Modern Vespa

I just took off my seat to mod it slightly (needed to move back a bit) with no issues.

When I replaced it, the outer 2 bolts tightened properly but the middle one just went in loosely and I couldn't see any threading.

Has this happened to anyone else?

I tried to reach in through the hatch behind the battery area but no soap.

How many panels need to be removed to get access?

Yep, been there, done that <https://modernvespa.com/forum/topic47857?highlight=>

It's nearly impossible to get in there. Of course, you don't have to; if you actually snapped the speednut clip, retreiving it won't help (mine eventually found "bottom" and stopped rattling). If it didn't snap, you may be able to bend it back. Remove the brass spacer and insert a thin flat screwdriver (something that will easily fit through a 6mm hole). Not just any rod will do, because you want a slight flange at the end (therefore one of those "jeweler's" screwdrivers won't work, there's no flange). Manuver it through the hole in the speednut, which will be below the hole you can easily see, and with the screwdriver rotated so the blade is perpendicular to the ground, you can lever the speednut back into position (you may need to remove the seat again to accomplish this due to the angle). Next, remove the screwdriver and pass the 6mm screw down and gently screw it in by hand. The nut will still be at an angle so you may have to hunt around to grab a thread - do this entirely by hand or you'll just force the nut back down again. Once it's threaded, give it a good yank to bring it back up. Make sure your seat is removed from the hinge and thread all the screws, but especially that center one, by hand only until all three have caught threads.

If you broke the speednut, you can get another one in with some forcing of plastic. It's not easy finding 6mm speednuts in hardware stores but 1/4-20 will do fine (of course that means you also need a 1/4-20 screw).

Thanks for that, knowing that this has happened to others is helpful (and something Piaggio designers should remedy).

I had read that posting but did not remeber the 'lost soldier' part of the story. I haven't noticed the rattling but maybe that frequency is no longer registered by these old ears.

Once again a reminder why I am on this site. Thanks AmmoGuy, I'm set for the moment. On one of the scooter parts web sites I saw somebody selling a whole bag of them, if I come across it again I'll both buy one and post the link. Nobody should own an MP3 without spare speednuts!

If anyone else has these speed nuts or knows where to get them I would appreciate it.

Unless the speed nut you're referring to is different from all the other ones on the bike, they're a common item, available at any well-stocked hardware store or audio installer.

It's a speednut, not a speedclip. They're also called cage nuts or clip-on nuts. I've found about a dozen of them in various places around the trike (e.g. the top most hole the /500 flyscreen screws into). They don't have them in metric at Lowes or Home Depot, at least in my area, but they do sell them in English. They also sell speedclips, which are just a single thread and so one of them can accomodate several different English and metric thread sizes. Most of the screws on an MP3 screw into speedclips (if the screw ends in a point, it mates with a speedclip or in a few instances directly into threaded nylon holes; if it's a machine bolt, it probably mates to a speed nut but there are a couple of exceptions I've found. Interestingly, McMaster-Carr - who sells just about everything - only carries metric speednuts in 5mm.

There's also yet a third kind, a "tapped hole speedclip," which is thread-specific but still stamped out of spring steel (kind of a hybrid). The lower side screws on the /500 flyscreen screw into these.

English is metric - Merkin may not be. I'd accept 'Imperial' though, but you might not.

[quote="jimc"][quote="rjeffb"]They don't have them in metric at Lowes or Home Depot, at least in my area, but they do sell them in English.
[/quote]
English is metric - Merkin may not be. I'd accept 'Imperial' though, but you might not.[/quote]

No, we had a revolution about accepting Imperials, as you may recall :-)

Here in the States, rightly or wrongly, we use "English" to mean pints, pounds, and inches. Officially, the "Machinery's Handbook" refers to measurements that are commonly referred to as "English" as "ANSI/ASME"; the term English is eschewed because it could be confused with British National Standard, British Metric, and British Whitworth measurements. Now, I know just how wrong this is, but we use the term "Imperial" to reference a non-metric measurement that is actually used in England, but which is not an "English" measurement, which generally isn't used in England at all. So if I ask for some gas - I mean petrol - in an English measurement, I mean a gallon that contains 3.78 liters. But if I asked for the same in Imperial, I mean a gallon that contains 4.5 liters. Of course, Americans would never do that, but some Canadians might. (Look, I'm an engineer, so I hate all non-metric systems...but you Brits aren't doing much better than we are when it comes to abandoning your thread sizes...even today, there are more British thread types and sizes than all the Metric Standard sizes combined, although I admit that's dwarfed by the baffling variety of idiosyncratic American thread types.) I guess we really should call these units "American" (or to be completely accurate, "American and sometimes Canadian") but we just can't bring ourselves to do that. We'd just as soon go metric, and we know that's not happening!

