Front Fork

Ok, things have been slowing down as I am getting ready for the next big push, body work, paint, and then the rebuild! I am still pondering between just polishing up my brake drums and current rims, or painting my brake drums white and getting chrome rims. I will be adding some chrome to the bike but just here and there. I don't want to go super-brit mod with the chrome. Just some accents here and there.

Anyway, I at least needed to get the drums off to look at the brake pads, remove rust off the front fork, and generally do a big clean up of parts, etc. Let me tell you, the front fork was a complete and total bitch! Granted I had some rust and who knows if anyone has looked at this fork since it rolled off the assembly line. Here are some tips and tricks (assuming you have the same type assembly).

1. Spray everything with liquid wrench, let it sit.

2. Brake Drum: The castle nut on the drum was real tight. It is the same size as your spark plug. Get your spark plug wrench out and use it with a hammer if you are having problems. It is six sided and gets a better fit around the whole nut. plus it all ready has a handy place for you to hammer.


3. Front Spring: Once you take off the nut on the bolt for the upper part of the spring, take a screwdriver and spin the piece inside the spring down the spring. It will pull out the bolt. It's just an aluminum piece that holds the bolt and it will spin up and down the spring. You may have to use two screwdrivers. One to pry the spring and the other one to spin the piece.

Once you take off the top bolt you can then just spin the spring itself and it will undo the bolt at the bottom of the spring. Sorry no pics of those pieces inside the spring but you can see them up close at the top and bottom of the springs inside.

4. Front Shock: The front shock was actually also really hard to remove. But I think that was mostly because my bolts were really old and rusty. I still haven't gotten the bolt off the assembly. I was able to get the nut off and then slide off the shock. So my only trick is, get the nut off and don't worry about the bolt, unless you really want to.

5. Holding Pins: The two pins with the notches. This turned out to be easy, scary, and would have been impossible without my friend Shane's dad having lots of crazy tools out on their farm. So Shane's dad had a hydraulic press, which I can't even imagine doing with out it. Here's the pins I am talking about (in the center of the pivot arm):

Here's how we did it, luckily Shane's dad uses the press quite a bit so he was able to figure it out rather quickly. He took a small 6 inch piece of 1' pipe put it under drum assembly (or whatever you want to call it after the drum is removed and where the brakes go). This would be so that as the rods are coming out they have somewhere to go and don't just hit the bench. Then he took a regular old bolt the same size as the rods and put it on top of the rods. The fork is sitting on its side kind of like this (this is NOT my picture but a picture I took from Jim Williams off the scooterbbs.com website while he was helping me trouble shoot this):

A few things about the pic. The first is that I had the fork turned upside down from this picture and I was driving the pins out the other way. I didn't want to push against the aluminum and bend anything. Although the disadvantage to my method is that you might run the risk of folding the "tabs" on the ends of the pins. We attempted to avoid that when we first applied pressure by only lining up the "push" bolt only with the thick part of the tabs. This way we could at least get things moving and hope that once we loosened it a little it would go easier.

The first bolt went no problem. We pushed off center until flush with the aluminum assembly. Then lined up on center and it pushed out no problem once things got moving. Just as we had thought. The tab was in great shape.

The second bolt was a little bit scarier. We had to exert more pressure and we had a definite "pop" when the bolt moved. Looked around, no holes in bodies, all the parts still on the press, big sigh of relief and from that moment on we were able to just push the bolt through real easy. Tab was also still ok.

Again I have no idea how this would work without a hydraulic press. Everyone else seems to recommend a blow torch for heating the aluminum and a brass tap. Tools i don't have readily available anyway and rounding those up turned out to be harder than finding someone with a hydraulic press. Ask at a local garage?

One other thing, when you take out those pins. Watch the one that connects the fork. Inside are grease packed bearings. Pull out the pin just enough to get the fork off but then put the pin back in asap. Also there are a few washers in the assembly watch for them falling off as you take the fork apart once the pins are pushed through.

The brake assembly and brake's themselves were rather easy to get off, just follow the manauals and you shouldn't have any problems.

Now that I know my friend Shane has an aircompressor and a big barn I am thinking of media blasting my Vespa all by myself to get rid of the paint and rust and getting it ready for body work. I'll keep you updated.

