Vespa 100 Sport

I’m rebuilding a 1980 Vespa 100 Sport for my brother. I’ve been tinking with it in my garage for like a year, but I haven’t made much time to do anything with it until recently.

The ugly camoflage one is the 100 sport. The blue one belongs to a friend. I took this picture when I first bought it last august. It had spark, but no cables, no battery or engine doors, no front fender, and no seat cover. Then there’s the ugly paint…

I took these pictures after I cleaned the carb, put some new cables in, and replaced the seat cover. I tried to see if Janice would ride it, but girls don’t seem to like manual transmission scooters. She prefers the Honda Spree.

I couple of weeks ago I decided to take off that unsightly camo paint. I used stuff called “graphiti remover” from Ace. I got most of it off, but there are  a few spots left. The steering was pulling a little to the right. That means that somebody crashed this bike, especially since the fender was gone. I wasn’t feeling the cost of a new fork, so I took the one I have to a guy in town that bent it back with a pnuematic press. It isn’t exact, but it’s a lot better than it was and the fender doesn’t rub.

The picture on the top is the fuel lever. I bought a used one that is built for this model, but the plastic gears inside it were too worn to turn the lever. So I used a lever I had sitting around and drilled a hole in a piece of sheet metal to cover the giant hole left by the old fuel lever. The middle picture is my battery door. I wasn’t feeling the $150 cost of a new one, so instead I fabricated one out of sheet metal with tin snips and my hammer and dolly set (body work tools). I bought the engine side door, which is much more common, for $35 from American Scooter Center. I think you’ll agree that the bike looks MUCH nicer.

IT’S ALIVE!

Watch the Video!

I can’t believe it. I popped that carb float in there and it fired up the second kick!

On the Recent Fuel Shortage (written May 7, 2006)

I’ve stolen some old scooter related stuff I wrote a while back to get some content on this site:

Well folks, here comes another summer, the travel season, bringing with it more outrageous prices at the pump. When it got high last year, I had it figured out that it cost me $5.50 to go down to Fort Carson and back to my house. This year is supposed to get even higher because current prices have already surpassed the records set last year. It will be interesting to see if they can get up to $4.00 a gallon, maybe even $4.34 (it got over $3.34 at the peak of last year), which would make an increase of $3.00 from when I moved here in Ought-three .

The price of oil has shot up to $75.00 a barrel, driving up the cost of production, yet somehow oil companies are making “record earnings”. An interviewee on a political talk show claimed ”it is basic economics” that the oil companies would make more money. She explained that as the price of crude goes up, supply becomes more limited, demand increases, the prices goes up, and an oil executive buys himself an island in the Carribean.

I’ve taken this economics lesson to heart. I’m starting a lemonade stand. When the price of crude lemons in Walmart’s produce section doubles or triples, people will have to pay outrageous prices for my product. I should clean up quite nicely. Although, I do get lost somewhere in the math. Let’s see…. if lemons double… then my lemonade should double…. hmmm. That’s weird. It doesn’t seem like I would make any more money unless I charged more than double for the lemonade. But nobody should notice, because the price of lemons is already so high.

Anywho, I hear that Iran is one of the largest suppliers of crude oil. If they are sanctioned for their nuclear bombmaking, er powerplants, it will drive up the price of oil even more.  Americans would get to pay more at the pump (and me and the boys would get a combat jump into Tehran).

I have to say, I am just happier than a pig rolling in his own feces that these prices are exponentially increasing. People are finally starting to pay attention. It used to be that the only people who cared that we sold our souls for unleaded were hippies who rigged their VW Bus to run on vegatable oil. Now that people care, the government is stepping in. In an ingenious move by congress, E-85 Ethanol can now be bought at most filling stations. This not only allows mainstream consumers to buy alternative fuels, but makes storing adequate amounts of regular gasoline wonderfully impossible. With any luck, this should make buying fuel such a nuissance that the public will want to do it as seldom as possible. Maybe they would buy more effecient vehicles. People could opt for a Honda Insight, which gets around seventy miles per gallon.  Demand will go down, supply will go up, and that Exxon executive will have to sell his island.

I myself have decided against buying a Hummer and went with a scooter instead. I get 90 miles per gallon on this hog. It’s nice to think that I am reducing dependence on foreign oil and cleaning up the atmosphere, but I’m really just one man doing his small part to not get screwed while those SUV driving chumps pay through the nose.

New Site

I’ve finally decided to create a new site since other places I liked to blog have died out. I’m dedicating the site to scooter news and talk. It seems this topic takes up most of my leisure.

This site is affiliated with the Slow Pokes Scooter club. Hopefully we can move some of our talk over here so we can add pictures and stuff.

I own an ‘03 Genuine Stella, a ‘90 Yamaha Jog (in pieces), and an ‘84 Honda Aero. My wife owns an ‘86 Honda Spree. Three of these scooters are pictured in the banner, and I’ve just sold the silver Vino.