Scooter-Lollapalooza

October brought leaves to rake, pumpkins to carve and mittens to unpack. As a scooter enthusiasts, it also brought some issues with the hog. In this blog I'll be recapping the fall-cleaning of my 79' Vespa.

New Seat

First up was replacing the seat. I actually kind of liked the look of the old beat-up seat. After all, nothing says rugged bad-boy like ripped leather - just look at The Ramones. That being said, the ripped seat wasn't just a cosmetic issue. For early-model Vespa's the suspension is actually built right into the seat. The springs in my old seat were pretty loosie-goosie and, as a result, any tiny little road pebble would send me (mili)meters into the air! So, in the interested of safety, I had to go ahead and install a new one.

B-B-B-B-Bad Old Seat

Anyways, this was a super simple job. I just unscrewed a couple of bolts, off with the old in with the new, then screwed the bolts back on. Badabing badaboom.

New Studs

While the new seat may not have been completely necessary, new studs were essential. As you can see, the studs (the threaded part that keeps the wheel on) were worn down to the nub. This is pretty dangerous - the last thing you want when your flying down Broadway at 50 kilometers per hour is for the nut to strip off and your back wheel to fly past you.

Replacing the studs was not fun. First you have to take the wheel off which means deflating the tire and unhinging the exhaust. It wouldn't be too bad, except for these two springs which were absolute buggers to get off and on.

Bugger Springs

Once the wheel was off the next job is is to take off the old studs. This was borderline impossible. Superman couldn't have done this. I'm not saying better than Superman but I am. You're basically trying to unscrew the threaded part of a bolt. Here's a photo of what I'm trying to explain:

Here's how I made the impossible possible:

Twisting the top and bottom nuts simultaneously and bidirectionally tightens the two screws to each other. Once they were nice and snug against each other, I let up on the top nut and kept unscrewing the bottom one. The top nut didn't budge and the stud was forced to unscrew right along with the bottom nut. Pretty neato little trick if I don't say so myself.

All that was left was to put in the new studs which I did using the same trick, twisting the top nut this time as opposed to the bottom one.

New Rim
Last and definitely not least was replacing the rim of my back tire. First step's cake - deflating and taking off the tire. Done and done.

The next step was a toughy. Superman probably could have had this part done and over with in about two minutes. For me and my little noodle arms took the better-half of three hours. Thats fine, I never claimed to be better than Superman. This long arduous process that involved soapy water, a hammer, a cardboard box and a bottle of Pam. For your convenience I've went ahead and listed off what each item was used for:

Soapy water: used as a lubricant between the metal rim and rubber tire.
Hammer: the claw end was used to pry the rim away from the tire.
Cardboard box: an object that was punted over my neighbors fence at about the two hour mark.
Pam Cooking Spray: the magic lube that FINALLY split the rim.

After that I had to inflate the inner tube and it in the tire. Easy peasy.

Next I put the rim over the tube, sprayed a little Pam and squeezed the rim into place. Unfortunately the inner tube snagged as I was placing the new rim and I had to go buy another one. No biggie, mistakes happen.

So, the next day I take the bus over to the scooter store, buy an inner tube, bus back to the house and as I'm putting the new one in boom it snags against the rim and rips again. Fine whatever. Fast-forward to the day after that. I do it all over again - take the bus, buy the inner tuber, yada yada yada. I get back, finally get the new rim on and overinflated the tire to fully set the rim. Shoutout to this guy by the way with a truck-full of tools who let me use his air pump, thanks for saving me $1.50.

Anyways, I go to put the wheel on my brand-new studs thinking I'm all that and a bag of chips. Well, it turns out that inner tube #3 was poking through the studded region of the tire so when I went to put it onto the studs in snags and, what else, pops.

By this time I'm so over it. The next day I just brought my whole wheel to the scooter shop and they were able to put in the new inner tube in about 15 minutes, ten of which were them laughing at me. Long story short, I was finally able to get back to the house, put on the tire, hinge the exhaust back on, inflate the tire and scoot off into the sunset.

All-in-all the process took about four days, $30 in tools and another $30 in inner tubes. Either way, it was pretty rewarding to finally get the scoot back up and running. Thanks for reading and here is the side-by-side:

Before:

After:

P.S. I know this was a pretty long blog. Here's me in my Halloween costume to make-up for it. Shoutout to Ty for the steller camera work - you're going places.