Modern Vespa

Hi there, this is my first posting on this forum.

I would like some advice my bike was recently attempted to be stolen but they weren't very successful however the damage was left behind.

The bike now appears to have a broken steering column as the handle bar points one way and the wheel points the other. The handle bar locks but as said the wheels are pointed in the other direction.

Can someone advise me on the level of damage and whether it is repairable. :

i doubt the steering column is broken. it sounds like a much simpler and easily repairable situation.

there is a clamp and pinchbolt at the top of the steering stem that holds the handlebars in the stem. in the event of a crash, the bars need to be able to move in the stem, so the pinchbolt shouldn't have been torqued down too tightly - i.e. the bars should move if subjected to a certain amount of force.

the would-be thieves have probably turned the bars hard in an attempt to break the steering lock, and in doing so have pulled them out of alignment. you can re-align them by simply bracing the front wheel between your feet and pulling the bars back to a straight position. ideally you will take off the handlebar covers and re-tighten the pinchbolt, but if your'e not sure how to do this, or how tight the pinchbolt needs to be, then the 'quick fix' above should at least allow you to drive the scooter to a mechanic.

oh, and welcome to MV. glad the little toerags didn't manage to steal your scooter

Piaggio steering lock construction prevents theft yet again!

Just as Genie said. If you take the plastic off the headstock, you'll see that the bars and the steering tube both have notches at the 6 o'clock position. When these are in alignment, the bars are properly set wrt the front wheel.

Do NOT do up the pinch bolt too tightly, otherwise next time the toe-rags could break the steering-lock. It should be done up enough that it'll never move in normal use, but will in a crash or attempted theft. The torque setting in the manual is a good starting point, it might need a bit more after this attempt.

thank you, I have browsed on here before so and u all seem very knowledgable.

I don't fancy shelling out another £150 because some little rat wasn't able to steal it last year they stuck a screwdriver in the ignition and destroyed that.

However not as bad as the year before when I was actually on the bike when some hoodies came and pushed me off and rode off with my pretty little blue vespa. Oh glorious London, don't u just love it......

good grief are you in south london by any chance?

i live in north london, just off a street fondly known as the 'murder mile', and down the road from one of the worst council estates in the UK, and I've never experienced anything that nasty.

it won't help with the scooterjacking, but if there's any way to park your scooter on private property it will really reduce the level of tampering and theft attempts. we push ours up a ramp into the front garden - a bit of a pain with the fat-bummed GT, but well worth it in terms of discouraging random acts of vandalism. A cover is a good preventative as well - out of sight, out of mind. make sure you get one with grommets so you can lock it onto the scooter so it doesn't get nicked - i found this out the hard way earlier this year

This has just happened to me on my ET2.....saved only by the steering lock..

South London is getting worse I swear.....

The exact same thing happened to me last night with my ET4! Thieves in Edinburgh tried to break the steering lock and roll it away however the were unsuccessful thankfully! Now it seems that the lock still kind of works but the wheel is no longer aligned with the handlebars and veers to the left. My insurance company recovered it last night and will assess the damage over the next couple of weeks, does anyone know if this will be a big repair job? Thanks!

I saw the headline and quietly wondered whether it was London. And then find not just one but 3 thefts in one thread. Perhaps I should chain myself to the bike while I'm riding it!

I was at a police inspectors meeting a week or so back and told them that their current policy of not chasing after criminals on scooters, if they're not wearing a helmet, was senseless. They simply regard a scooter as an easy "get away free" card. Obviously they need a scooter so they nick our scooters. On the day I was speaking they had an armed robbery in North London where a dozen criminals, all on scooters, robbed a jewellers. All the scooters would of been stolen. One of them was caught but not by the police, instead it was all the local shop keepers that managed to bring him down while they were escaping. Will they change their policy? I doubt it...

Stand facing the bike with the front wheel between your legs so it can't move. Turn the handlebars with small discrete pulls until the bars align with the wheel. Cost £0.

PS just realised this is an ancient thread that's been restarted. I should of ignored it

Hi all, new to forum but hoping someone can help. My PX125 has been damaged so that the handlebars are now totally loose and not moving the front wheel. There's been attempts in the past to break steering lock and screwdriver the ignition barrel lock but I'm not sure how to fix this. I'm guessing something has broken as the handlebars just turn freely with no connection to the front wheel...?

I think that you Londoners need alarms and GPS trackers installed on your scooters, in additional to very thick chains. Do a search for TK109 or LK109 tracker on Amazon. That's what you want. Your cell phone tracks your scooter. Reasonably priced. There is a monthly fee for phone service, but you can get a very cheep plan that doesn't cost much. It probably won't stop damage by rats, but at least you are highly likely to recover your scooter.

I know this is a veeery old thread but wondering what this turned out to be as I have a similar issue. Not completely free but a lot of play on each end of lock.

Answered in your own thread. So locking.