Scooterotica

Well it's a really, really long story but I'll keep to the main points that brought me to this build.

I purchased a Jet200 in 2005-ish? and after rebuilding it, I had figured out that it probably sat in a florida salt pool for the past 20 years and the guy I bought it from slapped a coat of paint on it and a bunch of bondo and sold it to me as a nice original.

The back of the frame was rotted out and after awhile I had some how determined that it was mine and not worth restoring so I should build it how I want.

I bought all the necessary bits to turn it into an early Jet with SX panels. I just recently pulled it out and was going to swap seat arches on it and finish it as I had just procured a straight frame.

After staring at it for countless hours, I decided I would instead get the original seat arch repaired and restore it to it's former spanish glory. I then realized I had a ton of parts laying around from all this and some other stuff I had accumulated and could actually put almost an entire scooter together using the straight frame I had just purchased.

So long story short, here is the Frankenserveta I am building:



Basically its an LI150 Serveta frame with repop TSR SX panels and SX badges I cut the "200" script off of. Seat is one of mine and the leggy is wrong as it belongs to my Jet. I'm waiting on Gene from Scooters O' to dig through his stash as I'm really pushing for an original white legshield as I do not intend to paint anything on this and most of the stuff I have is white already.

I will be running the side panels as they are to celebrate their rough and tumble looks. The motor will be an LI125 motor I picked up a few years ago at the Davenport swap but I will change the sprocket sizes and intend to have Soulrunner1 do me up a 190 jug for it. I already have a couple of pwk24 carbs here so that's what it's going to get. Exhaust will be the Boomstick TS (arriving soon) and forks are from a Jet with an outboard disc from SSC and some nammer drop SX bars. Gas tank will be a long range one I sell. Tire and rims will be from what I have laying around and all the body rubber will be black as I somehow have a ton of new black rubber here.

So that's the guts, now the fun part.

I just finished an inline spare holder for it. I picked up the belt at the thrift store for $1.75 and made the rest with scrap I had lying around. Very much in the style of vintage salt flats racing and something I picked up from my british chopper days.







I still have to modify the glovebox door and I may still need to brave it from the floor.

I also plan to make a 2t oil bottle holder in a similar style since accessing the glovebox will only be when I need to get at tools on the side of the road.

Sorry for the crappy cell phone pics.

Here's a couple of close ups of the brackets.

Strapping the tire all the way to the floor pushes the tire well into the glove box door space so I needed to modify the door to fit the tire properly.

I started with a door, mismatched of course.



The first thing I needed to do was to remove the door hinge as the tire will actually interfere with it. I did that by drilling out the spot welds as I'll be reusing the hinge later.



I started by strapping the tire down and laying a ruler across the where it passes into the glovebox space. I marked that spot off the on the frame with some tape, put the door in and marked where it crosses.

I measured the width of the widest inflated tire I had around, drew out the pattern and cut it out of the door with the cutoff wheel.



I then cut a piece of 20 gauge steel and rolled the concave into it using a slip roller although you can just as easily bend it around a tire or something to get the right concave.

After that, I tacked it into place and when it was all correct I finish welded it, ground the welds down and hand filed the edges.



From there I used a piece of scrap paper and traced out a pattern for the sides and cut those out. Once I hand filed and fitted the sides, I tacked those into place.



The next thing to do was to weld it all up on the inside and outside and get ready to finish it.



After that I ground down the easiest to reach welds using a sanding disc. Then came the hardest part which was grinding the inside corner welds. I struggled with this for a bit until I got a bit of advice and picked up some carbide burrs. Even with those it was still a very time consuming process but it certainly went a lot better.

I finished the inside edges with some sanding discs and hand filed all the edges. I went over the entire door with some 3m roloc scotch pads and finished the entire thing with fine wire wheel on my bench grinder.

After that I had to bend an tweak the hinge bracket, cut it down and just plug welded it back on. Works great!



Now I need to design an oil bottle holder as access to the glovebox is going to be a pain.

That Sir is a work of art!

You can't beat a bitsa, brilliant welding work good luck with it

Agree great bit of welding , great story and pictures as well keep em coming

Quality fabrication, great thread -

Great work there fella and well thought out.

Dean

very nice work mate