Modern Vespa

I had a nice running '65 Vespa Sprint with not-so-great sheet metal. The floor boards and the tail end were in the worst shape. A previous owner covered up much of the rotten metal with bondo and paint. But rust-through was apparent in one area, and close inspection showed the floor boards and their stiffening ribs were in bad shape.

The scoot had been around for a while, reportedly coming to the US from Italy to a Denver Area Shop and then making its way further west to Seattle. From the number, the motor appears to be a '72 Sprint Veloce, presumably with the power increase of three ports. It runs strong.

Sprints are seemingly devauled somewhat, as they are a favorite of Viet-bodge. This scoot in not from Vietnam, and has the nice look of an early Sprint - and since it runs so well, I hated to let it continue to deteriorate.

After some research and finding an excellent metal fabrication man (Elliot from Elhot Metal Fab) in Seattle - who was willing to work with me on a budget, I decided to replace the floor boards with new ones. I sourced the new Italian-made floor boards from SIP in Germany. With shipping to Seattle, they ran about $150, but saved many dollars in labor had I tried to repair the original ones.

Here are a few photos of the repairs. The metal work is complete and the scooter is now with the painter.


Work is about to begin. You can see one spot rusted through by the rear brake pedal.

One side has been cut off. Bondo is now showing under the paint. More rust-through can be seen under the bondo.

Peeling back the onion . . .

The running boards are gone now. Rust in the tunnel looked superficial.

Black colored POR-15 has been applied to the inside of the tunnel to protect it for the future.

Ooops, more rust-through near the rear swing arm attachment. It had been covered with bondo.

The new floorboards are test fitted. Notice how far they go forward. Not all the way, but at least they cover the worst area and all the reinforcement ribs are new.

Surgery . . .

Backing up the patch.

Ahhhh, I'm whole again!

Clamped in place and getting ready to tack weld.

A close up. One spot ahead of the new floor boards required a patch. The rest was sound.

Things are looking up now . . .

Tack welds are in place.

Welds are complete and ground down.

Hey, this wasn't so bad. I like how this is looking.

Primered to prevent rust bloom before the painter gets started.


Last edited by Augsburg57 on Sun, 30 May 2010 18:06:38 +0000; edited 1 time

Great pics and a fantastic job 8)

Thanks for documenting this mate.

Cheers

Agreed. Well done.

Yeah... good job
though without drop the engine... that's a little scary to me
does resulting straight body?

I'll have to wait for paint and reassembly to see how straight the body is. It seems fine. The floor boards provide strength when the bike is upright and has weight of the rider on the seat. So as long as it is not loaded up, with the floor boards cut off, it should be fine. In any event, the approach was consistent with the available budget - about $3000 to $4000 for metal work, paint and parts. I know, more than the scooter is worth - but no one should by a '60's scooter as an investment . . .

nice work!

nice work, thanks for posting the pics now i have a ilustration on how should i replace my sprint floorboard too

Good Work.
FYI Your air hose is about to blow out!
I like the sequence of photo's showing it slowly getting worse.

Nice job.
Good pic's too.

Thanks everyone. I had not noticed the air hose until someone pointed it out. That's why Elliot mentioned he had an "air" problem . . . .

Here are a couple of more "before" photos and one more "after".

Tomorrow, I select the color from the painter's color panels. The painter is mixing up three versions of the color of blue similar to the light blue in the photo below as found on Flickr.




Many years of license plate abuse.

The tail has been repaired too.

This is the light blue I found on Flickr that I'm having the painter try to match.

Here are some update photos of the scooter after going to paint. Paint was by SIK Werks in Seattle. The color is an early 1990's Vespa "benneton blue" (Piaggio Color #406) A big thanks to Brian and Ken at SIK Werks! The scoot is now in final assembly.

Can't wait to be able to ride it and stand on floorboards I don't need to worry about falling through!

More to follow . . .


Arriving at SIK Werks following addition of the new floor boards

Sanding has begun.

Beginning prep of the scoot for primer.

The engine is wrapped in tin foil.

Primer has been applied

Viola'! Paint has been applied.

Benneton Blue or Piaggio #406

The next step is final assembly.

Wow! Looks great!

wow sweet what u do there is better what i did with my paint job.. ur sprint is more sweet then mine

Very exciting. I'm going to get around to this sooner or later. Can you provide a link for the folks you bought the floorboards from? I've got to start pricing this stuff.

