HISTORY
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HISTORY |
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I ALWAYS PREFERRED LAMBRETTA..... I currently ride an Li175, and my first scooter in 1984 was a GP150 which I loved. But prior to that in the early 80's my older brother had this Vespa SS180, and I’d always loved the shape of it - curvy, and big! It seemed twice the size of the 50 Specials some of my mates had. The seat was so comfy, like an armchair. And the little details - the side panel vents, the integral horncast as opposed to the stick- on plastic P-Range version, things like that, must have stayed ‘hidden in the back seat of my head’ until 25 years after seeing my brothers SS, I decided I wanted to buy ‘an old Vespa’. I wasn’t too bothered which model, to be honest. After seeing a couple of sad examples for sale, with the floor rotting through, one came up for sale about 10 miles from my house, so I went to see it. There it was, sitting neglected at the back of a garage, with half its bits in cardboard boxes. The classic ‘unfinished project’. But I fell in love with it anyway. I just loved those curves! We agreed a price, I got a friend Jim to pick it up in his van and we brought her home. I don’t know how I thought I was going to get it all done, but I could just see her zipping round country lanes or through city traffic and that was enough. Another friend Steve Everitt - more of a Vespa man than myself - gave up his day off to help me get started (cabling, checking the barrel & piston etc). There were a couple of small tears in the steel frame which I had welded at Gran Sport, Birmingham, who I also arranged to polish the handlebar controls, and chrome the speedo surround and headlight rim. The more I got into the project though, the more I realised how little I knew about Vespas! To cut a long story short, as much as I was enjoying it, I decided to get an expert to carry out the rebuild. (Neil from Coventry, who really knows his stuff when it comes to vintage Vespa.) One of the things with old scooters is simple wear & tear, and after messing about with the engine, and finding that amongst other things, the crank was past it, it was agreed that the way to go was to put a PX engine in. I decided on a 125 (never been into speed!) and once that went in, with a specially made wiring loom from Beedspeed, it all started coming together at a pace, until I got the call to say it was ready for collection. It was a great feeling to ride the rebuilt Vespa - albeit a bit scary! The front end dipped when braking, although it stayed upright, and I guess I just wasn’t used to the Vespa position, you seem a lot higher up. After some delays with paperwork, I got the UK registration sorted, with an ‘age-related’ number plate - the nice black & white one as opposed to the yellow one. I then took it out for a spin every day for a couple of weeks - even though it was November - before storing her away again for the winter. Now having just bought a car (a classic Mini) I’ve sold the Vespa. I ride the Lambretta every day in the summer, and it’s such a shame to keep the Vespa sat there doing nothing. The plans I had were always to restore it to ‘show’ standard, but I don’t have the expertise in painting, and it’s just not something that I can afford to pay someone else to do. Now someone else, who hopefully has the time and knowledge to carry on the restoration, is continuing the work.
Cheers, Thanks to Gran Sport, Birmingham and Steve Conneely at InterScooters, Coventry for all their help and advice, especially in tracking down hard to find parts! |
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