Horn Switch Removal

I had one thing left attached to my Vespa that I wasn't totally sure how to get off. The high-low and horn switch assembly located next to the throttle (right side).


This is the underside view. Here is how I got it off. It's pretty cold here now so I think I got an advantage. I took a lighter and ran it around the outside edge of the assembly. Then gently squeezing with my hands I tugged at the assembly. I was able to get a minuscule amount of separation at this point. Then, on the left hand side of the assembly there conveniently is a small flat head screwdriver size slot. Gently insert the flathead and pry up. You should get even more separation. Then just go around with the screwdriver or if you can use your hand. That's it.

Tips & Tricks

So taking apart the Vespa was actually very straightforward! Taking the engine off was real easy, especially if you have a friend helping. Here are the only real tips I would have to offer.

1. When taking off the headset push the Speedometer cable down into the head tube. You can push that cable as far as you want down the tube because you can just push it back up later. This is real important because as you try to take off the headset you can pinch the cable real easy. Luckily I noticed this and went back and pushed the cable down.

Here's a pic of the speedometer cable before it's off the speedometer itself.


Here's a pic after the headset was pulled off with the speedometer cable in the headtube. I would push it further down than what you see in this picture.


2. To get the Vespa logos, Floor rails, VIN badge and other trim off get a small chisel. You may need to flip over your vespa to get underneath it. This was the very last thing I did. Take the chisel to the small rivet heads sticking out. It won't seem like much when you run your fingers over the rivets but there is just enough there to chisel. Tap gently with a hammer on the chisel and these heads should chisel right off with out much effort. From there the rivets should pop out on the other side with a little leverage from a screw driver under the rails. I took a small nail and "punched" out the rivets from the underside if they gave me any trouble. They popped right out.

3. The brake pedal was actually rather easy for me. I've heard this has been a real problem for others. I took the brake pedal rubber off, sprayed the pin with a lot of Liquid Wrench, let it sit for a couple of hours and then the pin popped right up and I was able to grab it with some needle nose pliers. A really small allen wrench might also be real handy to help push up the pin. It did take me a while to figure out the pin was being pushed UP and it had a small head on it. The pin actually goes up and down as the break is used.

4. The gear cables (not the clutch cable) are behind the kick start in the gear box.
Here's a pic


at first I thought you could just unscrew the cables from that "gear box." But it appears that just makes adjusments. You have to take off the grey cover that you see in this picture. You only need to take the very bottom screw located about where you see the bolt removed in this picture. You can actually see the bolt sitting on top of the gearbox in the picture above.


From there you can open the gear box and unscrew the cables from inside the gearbox.

Make sure you keep track of which cable goes to which part of the gear shifter on your handlebars (well actually inside of your headset but on the end of the shifter tube).

5. Speaking of shifter tubes (and also throttle tube) there is a clip that keeps the tubes and the cable holders inside the headset together. Just pull out those pins and the tubes and the cable holders will pull apart real easy (well if they are a little rusty get a RUBBER mallet, some liquid wrench and then bang them apart).


Those are the only real problems I encountered when taking things off. Of course you have to make the decision if you want to take off any original trim and foot rails. Mine were stock and I went back and forth on whether I wanted to remove the leg shield trim and the foot rails. My final decision was based on the rust on my bike. I had a bit under the foot rails and I would rather have all the rust removed and a really good paint job done then fret over having "stock" rails.

1974 Vespa Super Restoration

Hello everyone. Is anyone listening? Well if you are, here's the deal. I have owned a 1974 Vespa 150 Super (VBC1T, supposedly manufactured Feb, 1974) for 10 years and I've finally gotten the inclination to fully restore her. She's in ok running condition but she could use a little bit more love attention. She has some rust and a few bumps and bruises so there is some body work to be done. I'm just gonna keep track of where I am in the process and any tips, tricks I learn a long the way as well as documenting with photos. I am taking LOTS of photos because I am sure by the time I am done painting the thing I will forget where all the little parts go! If you have any comments please feel free to make them, especially if you have any advice.

Thanks,
Vesperoni