Scooterotica

The weather and other stuff must have got in the way as there's no more for 2012. Around Xmas time I cut the deal with my brother on the PX in my other thread and the attractions of what I thought was going to be a quick 'fixer upper' plus his garage to work in diverted me for a while over the winter.

A concerted effort by my work to kill me in an ill-conceived, under-estimated, badly planned, under managed, under resourced project saw me spend 22 weeks at the beginning of 2013 in the south west, but that's another story.

We'll pick up again in late May 2013...

Come late May 2013 I get round to doing some work on this again.

I get the exhaust on.



Though I'm not entirely happy with the fit as I feel it's under a bit of tension and is likely to crack sometime.

You can also see in this pic that my stand is badly bent and will need replacing.



The cables are all done and the 'No Oil' sticker gone. I've also fitted new engine stud nuts, new bushes in the shock and one of Chiggy's half depth shock nut sets.

At the front I've replaced the dampers. After taking them off to give a coat of paint and replace the bushes I discover they're not even actually a pair. I buy a set of AF / Escorts type dampers and fit those instead.



Other things I've done here include replacing the damper studs on the links with stainless ones from MB. You might also see that the forks have bolt in buffers. This isn't an anomoly or the wrong forks. It's simply that when the original rebuild was done in 1990 that the thin brackets on the inside for the original push in buffers were so corroded that they wouldn't hold in place. The simplest thing to do was to cut / knock them out and fit bolt in bushes. Here also I've replaced the corroded bolts with stainless ones.

I've still got the pop in slave cylinder in place at this point and got it bled to a certain extent and though it works it's very soft, the lever comes nearly all the way back to the bar and that only with a lot of fannying about with various different types of bleed nipple and wasting at least a litre of brake fluid. Further investigation demonstrates that as the slave pushes it's piston out the the outside actually moves in the opposite direction as well and that the circlip flexes and this combination leads to a very soft feel to the brake. I conclude that this is not a conversion that's very good.

Fishing around I acquire an old Taffspeed converted backplate conversion albeit minus the piston, I pop the backplate into a local powder coater to be blasted and coated. We'll come back to that, I'm trying to keep the chronology consistent ...

As I'm getting on with this I start to get a bit interested in the actual history of my bike. I bought this as a painted frame and bodywork package from Cumbria Scooters in Carlisle in 1990 and used my original GP200 as a donor as the frame on that was rotten. TBH it had been rotten when I got it several years earlier as it had been stood in a yard for at least 10 years before that and we'd patched it up with glass fibre and repainted it. I ran it for a few years after that.



By late 89 it was really starting to crumble round the arch. I'd then taken it to Carlisle to see if they could salvage or repair it and they offered me the this frame and bodywork. I think the original owner had had it painted and couldn't afford the bill so had left it with them. In those days there's wasn't such a sharp distinction drawn between the models and their relative rarities as there is now. This frame is a 22/0 frame - GP150 - but still correct and proper Italian. I knew this at the time, but as I said it wasn't such a big deal back then. I still also got to keep the the 22/2 frame and sold it on with the V5 a bit later to an LCS member who's now considering restoring it.

I did a bit of scratching around and DVLA turned up the old records after I did a vehicle information request. Some of the documents they returned had obviously been digitised (badly) and were damn near illegible and the original log book was not included but there was a document from 1971 which listed the colour as white / blue - it was also listed as 100cc which seems like somebody was on the dodge. This piqued my interest as I hadn't been aware of this colour scheme as an option on the GP before. A bit of research on the web showed me that this had been an option on the GP / DL 150 along with the white / red. I also discovered that nobody actually seems to know what the blue used on these bikes was. There's loads of speculation and various opions offered. Consensus seems to indicate that this colour was called Ocean (possibly Marine) Blue. It's listed in Lambretta Concessionaires documents at the time but only by the part number (9x39- where x represents the size of the tin). I've since been chasing this where possible but not getting that far with it. I've been reasonably convinced by some pics I've seen from the factory with SX and GP production ongoing in parallel that the late SX150 in red / white and blue / white are the same as the GP150s in the same scheme.

I recently saw this pic which also looks very similar -



When I took the horn cast off, I was hoping to find blue under there as it's an oft neglected area in a respray. I did find a very slight hint in there though.



An after a bit of cleaning I also find blue under the underseal stuff that's been slabbered inside the panels.



However I do not think that this is the factory paint, as I think the colour's not right and in places there are runs and the finish just doesn't seem good enough for factory paint.

This leads me to start to plan a repaint of the main bodywork to the usual thorn white (bianco spino), but thinking ahead I'd like options. I've always fancied an AF S type as these were the epitome of cool when I were a lad. So I get a horn cast and a set of S type panels with a view to thinking I can have the option to swap these and have the standard GP150 look or AF S type look.

Here it is trying on the new clothes

New stand and splash plate fitted twice. Once without spring, once with. Is impossible to get it on with the stand fitted, even with a proper spring puller I simply couldn't get enough of a pull on the new spring either with the stand up or down. I end up taking the whole lot off again fitting the spring and then the splashplate and bracketry.




As the old stand was sufferring from the usual bent stops it really wasn't all that much use and the splash plate was also rather the worse for wear. I decided to go for a whole new set, including brackets and strengthening plates for the frame supports I get these from that nice Mr Corrado who offers an optional bracket that has a loop for a padlock as an additional security measure.



Now it sits properly.



