Modern Vespa

I've got confused ... and I'm praying you lot can help.

I'm planning to take the restricting washer out of my variator on my 2 stroke ET2 over the weekend (... I actually tried earlier this week but realised that without a variator locking tool my efforts where useless! ...) but whilst I'm in there I figured I may as well upgrade the rollers.

Simple I thought ... well the work is but which rollers to buy isn't!

Everywhere I search it says change by 1g per roller ... but it doesn't say whether this should be up or down and in the same sense I can't find out what my existing rollers are.

After some deeper searching I've come to the conclusion (perhaps wrongly) that the rollers I change too should relect my body weight.
Am I way off the mark?


Any help on this would be massively appreciated.

Thanks all!!

If you want the bike to take off more quickly, essentially staying in a "lower gear" for higher RPM's, you should use lighter rollers.

good man ... thank you ... and nice sunnies by the way!

The roller weights installed as stock are optimized for what the manufacturer considers to be average rider weight (who knows what that is, but I'm guessing they optimize for about 150-170 lbs.). If you are heavier than that, then your acceleration will definitely benefit by going down to the next lower available weight. If you go much lower, though, your top speed will suffer because there will be insufficient centrifugal force to push the variator pulley halves apart and get the scooter into the highest possible gear ratio.

If you don't know what the weight of the installed rollers is, the most accurate way to determine it is to weigh all of them at once on a postal scale and divide by the number of weights (usually 6).

I just got a long skinny chisel and jammed it in there. It was bendy enough not to shear the teeth off ( I don't think I could have broken any anyway, the Incredible Hulk I am not ) but held out enough to crack the nut loose.

From the "Tech notes" that can be found by rummaging:

Never discuss the technicalities of how to de-restrict with end users. But, advice given can prevent problems caused by them fiddling blindly.

.. Piaggio have never supplied any information about how vehicles are restricted or how to make them go faster.
.. Piaggio can not advocate de-restriction for any reason.
.. Vehicles will only have been homologated as Mopeds so will be technically illegal if they are de-restricted.
.. Piaggio have never offered any tuning parts.
.. If a 50 is de-restricted the licensing requirements will be the same as a 125, so Piaggio's official line is "Do not de-restrict, if you want to go faster get a 125"
125cc engines are not restricted, they are designed to produce no more than 11 kw. So they will be learner legal.
50cc engines are always restricted and are only sold as 50 km/h mopeds. There is no "full power" option. Most countries in Europe have the same 50 km/h category.

Restriction of 50cc 2 stroke twist and go engines.
Non catalysed engines.
All engines will have:
.. A spacer between the front pulley halves. (stops it obtaining the highest top gear ratio)
.. A branch pipe on the exhaust. (stops the engine revving beyond a certain point)

In addition, water cooled engines will have:
Older engines, starting with the first Runner and NRG MC2.
.. Have a tube spot welded into the inlet end of the silencer.
Newer engines.
.. Have a tube seam welded into the out let end of the exhaust pipe.
All these restrictions can be removed without the need to re-jet the carburettor.

Catalysed engines.
.. Have the spacer and the branch pipe. These engines will need a larger main jet, two sizes up on standard. Piaggio are probably unable to supply these.
.. Do not remove the baffle plate from the carburettor bell mouth.
.. Do not do anything to the "secondary air pipe" going to the exhaust.

You can get derestricted 50s legally in Switzerland and Portugal. I know this because I'm trying to get a copy of the Swiss papers and all the technical guff to make my halfway-derestricted S50 sort of halfway-legal in Germany

i like this quote