From Scootin’ Old School: Orin’s video answer to the age-old question “How do you shift a Vespa?”
Category: Technical info
#15: Can’t spell “Vino” without “VIN”
Today’s question for Dr. Buzz and his panel of experts comes from From Mark P. of Galveston FL:
I’m looking for a scooter and I’m considering the Yamaha Vino. I’ve read that Yamaha makes some Vinos in China, and I’ve seen ads for much-cheaper Chinese scooters that look like Vinos. Are these all the same bike? How can I tell where a scooter was manufactured?
Vespa 400 for Project Car Hell?
Jalopnik’s Project Car Hell is considering a Vespa 400. Vote now, and we might see something like this.
In arder t0 instal Pinasco PX/Rally performances…
P!nasco’s instrcutions on the line for perf0rmances kIt install appears to been mutiIated by bo1th machInes trans1ati0r *and* by the text recognizer soft war e. (Thanks, Matty)
SPD Lambretta parts clearance sale
Via Orin: Scooter Parts Direct is clearing out their entire Lambretta parts inventory. Looks like some good deals.
Vespa bicycle mounts?
Some ideas how to mount a bicycle to your Vespa compiled by the new president of the Vespa Club of the Philippines. (Congrats, John!) I’d think if you were doing a side-mount, you’d want the bike on the left to offset the weight of the engine, which already makes a Vespa/Stella right-heavy, but I’m not an engineer nor a cyclist.
POC: Piaggio dealer training and the 500cc MP3
Our old friend and contributor Phil Waters of Pride of Cleveland Scooters sent this informative and funny dispatch with much insight about Piaggio’s dealer training, and some dirt on their upcoming scooters… including photos of the Piaggio MP3-badged Gilera Fuoco 500!
Last week The Rabid Badger (Renae) and I attended Piaggio Dealer Training in lovely Costa Mesa, California. A rumor has been going around that Piaggio is closing their Costa Mesa Tech Center to dealers. We would only be able to get future training secondhand from certified “training centers” located regionally. In other words, it sounds like Piaggio is going to make folks from “ABC Motorcycle Mechanics School” pay big bucks to attend a training class, which will certify them to train the ever increasing number of questionable Piaggio/Vespa Dealers at a cost I’m sure will be split with Piaggio/Vespa. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I haven’t been wrong yet.
Continue reading “POC: Piaggio dealer training and the 500cc MP3”
Ringway to Wintec
Metzeler unveils their new Feelfree Wintec scooter tires for scooters with a press junket, including a test ride starting in Copenhagen, over the Malmo bridge, and through through the countryside to the Knutstorp race track. I’ve been writing about scooters for over ten years. Would it kill manufacturers to just once invite me to Copenhagen, or fly me to India or give me an Fuoco for a month, or something? Other than (an awful lot of) free booze from Corazzo, and some books from Veloce Publishing, I’m just not feeling the love here.
Porn for gearheads
A 2000-frame-per-second video of the inside of a 4-stroke cylinder. See the valves open and close, the plug spark, and the combustion spread around the piston head. Amazing! (Thanks to Kib on Modern Vespa for the link.)
Eau d’Exhaust
If Ipone Strawberry-scented 2-stroke oil is tempting, but you just don’t like strawberry, check these out. Frightening and awesome, but still, sadly, no bacon-scent.
Disc bragging rights: Laverda 1, Lambretta 0
It has been claimed that the Lambretta motorscooter was a pioneering machine by having been the first production two-wheeled vehicle to have a disc brake. While I believe the Lambretta model C to be the distilled essence of what a scooter is all about, the typical Lambrettista has very high smugness-to-running-scooter ratio. It is possible that Lambretta’s reputation for pushing boundaries lends some fuel to this imbalanced view of the vintage small displacement world. So to help bring balance to the world, we present evidence to refute this oft-repeated claim to a technological first. Continue reading “Disc bragging rights: Laverda 1, Lambretta 0”
New U.S. distro for PM Tuning?
As I read yet another PM-Tuning/CMSI-bashing post on Modern Vespa, I was surprised to see performance parts manufacturer PM Tuning’s Paul Melici post a follow-up, implying the end of their relationship with CMSI, or at least a major overhaul of their distribution system:
Since 9/11 it has become commercially un-viable to obtain product liability cover for the USA on all PM Tuning produced parts hence we are unable to supply USA customers direct, sorry.
We appointed CMSI as our outlet for the USA to provide the necessary insurance cover and technical backup for PM tuning related parts, but things have not gone according to plan as I freely admit and for this I apologise most sincerely. Any orders or enquiries sent to PM Tuning UK were routed to CMSI, as i now understand, without joy.
We are currently working towards resolving the situation by considering alternative options. Details will be posted at our official PM Tuning UK web site. In the meantime, all enquiries should be sent to info@pmtuning.co.uk, I will personally make sure you get a reply
Customers may always whine about prices, but quality, performance, and liability cost good money, and there will always be a market for high-quality tuning products. That said, supply, shipping, and pricing should not be a mystery to customers, and it’s good to see PM addressing the lack of communication.
Mounting a parking permit sticker on a scooter
Justinsomnia sent this story about a great way to mount a permit sticker on your scooter. Another nifty bit of motorcycle know-how that rarely gets passed on to scooterists. Thanks, Justin, and thanks for pointing out that 2sb’s email isn’t listed anywhere on the site, I’ll fix that ASAP. When I said “Submissions Welcome” under the logo over to the left, I was talking about more artwork to shuffle behind the logo, but we’re always happy to get other links and story ideas, too, and especially insider scooter industry gossip. Without you, dear readers, we’re nothing. Even with you, we’re not much.
ScootRSS
Say what you will about ScootRS (please don’t, actually, I’ve heard it all), Randall’s always been kind to me (though, to be honest, I wouldn’t buy a scooter from anyone without seeing it in person first). They’ve recently expanded their facility in Ho Chi Minh City (a funny story in that post, though “Where do some people get their hatred of Asia from?” is an easy question to answer). But the real point of this post is that ScootRS now has an “item of the day” RSS feed and whether you’re down with the eastern hemisphere or not, it’s a neat way to familiarize yourself with random vintage scooter parts, I look forward to playing “Identify that Part” every morning.
Vintage Lambretta Service films
Amazing vintage scooter videos continue to surface on YouTube. This time, scootr99 deserves the credit for unleashing two English-dubbed films released by Innocenti in the sixties. The first is a complete Lambretta Li150 Series III stripdown (parts 1, 2, 3, and 4). The second is even more interesting, a guide to opening and setting up an offical Lambretta sales and service facility (parts 1, 2, and 3). Most scooter dealers could learn a thing or two from both videos. (Thanks for the links, ajuda.scooterpt.com)