Hey, don't bring Canadians into this one; we're confused enough already.

Roll over the Southern border and we're into miles (ah, the speed measurement of my youth).

Ever since we switched to Celsius and kms anyone over 40 has had to mentally convert the weather forecasts and distances.

That has led to many problems, probably fatalities too.

Most people remember the Gimli Glider story in 1983 when an Air Canada jet had to make an emergency landing due to fueling miscalculation due to the recent conversion to metric measurement.

Here's a link: http://www.gimlicommunityweb.com/history/gimli_glider.php

[quote="heavyduti"]Hey, don't bring Canadians into this one; we're confused enough already.

Roll over the Southern border and we're into miles (ah, the speed measurement of my youth).

Ever since we switched to Celsius and kms anyone over 40 has had to mentally convert the weather forecasts and distances.

That has led to many problems, probably fatalities too.

Most people remember the Gimli Glider story in 1983 when an Air Canada jet had to make an emergency landing due to fueling miscalculation due to the recent conversion to metric measurement.

Here's a link: http://www.gimlicommunityweb.com/history/gimli_glider.php[/quote]

Well, since we've completely departed from MP3 seat screws, I have to ask something. Is it true that when Canadians state a wind chill factor, instead of saying something like "8 degrees celsius with a wind chill factor of minus 2" you say something like (I'm inventing the units here) "8 degrees celsius with a wind chill factor of 45 joules per square centimeter"?

At least you Canucks had the very good sense to switch to kms. Kilometres are *lovely* they flash by so quickly.

That's it exactly! It was invented by the Canadian Army one day when they all got tegether in a pub (small but really good army).

They were looking for a new defence strategy and decided that the Wind Chill as expressed in goggeldygook would dissuade would be invaders.

Sort of a reverse the Mouse That Roared strategy.

Back to reality: no one understand wind chill- it's either cold, really cold or f'ing cold.

The science of wind chill is debatable, some say it's pure hooey.

I actually call it the 'Windshield Factor' since the faster you or the wind goes it just feels COLD.

They do but the Sea to Shining Sea distance went from 3000 miles to 8 billion kms (or so).

It also devalued items like used cars when they go over 100,000 kms instead of miles etc.

Endless confusion reigns, but it's still a pretty nice place to live and as my mother says: that should be our biggest problem.

The absolutely brilliant thing about "English" measurements, which G.B. Shaw would have appreciated, is that we Americans use that term completely devoid of any irony, even though we know that it is a complete misapplication of the term in the very field that defines the need for accuracy, while managing to look down our noses at anyone using the obviously inferior Johnny-come-lately metric system.

Oh - I have to defend our wind chill scheme. So, suppose I have motorcycles that mass 100 kg, 105 kg, 105 kg, and 110 kg. That's a mean of 105 kg. and a variance of 12.5 kg^2. That is the actual, true, mathematical measure of the variability. But we don't like saying "a mean of 105 kg and a variability of 12.5 kg^2" because nobody knows what the hell that means. So somebody invented the standard deviation, which involves taking the square root for no particularly good reason other than the units comes out the same, so we can now say "a mean of 105 kg and a standard deviation of 3.5 kg" and feel smug that now it all sounds like it makes sense.

I therefore submit that stating a wind chill as "8 degrees with a wind chill of -2 degrees" is inherently superior, not because it means anything useful but precisely because it doesn't - it merely makes us feel more comfortable, which is pretty important when you're talking about wind chills, don't you agree?

Her: oh, the wind is blowing and I'm so cold!
Him (putting his arm around her): yes, the weather report says it's 8 degrees, but the wind chill is -2.
Her: hmm, I'm still cold, but now I feel oddly comfortable... :-)