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!Vespa .. trying to make this thing work!

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So, this happened...

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My next door neighbor took that picture from his yard. Seems the wind blew over two of our scooters. mrs72's Kymco has only superficial damage, most of it on the exhaust heat shield. The upside down !Vespa got tripped up on the little stone retaining wall and has very significant sheet metal & monocoque damage, along with stuff like busted mirror mounts etc. I'm guessing the Kymco is going to start right up and run fine since it's a quality factory scooter, and the !Vespa might never run again, who knows.

So, I'll spend my scooter quality time with my Vespa that has a future, the GTS250. The beloved Stellauto is going to get parked outdoors with the cover over it until I run out of other projects. If this wasn't the last straw, it's a pretty good copy.
 
Alright.

So the thing is, I have put a lot of time and effort into this rattly old-school scooter. I enjoy riding it, a lot. It's got a fun and carefree personality. It's like a problematic puppy. You can get over it pooping on the floor because it's so darned cute.

But I did get its replacement scooter in the GTS250, and now I am approaching getting it fully on the road and not embarrassing to be seen on. While riding the GTS around the past couple of weeks, I finally came to the realization just before turning into my street on my last ride on the GTS that I really, really like the GTS. It's not the same brand of fun as the Stellauto, but it's got a personality, and I like that personality. I like riding it quite a bit. I could even be content with it as my only scooter, once the cosmetics are fixed up.

Here in about a week, when the GTS250 is fully in business, I'll probably start the work to repair what's wrong with the Stellauto. I'm also planning to patch up the old Vino 125 and get rid of it. Maybe I will start parking the GTS outdoors with a cover on it when not in use, since it's kind of a beater in appearance anyway. And maybe I'll ride the Stellauto once a month or use it for neighborhood trips if I can make it work, and where I don't mind having to walk home. But one thing's for sure, we're going to whittle down to 3 scooters, max.
 
I finally got around to taking the cover off of the Stellauto yesterday.

I popped the bent right cowl off and managed to bang out most of the dent with a plastic dead-blow hammer and a rubber mallet. It's going to require some new stickers to fix up the ones that are torn. I have a bunch of AF1 racing stickers, should do the trick.

I was really worried about the kneeshield. I took the glovebox off, which is amazingly easy, and then got to work trying to bend back the kneeshield. Using the clamp and hockey puck method I perfected working on the bent kneeshield in on the GTS, I managed to get this mostly straight. I also knocked on it with a dead-blow hammer and even tried tapping out the last of the crease with a drift and a normal bodywork hammer. Currently it's almost completely straight, certainly close enough that a little bit of glazing putty would remove all remnants of the dent, but then I'd have to paint the entire scooter. The aluminum kneeshield beading is bent and unfixable, so I'll have to replace it.

So the scooter has quite a patina with its decade-old red paint that's seriously faded, and the body was slightly less than perfect before. It's even more imperfect now, but it still could use a paint job, and all of the remaining dents and minor bodywork issues would be 100% cured by a tiny amount of filler and covered with new paint. So unless I decide to repaint it, I'll live with it. It's as straight as the GTS is. And even though it's our 2nd to newest motorbike, it looks like an early 80s Vespa and the amount of dents, scratches, and paint wear, is all wholly appropriate for a bike that looks like it's in its 40s, not one that just turned 10. This thing has dog years.

I believe most of my issues with this thing running are down to rust in the tank. I did a laborious but poor job cleaning the rust with the tank on the scooter, because I hadn't yet discovered that you can actually remove the entire rear of the bodywork and then remove the tank without removing the engine. Also, that little reservior that's used to gravity-feed the carb should be removable once I get the bodywork off, so I can actually clean it properly, or maybe just replace it altogether with something like a chainsaw fuel tank. So that's my next plan: pull off the back of the scooter and pull the tank, clean it properly, and I might even do the "seal" job everyone talks about since this scooter will get little actual use and a replacement tank is not really available, now or ever again. While I have all of the rear bodywork off, I think I'll do all of the stuff that I wanted to do before, chiefly replace the carburetor with one that has a future and sort out the jetting and throttle linkage, plus remove all of the rest of the Dellorto ECS stuff, like the air solenoid and all that.

