NineMeister

Oh, almost forgot to mention. He must have liked tape, since the jack painting was edged with black pinstripe and the front mudguard was "chromed" with shiny aluminium tape. Also note the white wall tyres (emulsion paint?) and gold painted front fork & mainstand. Nice.

Floodj

Very cool project. I'm looking forward to see the final project.
--Joe

Wilder

That's awesome Colin. Must be nice to tackle a project with your daughter.

NineMeister

I have to be honest, yes you're absolutely bang on. It's difficult for the average bloke to bond with his daughter as she gets older because you inevitably have less and less in common. I like Rugby League and Football whereas she finds them dull. I tried to get her into dingy sailing once, I loved it but after 3 lessons she got frightened by the instructor demonstrating the difficulty of capsizing it and as a result would not go again, so it was back to the drawing board. Actually, that's comething which we do share, she's got my design skills and artistic eye, but I doubt we'll ever be drawing engine parts together.

My only other real success is in providing a continuous & ongoing education in music, especially rock & blues, and she now has a pretty eclectic taste I'm pleased to say. After a couple of years of learning the keyboard I bought her an Ovation accoustic guitar, now two years later she's playing like a dream, so I bought her and her mum a new Gibson LP Goddess between them for Xmas. Which is all well and good but it's not exactly something we can do together, so that's exactly why I bought her this project scooter.

We both stripped it, she's also been down to the unit to help with the paint preparation, but now that she's back at school I've had to let the lads take over some of the work that I can't do in my spare time. We have got something special planned for the paintwork so hopefully she will be able to cast her influence over the final artwork design and see it being applied.

NineMeister

So, as you can see, we rode the scooter into the garage on Saturday night minus the chrome & mirrors. Come Sunday morning the spanners were out again to begin the mechanical strip to a bare shell. Unfortunately the camera girl was still in bed when I started, so we only pick up the strip part way through the job. Just after lunchtime I downed tools to go to the match.

Note how Vespas take up a lot less space in your garage when they are in bits compared to a 993.

NineMeister

Later that day, after I got back from the match, we were back in the garage to pull the engine so I could get the stripped bodyshell in the van to take to work on Monday morning. We succeeded just after dark.

Did I mention that this is the first scooter or bike I've ever worked on? My only hope is that I can remember where everything fits when it comes to putting it back together!

dcdude

The "educational opportunity" aspect explains your desire to tear it down. Otherwise your Vespa at 1/2 market value is already financially upside down when you factor in the value of your time

+1 on the daughter bonding. I need to lay the groundwork now. Although she already loves "daddy's Porsche"

BTW- I have a very similar yellow lab. 6 years old and still obsessed with fetching!

David in LA

No one says you have to put the old motor back in...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OIl9oLGx1o

NineMeister

LOL. Now that's funny. Not sure the police would look kindly on a 750 Vespa that was restricted to 30mph: "No, honestly mate! She only does 30!".

NineMeister

Well, in this game you sometimes need light relief from the pressures of building Porsche's, so if it comes in the form of and Italian Meccano set I'm not complaining. Besides, what else could I be playing with (labour aside) that would cost less than a set of trackday tyres?

Loves daddy's Porsche? She already wants a race licence & is desperate to get my car on track. I'm equally desperate not to let it happen....

I like yellow dogs, Woody is our second Lab, is nearly 2 yrs old and just recovering from a TPLO operation of his left rear to repair a torn knee ligament (thank goodness for insurance). Our previous Lab, Tyler, was part of the family for 13 years. Now that dog was special, he was that clever everyone believed he was half-human.

David in LA

I read of someone putting in an RG500 two stroke motor into a moped...massive amount of torque when the power hit.

Raptor

Colin: You do realize that the next step is -

NineMeister

Thanks for that encouragement Raptor, but I'm not sure that I would ever trust myself on a fast bike, never mind let my daughter loose on one! I do appreciate the purity of modern bike engineering though, especially in the engine department.

NineMeister

OK, let's just put our Petrolheads back on the shelf for a bit and get back to the storyline. Before I crack on with the job, here are some of the detail shots of that lovely custom paintwork. Note the bare patches on the legshield left behind by the removed Vespa badge & club sticker. You can also see the delecate brush strokes in the close up.

Don't worry, it's going to get better soon.

NineMeister

So, the first night after work I decided to tackle the job of removing the non-factory paint from our bare frame. How hard could that be?

Well, talk about messy? Me and Marc tried to hit the paint with a DA (orbital sander) but the paint was far too soft and merely succeeded in immediately clogging up the sanding pads, so the next method was to see if we could wash off the paint with thinners. Fortunately for us this worked well, especially if you left a thinners soaked rag on the paintwork first. A couple of hours later (& high as a kite) this is what we achieved:

In the after shots you can see a few dents and holes that need repairing, as well as rust bleeding through from the seams. Since I did not have the time to send the frame away for dipping and e-coating, the rust was something that I would have to deal with myself. Also note the inner leg shield and glovebox in the background of the last shot, the silver paint on this also washed off with thinners.