Modern Vespa

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Good stuff and our fearless moderator made a long trip on one... Which model were you looking at? R

My wife has a SYM HD200. That thing moves along very quickly qne easily can go on the freeways. Carter Bros wherehouse burned down not long ago, so parts may be slow to get for a while.

Jon

To an extent, the motor is what makes the bike. If you are planning on not using the motor, you can probably pick any scoot of decent general manufacture which suits your aesthetic fancy. SYM is supposed to be a good company, and one of our members rode from Cali to the arctic circle on a Symba.

I very much doubt you can buy a new frame+plastic body parts+lights+instruments sans motor. You'd almost surely have to piece one together from parts suppliers (expensive) or just find a used bike, sell the motor, and keep the rest (what I would do in your situation)

I had for a year an Attila Victory and I have tried also the Elizabeth, that copies clearly the Vespa style. Both 125cc.
They run fine and the maintenance cost is very low but the driving experience compared with driving a Vespa makes them look like little toys.
One good point, if you plan to turn it into an electric bike, is that they are very light.

SYM makes a very solid machine. However as others have mentioned the SYM is pretty well known for the engine, so if you plan on taking it out anyway the major selling point of a SYM is pretty moot.

Also, regardless of manufacturer I highly doubt you can purchase any new vehicle without an engine. I don't think it's possible.

Buy a used Honda Elite or Met. Solid frames, good storage capacity, and pretty inexpensive. Those would be good to turn in to an electric vehicle. The idea of buying a new scoot to get rid of the engine is, in my opinion, ridiculous as most reliable scooters are known as "reliable" due to the reliability of the engine.

If all you want is a body the maker doesn't really matter all that much. Get a used shell and give your electric motor a shot. If it works as well as you hope find a better shell.

If you want a scooter without engine, the easiest and cheapest way to get one is to buy a used scooter with a damaged or seized engine. Remove the engine and go for it. As you want the scooter body for experiments with an electric drive, the actual brand of the scooter body is probably not a critical consideration.

I'm really confused by all of your posts. You said that you were going to buy a Vespa LX and convert it into an electric scoot by rmeoving the engine. Now you're not, as you can't afford one...

So how come you have an LX engine for sale? Just interested. I would have thought it would have been much easier to buy an electirc scooter in the first place.

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Doug, I'm with you. It's very confusing.

I thought we were done with this.

Buy a used scoot that has good accessibility to the motor area so you have lots of room to play with things. Buying a new scoot to tear it apart seems foolish.

BTW-- Ritchie Bros. is have an auction today of over 110 SYM scooters.

This is starting to become a habit...weekly post on what to buy to convert to electric.

Maybe you would get more help here: http://www.modifiedelectricscooters.com/forum/ or here http://www.gopednation.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=95

My personal experience with SYM has been that parts were very hard to get BEFORE their warehouse fire. (That fire has been dertermined to be arson, by the way. No perpetrators have yet been named.)

It took two months to get a horn switch, two months to get a new seat under warranty, and over two months to get numerous parts that were needed after an accident I had.

I'm afraid that the fire at their warehouse will simply make things even more difficult.

I loved the Sym I had (a CityCom 300i), but I'm now trying to sell it simply because of the difficulty in getting parts. If SYM USA had a different distributor here, I might reconsider. That is, if I wasn't enjoying my BV 250 so much.