While I had the cover off and was fiddling with this yesterday, I remembered just how much I love riding this little guy, so I'm going to make it work for the long term. I won't need to worry with making it faster or more suitable for long trips, since I have another scooter for that. The little 125 will have its purpose. Maybe it'll last long enough for me to teach my grandkids to ride on it.
 
Alright. I was randomly reading the service manual for this scooter some time ago and realized that it might be possible to remove the rear sheet metal that was keeping me from getting the tank out. So I tried it.

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Thdere you can see the tank on the way out, and the little fuel reservior that I had already taken loose.

I actually got the tank off. It's amazing how much rust was in that thing! It's soaking in vinegar now.

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I also got the little reservoir off, and it also seems to be filled with rust.

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Remember this thing is there because the fuel outlet is like a foot below the carb. So there's a vacuum fuel pump to pump the fuel uphill, where it gravity feeds from this little reservoir down into the carb. While the engine is running, just idling, fuel is pumped constantly back into the tank through the overflow tube, so I know it pumps way more than enough fuel to run the carb. I'm certain the current running issues are due to rust in this stupid little reservoir.

Unfortunately there's no good way to clean it. I need another solution for this. Needs a little tank with an inlet, outlet, and overflow outlet to return fuel to the tank. One idea is to just to make up a whole new part using brass hose fittings that fit through a panel and some kind of little plastic tank that will approximately fit in the space. Right now I'm thinking of using a brake fluid reservoir, and just adding the two additional fittings, one for inlet and one for overflow.

I wonder if this isn't even a problem anyway. Maybe I can just hook the vacuum fuel pump outlet straight to the carb and it won't flood. Go-carts with GY6 engines use these little vacuum fuel pumps all the time and don't have an issue, but that old Vino 125 pumped gas right out of the carb when I put one of these fuel pumps in it. I think the float valve was shot in that carb, maybe it's in better shape in the Stellauto. In any case, I'm all ears for any suggestions. This reservoir has been the bane of my existence.

Anyway, while the tank was off I pulled the fuel level gauge/float doodad out of the tank, in fact that's the hole where I filled it with vinegar. That part was also rusted like crazy and the float had fallen off, which explains why my fuel gauge quit working and the scooter quit on me last time I rode it and it ran out of gas. I suppose I can just clean this up and find some way to fix the float back on and it'll probably work just fine.

It's going to be my winter project to get this scooter back up and running in time for spring.
 
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I ordered a few things to try to whip up an alternative to the fuel reservoir on the scooter:

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I'm gonna try to fit two of those bulkhead fittings through the bottom of the reservoir bottle to give me a fuel inlet and overflow drain. Probably cut off the fuel inlet one so it's flush I'll use the inlet that's already there as the outlet to go to the carb. Should bolt right in place of where the original reservoir was and give me the ability to remove the lid to prime the system and also clean it down the line.

There's hope this scooter is going to work again one day.

Now I need a quick solution to the throttle cable adjustment sleeve problem. I might try to adapt a bicycle brake cable adjustment sleeve from a hand brake to see if that'll work. Otherwise I guess I'll make something up out of an aluminum bolt.

Oh and I need to figure how to make up a gasket for the fuel level sensor. I might just see if the auto parts store has some rubber gasket sheet. The old gasket is old and cracked, but it was holding fuel. Maybe I can reinforce it with some RTV and get on with my life.
 
I got the reservoir and fuel barbs in. I haven't built the new reservoir yet but I can tell it's going to work out well.

The tank. Oh boy. Well I dumped the vinegar out after a week and then rinsed it with water a few times, then dumped it. Then rinsed several more times and I guess there was about 1-2 cups of particulate rust that came out. Which is insane. I shined a flashlight in and there is one spot of rust that didn't come clean so I'm going to treat it again while everything is apart.

