Piaggio Museum

Back into italy.  yes we are doing a lot of back and forward. 
As a reward for a long days drive (Croatia, through Slovinia, and across italy from east to west) I was allowed to stop off at the Piaggio museum (just outside the port town of Lovorno) It is a lovely little museum that is predominantly Vespa related, but does also have examples of the earlier Piaggio machines including an aeroplane, a train carriage, and a pair of cable car cabins!
Ive read a little bit about all the variants of Piaggio scooters, but to see them all in one room was both impressive and suffocating - i shudder at the thought of being the stores-man in the Piaggio factory - it must have driven him nuts with so many changes and unique model bits.
Naturally most of the exhibits are the older and so rarer machines - I only saw one PX - and I have to say that they did whet my appetite for perhaps an older more curvey vespa :-)
I was keen to buy a souvenir from the little museum shop - just to show that i’d been there - but i really think that they were over-egging the privilage of being THE piaggio museum by charging those sorts of prices for a t-shirt, and so I shall have to make do with the cheap vespa t-shirt that I bought at a market in Croatia

European helmets

We’ve been traveling around Europe a bit this holiday and spent a week in Rovinj in Croatia (lovely place.  Thoroughly recommend it)  Once again, the place is heaving with modern scooters (with a sprinkling of PXs and interestingly a generous helping of Renault 4s in remarkably good condition!)  However, what makes these scooter riders seem cooler than Ive noticed elsewhere is that they nearly all wear those tiny ‘skid-lid’ type helmets (you know the sort that look no more substantial than a tortoise shell).
I was quite excited by these helmets, particularly as you seem to be able to buy them just about anywhere - clothes shops, supermarkets, souvenir boutiques.  Despite the fact that these sorts of helmets are illegal in the UK, i thought that perhaps it might look cool to have one just hanging from the helmet hook on my own scooter, and so I went to look at some in a road-side market stall.  The stall-holder was very helpful;
Him:  “very good quality”
Me: “Yes they are great”
Him: “I do you a good deal.  Normally 250 kunas” (thats about £30)
Me:  “Thanks, but they are illegal in the UK”
Him: “For you, 200 Kunas” (23 quid)
Me:  “Thats great but we cant use them in the UK.  It is against the law”
Him:  “Yes, its the same everywhere in Europe”
Me: “Oh really?  All Europe?
Him:  “Oh yes.  Here in Croatia too!”
How cool is that - they just refuse to comply with the law and seem to get away with it!
Mind you, I really couldnt bear to even think about what it might feel like to come off a bike with nothing more than one of those and a bikini to protect you!

Where are all the old Vespas?

All projects greasy have to pause for a moment while I go on holiday, but this seems like a good excuse to sit back and reflect a little on the progress so far.  And if I am going to be in the native home of the Vespa, I might get the chance to learn a little more about the scoot, and maybe even pick up some bits!

Well the first thing I notice while here on the continent is that while there are thousands of scooters on the roads, a good many of them are brands Ive never heard of and a very few of them are older vespas (and I havent seen a single Lambretta).  Now when I say ‘older’, I dont mean vintage machines, I mean, it is rare to see a vespa of more than maybe 10 years.  Everybody is driving modern, plastic faring, twist’n’go’s (though I have seen a few knackered old Tomos mopeds that I rather like ;-)
As part of the Kyoto agreement on global emission reduction, the Italians apparently got into a bit of a pickle a few years back as they had quite a stretching target to meet.  And so some bright bureaucratic spark came up with the then brilliant, but now disastrous idea of insentivising the nation with huge subsidies to trade in thier old smokey scooters, for brand new clean ones.  The rules were strict, and old traded-in machines had to be scrapped (unless broken down and sold for parts).  On the one hand this had a huge and positive impact on the air quality and environmental impact of italy, but on the other hand it stuffed the italian scooter manufacturing industry (leaving the market wide open for japanese scooters) and destroyed the iconic symbol of its national identity, culture and heritage.
So no more cool and suave on a vespa or lambretta.  Instead, skimpily clad nubiles and bermuda-shorted youths on suzukis, yamahas, MBKs CYMs(?) etc (though I have to admit that Piaggio and Aprilla still represents a good proportion of new scooters on the road)

Statistics

For those who might be interested here are some recent stats....
From the moment of shotblasting the frame (ie not including any time or money spent up until that moment), I have;
- spent 45 hours cutting and welding
- consumed 10 meters of welding rod
- consumed £40 of argon gas (i have got to get a better gas bottle and fill method. Current method is cheap for infrequent jobs but expensive for bigger jobs)
- ground away 1/4 of a tungsten tip
- removed nearly 2.5 kg of rust metal - presumably Ive replaced at least that much
- spent £52 on floor pan and replacement sheet metal

Thinking time

Oh what a disappointment. I had it all planned that I would get the scooter and parts all powder-coated this week, but when I phone Redditch shotblasting
***** News Flash******
TVOR BUYS A 1956 LAMBRETTA LD150
Old man has new excuse to fiddle in his shed
Watch this space for links to project progress
**********************
..But when I phoned Redditch shot blasting, they told me they couldnt do it this week..... and from next week I am on holiday (who would have though that a holiday would be so inconvenient).... so for one reason or another I can get the thing painted now for at least 6 weeks! Will it be all rusty again by then?
I am trying not to get too disappointed about this - in the grand scheme of things it doesn't actually make much difference to how quickly I get it back on the road - even painted I couldnt have done any rebuild for several weeks anyway. And so I am going to take the opportunity to reflect on the journey so far and think about colours and graphics - I am going to be in Italy for a a few weeks so will do lots of field research on Vespas in their natural habitat

Just do it

I had a master plan - when dropping the frame off for powder coating (hopefully this week), to also drop off the side panels and tool box for shot blasting. Then when I collect the painted frame I could also collect the stripped other bits ready for panel beating and preping for powder coating another day.
But Ive blown that master plan out.
Instead Ive decided to take all the above (plus handle bar head and various brackets) to be painted at the same time (ie NOT bring it back here for work prior to painting) - it will be good enough. Ive bashed and straightened as much as I can, and am prepared to accept a few imperfections and just get everything coloured up - so I can get on with putting it all back together again. I dont want this to drag on longer that it needs to

final details

So I thought I was nearly there with the finishing... until I woke up in a sweat the other night thinking about all the things that I SHOULD really do seeings as Ive come this far.
Ive been really struggling with this balance between - making a good enough job, and making a job Im proud of. Sometimes I think "that'll do, it'll never be a show vehicle, just get it done and out of the way" and then in the next breath (or in this instance, middle of the night) Im thinking "you've come this far, why cut corners now and regret not doing it properly"
So in addition to the final bit of grinding, I also make up some strengthening plates for the mounting holes on at the rear of the frame that locates the side panels. This is quite a rusty area, but I had earlier made the decision not to replace all this metal figuring it would have meant virtually replacing half the vehicle. So I guess a reasonable compromise that might help me sleep easier was to make up these plates, and they certainly have given a lot more strength to this area.

Another thing that has been playing on my mind is the security of the bike when parked up outside pubs and other public places, and so I decided to weld a 1/4" bar loop onto the inside of the stand - so that I could thread a chain through. I know that it wouldn't stop a very determined thief, but it would slow opportunists down. It seemed like a very good idea to me - why dont they put a loop on here as a matter of course.
And while I was tossing and turning over the stand - I also decided to make up some plates to help spread the load that it places on the floor while on the stand (Ive seen some sort of plate kit offered in a magazine to overcome this problem)