mate and i cant wait to see ur primavera project too

+1 I can't wait to see what you do with the Primavera too.

So today I check the front wheel and it is mounted the correct way. Unfortunately the valve is on the right side of the fork. As I mentioned before the front rim is a 10" GS 150 rim mounted to a Sportique 8" fork. The pictures can be confusing but the rim is solid and does not disassemble like a P200 rim. In fact, there is no pass through hole for the valve stem, look at the pics.

We also drilled and mounted the center stand that was not a perfect fit for the Sportique as the floorboard was replaced and the wheels are now 10". The rear tail wire harness was a bear and we were not able to pass the harness through the extremely small channel under the rear fender.

Next time we are going to try again on the rear tail light harnesss, mount the engine, and mount the rear brake pedal. We are also planning to mount an oil tank in the left side glovebox along with an ignition switch in the same area.

Thanks for the comments

I'm having fits with my wiring harness on the Sprint too...hope all goes well pulling your harness through the rear channel.

Be careful with that 10" rim on the front. I've heard that the GS front wheel can bottom out inside the fender and cause the front wheel to lock up. Please check it out before riding it.

Thanks, I heard of this issue so I upgrade the shock and the spring is quite firm. Plus there is a lot of room in the fender well. I also kept the old 8" rims just in case.

This weekend, we continued the rebuild of the 1965 Sportique and that darn rear tail was a beast. We tried every possible way of getting those three wires through the conduit under the fender and even used vasoline in the end (not literally)

We decided to cut it which help but the lower section eventually broke off so we used a stiff 5/16 gasoline line to protect the wire to the tail light.

The engine gear shifter was swapped with a VBB shift so to match the handle bars indicators. Now we also replaced the stator with a Euro PX stator (5 wire) but then noticed the oil seal on the brake side was leaking. Now we have to replace that seal which is going to take a day. Even though the engine was rebuilt when I purchased it, it seems that it dried out as there was transmission fluid in the case. Maybe I will replace the kick quadrant so to match the Sportique body lines.

Someday this will all end................right?

I had a difficult time getting the tail light wires for my Allstate pulled through that section too. What I did was to solder a single wire to all three in the harness. I fed the single wire through which gave me something to pull with. It went pretty easy after that. I know it's too late this time but maybe the suggestion will help you on the next one.

It's looking good. Keep up the good work.

Today we installed the P200 engine that I purchased a year ago and was rebuilted by the previous owner. We only hooked up the CDI and it fired up in three kicks. We also replace the oil seal (simple) and installed the muffler

Beautiful, creamy goodness.

Any chance you might swap out that little lever on the front brake drum, with something shinier, or is it too rusted on there to mess with?

Thanks. Good eye....no it can be removed as I will most likely just sand off the rust and paint it. I am really not into the chrome...too much polishing required

HI JAXS

I must inform you THAT YOU GO WHERE THE RUBBER MOUNT GAS PIPE ON THE CONTRARY

CORRECT

Got it and thank you for the information & picture

So on Friday, we managed to get the headset on and do some of the rigging before flying off to Vegas to visit our other friend.

I also managed to get a 1962 VBB engine from Bob at Moto Paradiso in Santa Barbara this week...thanks again Bob. Its in good condition (minus some chips on the stator side which shouldn't matter) so I will replace the P200 engine in the Sportique with this one in the future.

Today, I picked up some parts for the VBB engine at the Scooter Shop in Orange...thanks Mic, Jeff, David and Hector. We should only need one more day to complete the Sportique then it will be the Rally 200 engine rebuild.

So today I planned to work on the Sportique but yet again I was distracted by this 1966 small frame (mickey mouse tail light). I just had to get it so tomorrow I will continue on the 1965 Sportique

So today I managed to finish the 1965 Sportique and I must say it was frustrating, time consuming but well worth it. I rode it down the block a couple of times and its faster than my P200 maybe toooo fast as it has the notorious front fork dive. The front GS150 10" wheel rides fine with plenty of clearance.

So you can see in the pics the cowls are not installed nor the headlamp. I found a 1962 VBB engine so I am going to rebuilt it and use this engine as I have been told the kick start lever of the P200 engine will hit the cowls. The headlamp I have is a reproduction that did not fit properly so I either have to find a new bezel or another headlamp with a pilot light. Also the seat pin is the wrong size plus I found some nice SIP VBB foot rail that I will most likely have installed at the body shop. I added some minor scrapes here and there on the frame. In talking to Hector and David, I might also return to the original 8" wheels to keep the Sportique authentic plus my girlfriend (she's 5') wants it.

So I still have 3-4 more Vespa projects left and still looking for a SS180.

Thank you all for the advice and feedback

SICK!

That's a nice ride you put together there!

I love it in white.

What a beauty Jaxs!! I love the way it looks in white. Awesome work!

It's beautiful.

So you will send me that scooter, then?

I wish the 300 supers were that shade of white.

Thank you every one for the kind comments.

I am now contemplating that I might keep the P200 engine in the Sportique and test the kick start lever for cowl clearance. Has any one tried this before?

I will be heading to Motosport Scooters tomorrow for the headlamp, bulbs, seat pin, etc so it should be completed by Saturday then off to be touched up by the painter.

So I finally completed the Sportique with help from Kristian @ Bar Italia and Alex @ MotoSport Scooters...Thanks guys for the headlamp parts.

Beautiful! Now on to that smallie! ;p