With any luck I'll be putting it all back together next weekend. With the new Keihin pd24j knock off carb. Oil change is required too and then slow bring up since it's been sitting for nearly a year.
 
Round 2 tank cleaning done. CLR is way better than grocery store vinegar at this. Tank is gtg once it dries.

Realized when I took the carb off for it's cleaning why again I may not be able to switch to the Keihin. There's a throttle position sensor. Can't fit it to the Keihin carb. I can't afford to lose any hp by having the ECU fail to advance the timing because of a lack of TPS signal, so I'll be keeping the dellorto carb.

Now I just need a few bits of fuel hose and I'll be ready to put her back together this weekend. Maybe it'll just work.
 
mr72 said:
Round 2 tank cleaning done. CLR is way better than grocery store vinegar at this. Tank is gtg once it dries.
Click to expand...
Interesting. Thought the feedback from the previous thread was that the vinegar did a darn good, but maybe not complete, job. Did the CLR look really used when draining out of the tank?
 
I stumbled across 9% acidity vinegar when I was in the grocery store, works much better than "regular" vinegar.
 
Liteitup said:
I stumbled across 9% acidity vinegar when I was in the grocery store, works much better than "regular" vinegar.
Click to expand...

I imagine it would. I think the stuff I had was 3%. It takes a week for it to do its trick on a fuel tank. I think the CLR has phosphoric acid in it, along with some detergent and who knows what else.

Home Depot has 30% acidity vinegar for $20/gal. I bet that stuff will get it done in a fuel tank.

Jeff S said:
Interesting. Thought the feedback from the previous thread was that the vinegar did a darn good, but maybe not complete, job. Did the CLR look really used when draining out of the tank?
Click to expand...

The vinegar did a good job, it just took a week. I wanted this last bit to happen quicker, and I had the CLR on the shelf of the garage, so in it went. It would be too expensive to do a whole tank with CLR when vinegar will do the job with patience.

The CLR did look pretty clean coming out. The vinegar was black when it came out and it took probably 30 gallons of water to get all of the black vinegar rinsed out.
 
So now that the tank is clean, I'm going to wait for it to dry and then really clean the outside of the tank and spray some new paint on it. Don't want the outside to rust now. I think the scooter needs a new gas cap, which could be a problem, but maybe a regular Stella 2T cap will fit.

As for the reservoir, I have the new one made up from a generic brake fluid reservoir. Drilled and tapped holes for the extra barbs:
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I cut the inner barb off of one of them for the fuel inlet, left the long barb on the other for the overflow, then mounted them with a #6 o-ring and a bunch of RTV. Still haven't leak tested it. I coated the threads with RTV so it should potentially seal the threads and the o-ring is just extra. If it leaks fuel, I'll glue the barbs in with blue Loctite. But it looks good:
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left to right, that's overflow, outlet, inlet. Fuel pump will pump in the short barb, the molded in outlet goes to the carb so as soon as the first drops of fuel get in they should drain down the fuel line to the carb, and the tall barb will drain back to the tank if the fuel reaches that level. In theory. In practice I know the fuel pump puts out fuel way faster than the scooter can burn it, so the reservoir will basically fill up and pump fuel back down the overflow line where you can see it pulsing in the fuel neck where the overflow connects.

I'm going to put a fuel filter inline between the reservoir and the carb just in case, and of course one between the fuel outlet on the tank and the fuel pump. Shouldn't be an appreciable amount of rust, surely nothing like before, but with two fuel filters maybe the carb will stay clean. I am guessing the tank will still have some junk in it that I couldn't rinse out that'll eventually pack up my two fuel filters. I will be able to remove this fuel reservoir and clean it manually, so with any luck this should dramatically improve the maintainability of the scooter.

