No More Excuses

Hey, I’m still here.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time explaining why I haven’t been writing/working on the Vespa. I made a lot of excuses, it started with a valid excuse (had to finish my master’s thesis) and then just spiraled into less valid excuses. Busy with work, global pandemic, anxiety about being away so long, blah blah blah.

I want to be done making excuses. I’m still busy with work, so I still only plan to work on the Vespa on the weekends, and I’m not making any promises about writing a lot of blog posts, but I got back on Instagram which is easier and fun, so you can follow me @kaitlinsvespa if you’re on the ‘gram.

One of the excuses I made was that I could not work on the back brake (which needs adjusting, I put in 3 different shoes and none of them fit properly) without my husband’s help lifting the bike. He wasn’t particularly thrilled when I would ask this of him, and it was inconvenient for both of us. So you know what I did? I bought a jack.

Now I can take the back (and front) tire on and off by myself and the added height makes it more comfortable to work from the ground.

The most recent set of brake shoes are the closest fit of the 3 tries, but they still rub when the wheel spins and the brake is not engaged. My fix is to file the pads down until they don’t rub anymore. It’s definitely a band-aid fix, since it isn’t really getting to the root of the problem, but sometimes you do what you gotta do with these old vehicles.

My next excuse that was the biggest reason I was staying away was that I was terrified of doing the electrical and had no idea where to start. So I put out an SOS on Instagram and was flooded with tons of advice and tips and encouragement. The Vespa community is sort of a unique one, and I’m finding that it is full of really nice people who just want to see others enjoy their same hobby and passion and see old scooters get back on the road. One person in particular (I actually don’t know his real name…), seems very experienced and gave me super simple step-by-step of how I needed to get started. So I bought some tools and just got right to it.

Step 1 (after buying tools) was to trace all the wires and make sure I had good connections. I bought a multi-meter a while back and finally got to unpack-age it. I looked at the wiring diagram, started with the leads to the horn since there were only 2, and then guessed which of the mess of wires was the other end in the headlight. And guess what? I got it on the first try! (I later realized that the wires in the headlight are numbered, so this shouldn’t be as an amazing feat as I felt it was, but considering I didn’t know at the time and just guessed, it felt pretty great.) The wires are colored, so this should be relatively easy, but most of them have faded to the point that I’m not sure what color they’re supposed to be. Still, I sort of enjoyed that the colors matched the wiring diagram, which shouldn’t be a surprise, but was just sort of a pleasant reminder of the original-ness on this scooter.

I used my little number stickers to label each end of the wire. Again, I didn’t realize until later that the ends in the headlight are already numbered, so my numbers are different from those, but whatever.

Sorting through the wires one by one made the whole thing feel so much less intimidating, and I’m starting to wrap my head around what I’m looking at. I did run into a small roadblock, I had mislabeled a wire somehow, and when I went to re-test the correct connection, suddenly I wasn’t reading any resistance. Kind of confusing to explain since I’m not totally sure what happened. I’m wondering if two ends were touching and I didn’t notice. Now I’m worried that I’ve got a cut wire somewhere in the frame… I’m not going to panic yet, I’m going to keep going and if the wire needs to be replaced, I will cross that bridge when I get there. Fingers crossed I made a silly mistake and the wire is just fine.

I feel SO much better after jumping in and tackling my fears, once again. Over and over this project has taught me so much. Sure, I’ve learned about the mechanical workings of a scooter, but I feel that I’ve also learned how to push through something where I don’t even know what the first step is. I’ve also learned that there is always a solution to a problem. The solution might be difficult, and there may be multiple ways to do it, but even the toughest-looking problems can be solved.

I’ve also learned to ask for help when I need it (let’s be honest, I’ve always been good at that). So for now I have 2 questions that I need help with:

1. I don’t have the key for the wiring in the headlight. It looks like the entire piece is one assembly. Should I replace that whole assembly? Not idea how difficult it is to replace that. Or is there a way to re-key my existing assembly?
2. I need to pull the flywheel to get to the stator (same helpful person recommended I have it rewired). There are multiple flywheel pull tools and I’m not sure which one is for my bike. Can anyone tell me which tool is for a ’74 Vespa 90?

Thanks for reading. I’m not even sure what the intention of this blog is at this point. It’s always been a bit of a diary. It’s definitely more work to keep up with than posting a photo on Instagram, so I’m not sure how much I want to continue writing. Also wordpress changed a lot recently and I feel very overwhelmed, so I can’t even promise that any of this looks any good. On the other hand, I enjoy being able to look back at my own progress, as is the fun in a diary. So, no promises on when I’ll be back here, maybe next weekend, maybe in another year.