Also, I know this is going to end up being a dumb question, but did the rust grow under the bondo because the guy before didn't get rid of it completely before covering up, or is it even possible to clean rust up completely on something like this before bondo-ing? My dad mentioned bondo-ing some holes in my scoot, and I haven't ever really heard anything good about bondo at all. Anyone got some tips?[/list]

Get the floorboards from [redacted].com Dully - you just need the sprint / super ones.

You should only ever use bondo as a "Skim coat" and really sparingly...just to clean up minor perfections in the metal and such...tiny dings, etc. It should never be more than 1/8" thick at the most, or it will crack like plastic the first time your frame flexes at all.

$24 for these floorboards? How is this even possible? This....this is awesome. I expected to pay at least $100 plus shipping for this one part alone.

So happy right now. So Eric, I know you've steered people away from the mechanical stuff on [redacted].com in the past, but is the rest of the body stuff on here decent? I need a new left cowl (can't place a battery in there, the rust ate out the entire bottom) and a seat. I know these are pretty pricey in a lot of places, but you've just blown my mind, so I though I'd ask.

So, color me silly once again, but why would people use a huge amount of bondo if its just going to crack? Wouldn't it make fixes REALLY obvious? How to the bodgers get away with it? Again, it just doesn't seem like a good idea at all, but people seem to do it all the time. Maybe this is just another one of those things that I'm not getting because I use that pesky idea called "logic" all the time.

Please don't take this as criticism on your nice job, but I can't imagine doing the extensive repair as you did without a complete tear-down to the frame.

I'm on my fifth resto and all went down to the last nut and bolt.

Two required new floors, done by the artist Mark Wilson at Bulletproof Paint in Grover Beach, CA. I do the dis and re assembly and all the mechanical. Mark does the body and paint.

But, doing it while the engine and fork are in the bike boggles my mind!

It's not THAT bad ( shipping costs) because sometimes they actually have those parts ready in their Canadian office. Even if it's shipping from Vietnam, i don't remember the cost being that crazy for those floorboards. You have a Sprint / Super.. it's like a VBB or a P-series, parts are plentiful. Hell, [redacted] likely has a super cowl they'll throw in to your order. Otherwise you can try to source one here for cheap. Someone who uses a lot of bondo either 1) doesn't know any better, like a hack vespa 'restorer' who's trying to make it look pretty 2) Knows better but doesn't care because he's selling you a bike on ebay from asia....and the only way it's going to look presentable enough to be saleable is by smoothing it out with a ton of bondo to cover up cracks and welds.

Ideally, if you're a good body guy, and are spending a lot of time on a bike, you can make it smooth with skillful hammer / dolly work and a grinder. That's a lost ( and expensive ) art ...and so the cheap / fast way to do it is just smooth bondo over it, sand that down, and then paint.

THe problem is when you end up laying it down, the bondo will either crack or come off like dust ( like one of those exploding golf balls ) and you're left with a total mess to repair. A stock vespa is just primer and paint over bare metal. When it's damaged, you just bend / hammer it back. If it had bondo on it, you couldn't do that because it would just crack and damage even more of the paint.

So yeah, I was right. Logic was my main deterrent for understanding why someone would use it on big jobs.

Well, I guess I don't know where I got that price on floorboards, but I'm glad I was wrong.

As far as the other stuff, I was less concerned with availability and more with the quality of the stuff on [redacted].com. Just looking at some of the pictures on some of these things, not every thing seems to match up. For example, what appears to be a left cowl for my scoot has a picture of a more rounded left cowl (rounded? that ain't right), and then a teardrop shaped (which is appropriate for my bike) right cowl. I'm looking here btw. http://[redacted].com/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=834 Also wasn't sure if they sold cheap seats that might crack the first time you sit on em or something. I guess I've just read too much debate on quality pertaining to [redacted]. If you say they're alright to do business with though, I'll just ignore it and press on.

*shrug* they are hit or miss on quality.

I'd think something like a Super cowl could be practically TRIPPED over in SE Asia, though. They're probably using them to cook prawns in!

Thank you.

Here is the link from SIP for the floorboards I ordered:
http://www.sip-scootershop.com/EN/Products/PV15235/Floor+board+Vespa+125+GTGTR+.aspx

I paid just under $150 including shipping to Seattle.

I compared the SIP floorboards with the [redacted], (which can be found at this link: http://[redacted].com/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=298 ) and at the time the [redacted] were more than twice the $24 quoted now. (Makes me think something is amiss with the $24 price.) Even so, I like the full stamping and cut out on the trailing edge of the SIP supplied product, which is missing on the [redacted] version - as least from what is shown in the photo on their website. Finally, I trust European steel quality. This was important to me, because I'm a big guy and I'm going to have to stand on the floorboards once in a while when a pothole jumps in front of me!