I removed the air injection solenoid, I'll measure the DC resistance and replace it with a resistor just to eliminate the flashing ECS light. My first Stellauto ran great with the air injection inlet plugged so I'm sure I can dial this one in to work. I think mostly it'll make the idle easier to adjust and it'll run a bit rich all the time that mainly is going to impact fuel economy. I'm going to live with the broken throttle cable sleeve since I can get it to work as is. Before I find and order a new cable, I want to make sure I'm not going to wind up with a different carb that could require an entirely different cable.

I just renewed the expired registration, thank goodness with no inspection required! This coming weekend I plan to put it all back together and make it work by hook or by crook.
 
Yesterday I decided to start putting it together in force. I whipped up some new fuel lines, put in new fuel filters, cleaned the carb, and did a temporary-ish fix to the throttle cable adjustment sleeve with super glue, which for the moment is holding up.

I mounted the fuel tank and filled it with gas, only to discover about a half hour later that it was leaking from somewhere near the top of the tank. The dreaded pinhole:

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I got some JB Weld tank repair stuff and patched it, seems to be holding up:

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The brake-reservoir doodad I whipped up is 2mm bigger than the hole it has to go through in the sheet metal fairing. I could easily make the hole bigger and get it to fit, but I figured first I'd try an alternative idea: an inline fuel filter as a reservoir, and a "T" fitting to give a tank return.

I charged the battery and actually tried to start it once the carb was installed. It tried to fire a few times before I ran the battery flat, but it was overflowing the float bowl. That's when I remembered the float needle is a little bit tricky to keep attached to the float properly, so maybe I didn't get that right when I put the carb back together after the brief cleaning. This is a problem I know how to fix.

The fuel level sensor-gauge is not working. Before it read full all the time, now it reads empty all the time.

I'm considering picking up a NOS fuel tank from eBay. There are a bunch on there and I could get one that includes a new fuel level sensor and a new fuel pump for $45. They've all been sitting on in a warehouse somewhere in India for over a decade, so they're probably also rusted and will require refurbishing. That's cheaper than just a fuel level sensor though.

It got real cold overnight and this scooter is outdoors under a cover so I won't be working on it much today. I may go out and yank the carb off and see if I screwed up the float needle.
 
Well FWIW I did pull the carb and checked it, and the float level seems actually a bit low. My guess is some of the rust has made its way in and is impeding the float needle from seating all the way. Once I have a little time when it's a little warmer I will crack it open and pull the floats and needle out. This is not really trivial with this Dellorto carb, since the pin holding the floats is basically pressed in and I have to knock it out with a punch. Then I can spray some carb cleaner in the fuel inlet and hopefully knock out any debris in there.

Also I found a bicycle brake cable adjust sleeve that is perfect for the broken throttle cable part. The jam nuts even threaded right on. So that should completely fix that problem.
 
Good news, today: figured out the stuck float valve and fixed that, re-mounted carb with my bicycle brake cable adjuster mod on the throttle cable sleeve.

Bad news, today: my patched fuel tank is leaking. So I guess I get to grind the patch off and do it again. I am close to pulling the trigger on one of the NOS used fuel tanks but they worry me, all of them have the exact same picture and it has LOTS of rust visible. I absolutely hate this fuel tank.
 
Pulled and drained the tank again today. It's a new pinhole leaking. I'm close to just sticking a plastic Briggs & Stratton 1 gal fuel tank in there and living with a 50 mile range until I can get this one replaced or fully checked and sealed.
 
Put the patched tank back on, and re-charged the battery. Carb is cleaned. Tank doesn't leak. Still doesn't start, but I think it was just not getting the carb primed yet. I might try the old trick of spraying starter fluid in the airbox which has worked before. It's always a chore getting it to start once after it's been sitting a long time.

Weather was pretty perfect to ride it around this weekend. I have my Bonnie and the GTS both out on the apron and I thought about riding them, but the cedar pollen is too bad.
 
Patched tank held for a while, but I went out last night to take the trash out and noticed all the gas had leaked into the little tub I had put under it.

That's it. I'm done with this tank. Lost cause. Later today I may go out and pull the tank off and make up a cardboard model of a rectangular tank like you'd use for a lawn tractor. If I can make that fit, I'll order one and just live with a 1-gallon capacity. It's not like I'm going to ride more than 60-70 miles at a time. At least it'll buy me time to come up with an alternative solution.

