Modern Vespa

Hello ladies and gents,

I have a Ford Vespa ET2 50, and recently we had a bit of trouble with the back light. Basically the bulb had gone, so it was easy enough to replace that, job done. A couple of days later, I've now got a problem with the front light. I parked the scooter outside a friends house for about 6 hours. When I came to her house, the bulb was working fine, and I'd never had any trouble with it before. However, when I left her house, approx. 1am, so obviously it was dark, my headlights did not start with the rest of the scooter. Having switched the engine off and then back on again, I found the headlights had decided to work, but were considerably dimmer than before. Since then, I have visited this site for answers on how to access the front headlight, which I have done. Having had a look about, I found the bulb had corroded into its holder, and the bulb looked to be on its last legs. We have now replaced the bulb, but still the lights continue to be dim. We have cleaned the front glass, but that was not particularly dirty anyway.

I am now stumped as to what could be the problem. We have checked the fuse and that is still in tact, and I'm assuming should the battery die, that would affect all lights/indicators? The back light, after it's previous problems, is working fine. Any suggestions as to what the problem could be?

the headlight is normally a bit dim at idle - does the headlight light up properly when you rev the bike up ??

Nope not at all. The lights have always been dim at idle, but now they brighten up a very small amount when driving, but not enough to see properly. Like I said, I've replaced the bulb but it doesn't seem to have changed anything, checked the fuse and cleaned the glass, again no change. Bit frustrating really as I work all day, and often go out on it at night, but obviously can't with the current sitution.

Can you get a small brass wire brush into the bulb holder and clean off any remaining corrosion? Is there a piece of springy metal that makes contact with the bulb? Maybe it needs to be eased out a bit.

If all that fails, put a volt meter on the contacts and see what it reads. It should be up near the battery voltage.

Finally, trace the entire lighting circuit from battery to bulb, and clean every contact/joint you find.

Are your other lights bright? And does it start with gusto?


This reminds me of an article in QST, the US Ham Radio magazine, many years ago, entitled "In search of the mythical milliwatt". It basically said to clean every contact in the antennae path. Each contact you clean adds a wee bit of gain to the signal (that's a weird Ham term that means the opposite, i.e. it removes a wee bit of attenuation, go figure).