Modern Vespa

Mine is coming up soon, and I am wondering just how much time to sit aside for the Valve adjustment? From searching and googling, I noted it sounds like most of the tupperware has to come off? I have a mechanic friend, who I pay to help, but I need to give him some idea of how long the full service 12,000 miler will take. Time must be figured in for me getting in the way and running interference!

Rob,

I remember reading a post around here somewhere detailing how to adjust the valves from underneath, which supposedly shaves a ridiculous amount of time off of the job. Do some searching around and I'm sure you'll be able to dig up the pertinent post.

It doesn't have to be an all day event. The guy who did mine was able to do the full service including belt change, roller change, engine oil change, hub oil change, spark plug change and adjust the valves in under 4 hours.

chris

I'd be interested in that post myself.

Uh-huh. Yup. Suuuuurrrrre. Read the other thread and I gotta say Wayne is typically no slouch when it comes to getting it done - neither is Shawn. And BOTH of them had to remove more than that. I would in fact like to see how it's done and will personally be first in line to say "damn! that's cool!" if it works... I am soooo not looking forward to mine if all that tupperware has to be removed.

Egad--from the Valve thread, ( thanks for finding that--searches for "Valves and 500" got me zip) looks like a real horror. Why do I think a shop would just say-"Yeah, we did that" and just let the whole thing slide and hand you the bill?
The local shop did a thoughtless ( seriously) estimate of $80 for the Valve adjustment. Insane. No way they would do all that for $80.00.
I want to see that it is done carefully and right.

$80 to do this , I would pay that in a heart beat. Ask the shop if you can take a few pics of the valves when they get the covers off. this way you'll know at least they had the covers off and should have done the job right.

The guy quoted that without giving it any real thought ( one of the employees)
and you could not expect the poor mechanic who would get paid maybe half that no matter how long it took him, to do anything but a crappy job just to get it behind him --UNLESS they can do the adjustment without the plastic removal as road warrior said he was able to. $80 would sound good, until you thought of the reality. I have come to not trust this shop anyway, I constantly have had issues when I get our bikes back. Had one just last week on my wife's Vespa. Pretty much done with them.

Not sure how Piaggio works but industry standard practice is to have "book" hours for jobs. So it may be booked for 1.5 hours to install a stereo in a Nissan Sentra but after the mechanic has done a couple he can probably do it in 1/3rd that time. So what they *should* be doing is looking up the job in their book and quoting you that.

Guys, where is this thread whereof you speak? I don't see a link here and haven't succeeded with search.

EDIT: never mind, I see the thread has been revived.

True--should work that way, but when employees look nothing up and get stuck with a bone headed quote, I assume they can be on the hook for doing it for a go broke price too. I would not want to be in the middle of that one. Flat rates can work out good, or bad, for the guy doing them. If any issue comes up unexpectedly, you are not likely to make your flat rate price, according to my mechanic friend.

Well two things there - did you get it in writing and will they actually do the work for that price. I confess one of my biggest hangups is a distrust of mechanics actually doing the work. They can *say* anything and the typical warranty period may expire before problems show up. I usually place a "telltale" on something they have to remove to do the job so I can spot it. I have in fact caught an auto mechanic once that claimed to have done the work and when I pointed out the impossibility he blustered. I gotta say that it's easier to tell when work has been done when the vehicle doesn't run rather than when it simply needs routine maintenance. I had a highly rated Toyota dealership try to screw me on my truck AC. They claimed they replaced freon and put a marker in to see where it was leaking. I pulled out my UV lamp and they'd already sprayed some of the marker near the compressor front. My guess is I was supposed to come back in a week with my AC still not working and they would "need" to replace my compressor and show me where the front seal was "leaking". I canceled payment, explained why, then I took it to another mechanic who did the AC service (replaced freon and checked seals) and it has been functioning just fine for 5 years now. So with something this critical I'd suggest having a way to check up on their work.