As far as the bondo, a prior owner clearly made a decision to cover up some pretty bad rust. I hope it was because they made a decision to improve aesthetics on a budget and not for reasons to deceive. In any event, by the time I acquired the scooter, the damage was beginning to reveal itself. So, I knew I was going to find some rust. Elliot at Elhot Metal Fab looked at it with me and we decided together to bite the bullet and go the route of new floorboards. It was the right decision.

That's not to say if you have only minor rust in a non-critical area that a little bondo might make the scooter look better at a reasonable cost.

No offense taken. If I was retired and had more time on my hands, I might have considered taking on more myself - which might have allowed budget for a complete disassembly. But I have a million excuses - full time job, always traveling back and forth from Seattle to SF for work, etc. So I had to hire the work done and that meant trying to stick to some semblance of a budget. That plus, it is easier for me to ride a scooter that is not perfect. It looks nice now and is being brought back closer to original. So I'm happy. I commend you for finding the energy to take on so many resto projects. I'm sure it is rewarding.

Augs,

It has become an obsession! Now I'm starting a '58 VB1.

My '62 GS160 and '61 Cushman Vespa 150 are down at Bulletproof for paint.

Brag, brag: My '64 GL was awarded Best '60's at Classico Moto Italia last week. (Well, I've never been that modest anyway.)

Just wait, you will get another one and then you will start complaining about running out of space to keep them. (Good thing the lady across the street lets me use her garage.)

Jim

Very cool Jim! Congrats on your recent GL win. Those are really nice looking scooters.

We are a bit obsessed too. Besides the Sprint, we have a fully original '67 VW split-window bus - talk about taking up space!

It will be a couple of more weeks and the Sprint should be done and ready to ride. Can't wait!

I hear ya.. I already want another one. Im bored and thinking about goin into my old allstate frame. And it's rotted up pretty bad.

Funny how old volks and old vespa's combine so well. I had a conversation with a fellow Volkswagen/vespa enthousiast the other week about this. So many people that drive vw's ride vespa's and vice versa!
good floorjob by the way!

Jim, your GL is beautiful!!! Well deserved best 60's! I'd love to see your GS160.

Aug, your sprint is awesome!! I love the color!

Nice job!

I have always heard good things about Scootsrs floorboards.

What welder did you use? Mig , wire feed flux core??

same colour as mine

I believe Elliot said he mostly uses a MIG welder, as the weld is "softer". He said this makes the metal around the weld easier to straighten and shrink after it is distorted from heat.

Well, I finally have the scooter back from Big Peoples in Seattle. They gave it the once over and helped with final assembly.

You can see a short video at this link:


I'm really happy with the color and how it turned out. The color rendition on the computer screen is pretty accurate in the photos, but not as much in the video.

I found the correct fender crest and the aluminum trim strips for the fender and cowls.

Time worn, but honest original Piaggio badge. Correct for the year, "Vespa S" badge.

I kept the original speedo. The plastic lens is crazed with age, but the speedo still works. Reads in km, as this scooter is originally from Italy.

The holes for the "Vespa Sprint" badge had been covered up with bondo by a prior owner.

Notice the correct glove box lock - a transitional feature of the early Sprints that was carried over from Vespas from the early sixties. As far as I can tell, this is the correct taillight for a European '65. I'm 6'4", and the spare tire does not

All the torn and rusted sheet metal on the tail was repaired.

very very nice!!

Awesome job! Love the blue.

Looks awesome! Very nice and clean. Starts on a half-kick, too. Had it been running before or is even like that if it's been sitting a while?

Quick question: when you were going to turn it off I noticed you didn't use the kill switch. Did you turn the fuel tap off or put in the choke and it died?

Just wondering, as if it was the fuel time mine doesn't respond anywhere as quickly...

Thanks for all the pics of the resto and congrats on a great looking scoot!!

Nice job mate. thanks for the pics and descriptions. very helpfull

I used the key to turn it off. This scoot was retrofitted with a key ignition by a prior owner. For the video, I'd actually forgotten to turn the fuel on. It started with fuel left over in the carb from starting yesterday - which was a first kick start too. The scooter has always run very well. That's one reason I restored it. It generally starts with full choke and one kick. Then I turn the choke off quickly.

That is just lovely. You have a treasure there, as I'm sure you know.

why the redacted??

Hi

Did you just use a grinder with wire wheel to remove paint in trouble areas? Can anyone comment on the pros and cons of doing this instead of blasting?

Eeeewww weee

this thread is older than some of my underwear.