I've also noticed I've got a hydraulic leak around the pop-in master cylinder hence the rag wrapped round that. Time to think about the other conversion.

I've been resistant to the temptations of the outboard style of brake for a number of reasons. Firstly I've heard a lot say that the size of the disc and caliper on a lot of the conversions are too big for the Lambretta and this can make it snatchy. Secondly, looks, I love the look of the original disc hub on the front and wouldn't consider the popular ones that uses drum hub. I could just about entertain the pepperpot style but again I think these use the same disc and caliper as the others. The PM ones use a smaller disc and a Piaggio caliper which i think is more suited to the Lambretta, but are a shade above my budget at present. The ideal one would be the LTH with the old style disc side but still out of my price range at the moment

Latterly I'm starting to consider it as an option but not by the conventional route. A while back I'd bought what was advertised as a PM wheel without the caliper or carrier.





On consulting PM they said that it wasn't one of their wheels but was in fact out of a Zip. They advised that this is the wheel that they use for their conversion but they machine it to fit with their caliper carrier and speedo drive. They weren't prepared to supply any parts for me to do my own conversion either because of their branding on the parts.

I've trial fitted this in the forks using a standard Lambretta disc style axle and it looks like it should fit without a great deal of trouble.







However in the interests of moving things along I decide that the effort involved is too much for now and decide to push on with the Taffspeed converted inboard backplate. I've still got a couple of problems to overcome though as it's not complete. The piston is missing from the slave and the bleed screw is also missing.

I've had this blasted and coated and now the slave won't screw fully home. Its short by about two turns.





I think that this is further damage caused by careless blasting. It takes several hours of work with a thread file and a 1.5 pitch tap to get this all the way home. With it screwing in smoothly I also have to remove the coating from the top lip to get the bleed nipple in the right place i.e. near the top.

Meanwhile after a post on here Ian advised that if this indeed was one of their conversions then the piston should be out of a Mini Metro four pot caliper. A bit of research and trawling the Mini forums uncovers the right part if anyone else interested in this I sourced a seal repair kit and piston from minispares.com

Part numbers -
Piston - SAAS1022
Seal kit - GRK5003

The next issue is to source a long enough M7 x 1.00 mm bleed nipple. I eventually find a suitable one on ebay and fit it and the new seals.



However whatever I do I can't get the blooming piston in. Take the seals out and it drops right in with the seals in I cannot get it in at all. Every time I try it coggles to one side or the other and will not go in straight. Someone suggests a little red rubber grease but that doesn't help. Eventually after stopping to think about it I realise I need something to push it in straight and hit on the idea of using a G clamp.



That does it and it slides in with surprisingly little effort.



I strip out the disc brake and change over the backplates, connect up the hose and bleed it off.



and with it bled we have a much better feeling brake



Unfortunately I cannot get the speedo drive to work with this backplate the worm drive simply won't turn. I've had it back to bits a couple of times to see if I can improve it but nothing seems to work.

How did this one end up? Would be great to see.

Haha end up...ongoing too many things going on...

To pick up the story I went out to the shed this afternoon with a can of petrol and one of two things in mind...

After poking the kickstart about 8 times it tried to catch, next one started...



I'm still not ruling out Option 2 yet

I need to get the carb off and see what jetting is in it, maybe take the Augusto out of the loop till I get it running cleaner. At the moment it's spitting back as much as it's sooking and very boggy, won't tick over at less than a 1/4 throttle.

Great to hear it running at last it does seem very boggy though. Did you say you'd set the timing to 18 degrees? if so, that way too retarded, needs to about 21 degrees so that it retards back to around 16 by the time you get to 6k RPM.

With regards to the ZIP front wheel, I have done this on my Jet using a caliper bracket made by CS Engineering and incorporating anti-dive. The wheel needs 25mm machined off the disc mounting face, the threaded holes are plenty deep enough although I did run a finisher tap down each thread. SIP caliper sets it off nicely. Not, I opted to keep the caliper on the normal side but the Zip has it on the other side so my speedo drive rotates the wrong way...not a problem for me as I use a Garmin. Byron also has the same conversion but he has his the other way round and a working speedo.






Colin

Cheers, Colin, I've put the zip wheel to one side for now to concentrate (ha!) on getting it on the road but am distracting myself with thinking about paint .

I seem to remember setting the timing at 19 but that was a while ago now and I'll need to check it out properly when I get a day off that coincides with it being dry. Soon as I took it out yesterday the rain started and hasn't stopped since.

Ross,
This is one of the best write ups I have ever seen of a 'rebuild'.
You have been very honest and covered stuff that lots of people would never have thought of.

If you're interested, I 've got a very similar project to do, but what with family/work, like you being away from home for the job (sounds like anyway) + trying to continue sprinting (haven't been to a meeting this year yet) it will be a while before I get onto it.
I've taken a different route with the engine and I bought a brand new Indian crankcase...............

Anecdotally, you've mentioned fettling your clutch plates in your hotel......I was away somewhere in the UK a few years ago and one of my work colleagues said I seemed a bit 'anxious' about my car (company vehicle btw), there was no car park wherever I was staying, and it was parked on the street.
I said, I don't give a sh*t about the car but in the boot there's a custom made crankshaft, a TS1 Barrel, head and expansion chamber, designed and made by myself, which to me were irreplaceable, I was messing about with it all at the hotel..............

Hope you get it on the road.

Richard Baker