I'm determined to find a way to ride this scooter by spring. Tick tock.


EDIT: I discovered this problem in the dark, but in the daylight it's evident that the fuel line came loose from the fuel filter. So it just dumped its fuel. Maybe the tank is holding fine. Who knows, maybe it's leaking. Maybe I don't know how to operate a hose clamp. I watched the tank for a whole day and it didn't seep or get damp anywhere.
 
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So kinda good news, even though I haven't had time to do a single bit of work on this scooter in the past couple of weeks. I have let it sit with 3/4 of a tank of fuel in the patched tank with fuel hoses that won't pop loose, and it hasn't leaked a drop.

I have a business trip this week so I won't get to fool with it, but next weekend when I'm back I intend to go out and clean the spark plug, debug why the brake light doesn't work, and hopefully get it rolling again.
 
So that was a long time ago and I never got back to trying to make this work again. It was on my schedule for last Saturday, but then my friend called me to go on a church group ride and there goes my plans. This weekend I might get to it.

It dawned on me that it could be the brake lever switch that is responsible for both the brake light not working and the scooter not starting. You have to hold the brake to get it to start, and the lockout is triggered with the same switch as the brake light.

Anyway, maybe I'll get back to it on Saturday this week and make it work.
 
Funny thing about Piaggio/Vespas..I have found sometimes the mechanical issues that arise are some of the most "simple" in nature. Parts and Labor are expensive, so when one of these simple issues arises they get parked. Issues such as your brake light for instance.

In europe the miles people put on scooters is insane, here in the US they are treated as a sub culture to motorcycles.
 
The future son in law came by yesterday and we tinkered with this scooter a good bit. We finally chased down the brake light issue, which really was just that the wiring diagram is wrong and also lacking in information, so when I had reconnected it the ordinary assumption that you know same color wire on both sides of bullet connectors should be connected together. Imagine that. And the brake light itself was wired with polarity reversed of normal ("tip" was connected to the switched ground). So we eventually fixed that and went on to trying to get it to start to no avail. It'll fire briefly on starting fluid but won't run more than a few seconds. We had the spark plug out several times and it was wet each time. I think I'm just going to have to pull the carb off again and clean it one more time (every time!). But it started raining and we ran out of time anyway.

As usual my wife was hassling me about why I am trying to get this scooter running again. "I really like riding it" wasn't a good enough reason.
 
I'm in it to win it now.

Just ordered bar end mirrors for this scooter since the original mirrors' bases were bent in the flipover.

Also ordered LED tail light and brake light bulbs, and a bunch of tail light flasher doodads to add to this scooter, my Scrambler, my GTS250 and my wife's scooter.

I'm determined: the next couple of hours I get to go work on this, I'm pulling the carb and cleaning it again. I know I can get it to run with a fresh carb cleaning. Not sure how it's gotten clogged again but that microscopic pilot jet does it all the time. Tempted to just try the Keihin PD24J knock off carb this time, with the pod filter. It's brand new but the jetting is probably nowhere in the ballpark and I'm concerned that it'll lose what little low end torque it has with a pod filter in place of the airbox. I mean, the stock carb is super unreliable but at least when it's working, it runs right.

Future son-in-law (also named 'Josh') is eager to learn more about carbs so I'll hopefully be able to wait until he is available to do this little job. Today's a great day to ride scooters.
 
We tried again to get the stellauto to start on Saturday. No luck.

I think I have it set too rich on pilot. There's hope but I'm running out of willpower.
 
OK, last weekend I got the scooter running. It stalled while I was adjusting the idle and the battery was too low to start again. Seemed to be running as expected though. However, once I shut it off it had a bunch of gas that overflowed from the carb, not from the overflow valve but from somewhere else, so I guess the carb is coming back off and I'll have to sort that. But the good news is, it can and will run. I WILL have this thing back on the road.
 
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