Abarths daily vespa in beige

[Abarth]

Was looking for something to get to work on a couple of months ago. Then this heap turned up on trademe which had been stolen and recovered, the owner just wanted to get rid of it so $267 later it was on the trailer home!

Stoked as its an ET4 125cc version so it has a bit more grunt round town instead of the 50cc I was originally looking for. Anyways got it home checked all the fluids and hot wired the smashed in ignition, it burst into life straight away. Bonus!

Got some second hand parts for it to get it road worthy, still looks as rough as anything but who cares.



As it stood, I wrapped the horn cover in 3m carbon wrap, looks much better now imo.



Jazzed up the exhaust with some high temp paint and cleanned the rust off the chrome with lemon juice and tin foil (works a treat!)

Drove round like this for a couple of months and it was running mint. However it wasnt as much of a fan of burnouts as I am. Pic's explain -


Engine out



How this broke before anything else is beyond me



Took the opportunity to clean up the head, it may even get a bit of a polish if I have time.

 

[Abarth]

Well, the second motor a 150cc had been running reliable till one sunday morning down the motorway. Pretty sure it dropped or broke a valve at 100kph leaving the piston looking like this -

 

 

And it effectivley took the rest of the motor with it. Luckly I found a new engine in a matter of hours and later that night the Vespa was back to normal thanks to a newer LX150 motor.

 

After many months of debating of whether I should paint it I finally stacked it on its good side which sealed the deal that this Vespa needs painting. Always been a fan of them in black so heres what happened next!

 

Ordered some Mipa 2k Primer, Basecoat, Mipa 2k Clear, 2k Thinners, sandpaper etc....

 

 

Stripped it down

 

 

 

 

 

Found a bit of surface rust building up behind the paint

 

 

First coat of primer, still lots of sanding to go!

 

Collection of muli color parts haha.

 

All primed up, did two coats, added a little base coat to darken the primer in the last coat to act as a guide to find any hidden high spots. Started off with 320grit then worked my way up to 600grit before applying basecoat/colour.

 

Base coat goes dull once it dries.

 

 

Clear coat brings out the basecoat nicely, here you can see the red pearl in the black basecoat.

 

Really stoked how the colour came out.

 

No pearl

 

Pearl!

 

 

 

 

This is the finish straight of the gun, its ok but has heaps of orange peel.

 

Hit with a bit of color sanding, wet sand with 1500grit finishing with 2000grit. Then used a cutting compound to bring the shine.

 

 

 

Could do with more polishing, but that will do for now.

 

One more, first time I've seen in day light, stoked with how it turned out. Even the seat color matches the black well. I also added some 3M carbon wrap on the parcel tray and up by the ignition, hard to tell from the iphone camera but I reckon the carbon look goes well with the black.