Modern Vespa

Hello all, new to the forums and have tried to search for similar with no luck.

I have a 16 month old LX150ie that has just developed an intermittent starting problem. When cold, the scooter starts no problems, first crank after a second or so. Sometimes, if doing some stop-start travel - like driving to several places around town and stopping at each for half an hour to forty five minutes, it will not start. Symptoms are it will initially start and run for about three to four seconds then die. Subsequent start attempts the engine will run for less and less time until on the fourth or fifth attempt it will not catch at all. During the whole process the starter is turning the motor over strongly, so I don't suspect the battery. If I leave the scooter for several hours, it appears to then start normally.

Up until recently I have been impressed by the trouble free motoring the scooter provided. Now I am worried about riding further than I can walk home - not really satisfactory

Has anybody had similar issues or have enough experience with EFI or electronic ignition to be able to suggest possible causes?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Cheers,

Chris

It may need a software upgrade. Some of the early IEs had a problem. Take it to a dealer with a Piaggio Navigator.

Thanks for taking he time to reply. It has about 3700km on it and has only started doing this recently. I will take your advice and take it to the dealer (about 110km away...).

I live about 120km south of Sydney, where the dealer is located. While driving it in this afternoon it died about 10-15km short of it's destination. If any of you know Sydney, it died in the M5 tunnel. That is about the worst place for it to happen Hopefully the dealer can sort it out (under warranty). Waiting now to see if it might start when it cools down, or just get a tow truck

Many of the 250ie had problems with the fuel pumps, generally when they were sitting on the dealers floor for long periods of time before they were sold, they would soon after have running problems like your having. The 150 and 125ie have the same fuel pumps and injection system as the larger models so I would be looking at the fuel pump which is located in the fuel tank.

Thanks for the reply. Luckily had my better half following in the car when it happened. We had dinner with friends and then drove out to see if it would start. It did...

Of to dealer in the morning. I just hope it is not one of those difficult to find intermittent problems.

Will post when I find out the problem.

Regards,

Chris

Dropper her off at the dealer. The mechanic immediately said he thought it was the fuel pump. Said there had been a bad bunch and that there had been several people in with similar problems lately. Also said that if I had the problem a few months ago they would have been scratching their heads trying to trouble shoot as they have only recently traced the problem. He stated about 1 in 5 scooters are coming back with this problem from their dealership.

Hopefully it will be back in a few days, and after a few days of riding to confirm the problem is indeed fixed I will post back.

Regards,

Chris

Useful to know - the symptoms match those of the the GTSs that were failing. We also know that there were some early reports of software problems, usually stalling at idle.

The dealer has replaced the fuel pump and I have picked up the scooter.

I do not want to preempt anything, but it does appear to be working OK. I rode it to work yesterday, about 10km of 80km/hr. On the way home I stopped for about 30-40 minutes to pick up some groceries and it started fine.

From what I have read about the fuel pump issue, it looks like it will normally run OK, but if you stop for about 30-45 mins, the hot engine causes a vapour lock and the failing fuel pump cannot provide enough pressure to overcome it. Multiple posts about the GTS 250s having similar problems. Read also some of the 250s would cut out at high speed (hot engine?). In all cases the scooter would re-start after it had cooled down (for some this was 30 minutes, for me it was about 2+ hours).

I know this info is posted on other threads, but I have included it here to aid anybody doing a search, as most of the past issues appeared to be related to the 250 (which shares the fuel injection/electronic ignition of the LX ie's)

Thanks for the input guys and girls,

Chris