Triggers Broom - Here we go again

[Richjak]

Couple more shots before i turn in for the night.

Any comments ??

[Richjak]

Spent most of the morning doing the small outstanding finishing jobs in the hope of somehow trying to delay the enevitable cabling - i will happily spend hours and hours ripping engines apart and also building up complete scooters but the thought of running cables through the frame of a Vespa and connecting them up in the clostrophobic Sprint headset fills me with dread.

Today saw the completion of the spare wheel disc, fitting and finishing of the matt black number plate, fitting and painting the plate for the under seat tool box and just to show you how desperate i was to put off the cabling i even detailed the front fork link.

Have a few other finishing jobs to do but now i can see the light at the end of the (frame) tunnel.

[LI150]

Looking good ..

[Richjak]

Today saw another round of odd jobs completing now that the cables are pulled through the frame (so glad thats done) as good as they look, Sprint Veloce / Rally headsets are a b@5t@rd to cable up.

First up on the list was the side stand kick bar - due to the additional floor panels being welded in, the original side stand that was fitted to the chopper (now been shortened) is now too far under the floor boards to get your foot on to when you want to put the stand down. Due to the amount of welding on it from before i thought that moving it would be harder than fitting a kick bar, glad i chose this way as the result turned out pretty good. I utilised the rear brake pedal bar from the chopper and it works really well, although from a practical point of view it may need to be shortened.

I will also cut the original side skirt to get it to tuck a bit higher up under the floor deck.

[Richjak]

Another couple of more interesting tasks to close out today was the fitting of the ignition switch under the seat and the blacking of the legshield badges. I wanted to get away from too much chrome on the body work and tried a trick i saw on the turbo channel whereby the badges are scuffed with a fine sheet of wet and dry to produce a duller matt finish but this didnt really look any different so i ended up painting them matt black and putting a coat of satin clear over the top so that they are slightly different to the body colour and are still obvious in a less obvious way ?!?!?!?. Sure you know what i mean.

[Richjak]

To close out the day i reworked the first attempt at a hugger mudguard which turned out too wide and too long. This was re cut re hammered and actually looked pretty good i am well pleased with the result. I will fit the early Sprint type mudguard crest to carry that old skool look and think about a mounting bracket in the coming days. To get an idea as to how it will look i gave it a quick blow over in matt black, although it will have a skim of filler on it to smooth it out before the finished coats of paint go on it, as it is still very rough and bashed looking although it looks better in the photos.

This was the highlight of the day and another big milestone completed on this build.

[Richjak]

few more outstanding jobs completed today, namely the fuel line, seat, badges and front mdguard which after being reworked 3 times is now ready for paint. Certaily a learning curve on the bracket and setting the mudguard on top of the wheel but got there in the end.


Badges were easily fitted and i got the result i was after in the end, although not shown the screws have been blacked out to complete the look and as you can see i have also picked up the head lamp completing the "face" of the scoot.

[Richjak]

After a bit of drilling and grinding the seat and the fuel line went in ok, the biggest headache with the fuel line was tring to route it into the frame where it wouldnt snag and on the other hand would be far enough away from my right foot and the brake pedal. I wanted to satisfy my curiousity and did pull a string line from the float chamber in the carb to the tank, allowing for the law of gravity i should get the top 2/3 of the tanks fuel capacity providing there is enough head pressure, the lower part of the tank is below the float chamber height so will probably be unused (unless i am going up a very steep hill )

[Richjak]

Finally the Hugger muguard _ this individual task has become a labour of love and at times stress to, the plate and the bracket were mocked up in card board and then cut from 1.5 plate steel flat bar, it looked good on paper (and cardboard ) but after fabrication the support bar hit the side of the front tyre. This was rectified by cutting the bar off again and welding the lower shock bolts to the plate itself and grinding off the heads to allow the mudguard support bar to be welded in the centre of the plate giving another centimetre of clearance between the bar and the side of the tyre. So far so good. The mudguard itself has a stiffener (flat bar) on the under side and this is where the 2 pieces were to be lined up and marked (via 2 drill holes) and made ready for welding.

After a bit of fiddling about trying to get the stance of the mudguard right the 2 parts were marked and welded together then refitted to the forks to check. Bingo spot on first time it looked great until you touched it and then it wobbled around as if it was spring loaded - obviously 1.5 mm wasnt thick enough for the muguard support bar and the whole thing came off again for a rework. Eventually the easiest solution was to add an addition 1.5mm bar and weld the 2 together to stiffen things up This worked like a dream and after another fitting and check it was all pulled off again and given a final grinding up on the welds and a skim coat of filler ready for painting tomorrow.

This was all made from scratch including the mudguard itself (bashed into shape from a piece of steel plate) and i am very pleased with the result - would be interesting to see a factory produced unit to compare the two.

[Richjak]

Got the front mudguard all sanded down and painted today, all was looking good as i flatted the paint off and got ready to fit the finished item to the scooter - as i dogged up the bolts feeling very pleased with my efforts my heart sunk when one of the bolts sheered off (the weld broke) this meant another bolt had to be welded in - bang goes the effort of painting it.

Still after that minor mishap all went well and after another repaint the front hugger was finally fitted.