Actress Gina Lollobrigida astride a 1952 Douglas Vespa. The Douglas company was an English motorcycle manufacturer which had the foresight to lock up the Vespa franchise for the UK very early. They built up partially assembled kit Vespas in England early on, and then sold Italian built scooters. This model has the strange English market headlight affixed to the legshields.
This photo comes from Gregor, a friend of the site. He took it in Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat, Cote d'azur just a few kilometers from Nice and Monaco. It even has a Monaco license plate! If you want to see more pictures from his travels, check out his site, www.dolcevitavespa.com
There is nothing about this picture that isn't awesome. First of all, it is a 90SS! Second, check out the angle on that see-saw. Third, helmet. Fourth, the dude standing by, wow, what a sweater.
The world is an imperfect place. Screws come loose and cables break all the time. A broken gear cable can be a bummer, but it isn't all that hard to rectify. Here we have a Vespa Rally 200 with a broken gear cable. The procedure will be the same for any 60's to mid-70's Vespa.
First, you'll need to remove the headlight bezel and headlight. Depending on which cable you broke, you may also need to remove the speedometer. In this case, I broke the one that is at the front of the headset, so I didn't need to take out the speedo (see the above picture). Once you have access to the cables, pull the broken one out - either from the top, or the bottom, depending on where it broke.
If you need to get to the rear cable, the speedo is held in by one screw, which is located at the bottom center of the headset. It is helpful if you push the speedo cable up from the bottom a bit to give yourself some slack. Before you remove the speedo entirely from the cable, slip a zip-tie around the cable below the top of the cable. That way the top cable nut won't fall down the forks (ask me how I know!).
There are some fairly common scooter projects that are actually quite simple, but can be intimidating to the novice. Replacing the fuel line is one of them. The intimidation factor can be traced to the fact that the fuel line runs under the gas tank, and through the frame up under the carb airbox.
I was recently working on a Rally 200 which had poor quality old (though not original) fuel line, as well as a strange rubbery plastic oil line. In order to get this scooter in top running condition, I had to replace both the fuel and oil lines. Here we go:
As with every project, get all of your parts together first. Read through these directions to get a sense of what parts you may need, and then buy them. Once thing to consider is that the fuel line has to be the exact right size. Too short, and it won't reach the carb. Too long, and it will kink, and not allow the fuel to "gravity feed" to the carb. The easiest thing to do is to buy the correct fuel line from a reputable scooter dealer. Make sure to have them double check that it is the correct length.
First, you need to take off the seat by removing the three seat bolts. Then remove the two rear tank bolts.
Here we have another Ebay listing for a fairly rough early 150 Super. The low opening bid of $10, with no reserve, is attractive. If this scooter sells for somewhere under $400, it would probably be worth the effort in resurrecting it.
The very first batch of 150 Supers imported to the US had some interesting features. For the first thing, they did not have the turn signals and funky electrics of the later US models. However, they did have some nice goodies that the European models did not have. They included the oil injector. They also had smaller headlights, which made the handlebars look nicer. The other nice thing about these early ones is that they had the older style script badges as opposed to the block style badges of the later Supers.
This particular scooter is one of the few which came in this olive green color. I've seen a few from this batch, and I really like the color. I've only seen it on these early 150 Supers. Sweet. This scooter also has at least one of the original front fender reflectors, and still has the correct rear tail light and the often missing tail light side reflectors.
It is a toss up whether to buff out the original paint and ride it as-is, or opt for a respray. The motor side cowl looks pretty rough. Hmmm, hopefully this scooter will find a new owner for cheap. It is complete and interesting enough that it deserves to make it back on the road.
It seems that there is a strain of the classic car and motorcycle community that is moving toward placing a lot of value on un-restored original vehicles. We here at Scooterlounge agree. We prefer an original scooter with some dings and scratches as opposed to many of the so-called restorations that we often see. Let's face it, a shiny new paint job does not a restoration make...
On the other end of the spectrum of originality are scooters for which the word "patina" has lost all meaning. Perhaps we've spent too much time around the California hot rod scene, but we sure have a healthy respect for scooters that have begun to succumb to rust's not-so tender embrace.
This scooter just turned up on Ebay with a fairly ambitious opening bid of $500. If this scooter can be salvaged, it will take a lot of time and money. Of course, leaving the paint as it is (which we'd prefer) would significantly cut down on the money investment.
