Kimjon

Fender struts back from chrome, so I was able to push on with mounting the rear fender and sorting out the wiring. Its mocked up here, but I'll add connectors to the rear fender loom so its removable. Pretty much the last stuff I needed to sort out. Time for cert, wof, reg...ride!!

Front fender. I won't bore you with details...but It was pretty savage getting the cunt to fit. Wrong fork, wrong guard, wrong frame, wrong brakes, wrong wheel size...was it ever going to be easy? It's rough, but it'll do for now. If i ever get the urge to do a restoration, I'll replace it and cut out the shock tower area like @64valiant did on his one. That's a tidy way of doing it and not distorting the pannel steel by beating the fuck out of it.

Motors in, all fitting as it should. Rolled it outside so I could stand back and admire it. Yep, pretty happy with it. Love the 10" wheels on it.

PX disc brake front end installation. 10" wheels (should be on 8's). Ive got a "Vespa 150 Super" motor to go in it. Going together reasonably well. Few issues to sort out etc as you'd expect. But overall I feel like I'm on the winning team.

Not terrible, looking pretty good now. I shifted the lefthand side of the front shield forward fuckloads (almost 100mm), righthand side about 40% of fuckloads. Its within the ballpark now, I'll flatten out my sins from the beating it took (another day) with a planishing hammer, but overall its surprising good now given how much of a hit it had taken in the past. Pretty happy with this so far. Be a fucking cool scooter when done.

Stacking them up. Such a pleasure to look at, the lines of the earlier large frame vespas are so perfectly proportioned.

Shit photo, but I've started collecting parts for this round tail frame circa 1959-62 vintage. I put a PX disc brake front fork into it, which will also come with a 10" wheel conversion. Its a bit of a resto-mod build. Frame is 100% rust free, but has a bit of front-end damage. Nothing a hammer can't fix. It was stored hanging from roof rafters for the past 30 years. So I got lucky finding one thats rust free. Pretty much have most parts to slap this together. But no hurry to do so.

Made my own brackets up to adapt a steering damper to my go-fast vespa project. Worked out perfectly, just tthe right amount of travel, and no interference issues. It articulates in a very flat arc, hardly moves from its parallel resting position from one extreme to the other.

Cool, you can turn it over and see if light goes out. It may not require priming if you haven't drained all the oil.

This one, the lower of the flat head slotted screws. It'll be directly over the oil feed line.

This is an easier way to show you. I took a video to show my mate at the time.

For oil priming, assuming you have oil in it, ready to go. Take plugs out and ground them (or disconnect coils). Undo the lower of the large flat head screws on the oil pump. Put a magnet in the hole and pull the ball bearing (check valve) out. Let oil bypass into the hole you'll see, that the ball bearing would be blocking. You can put you finger over the top hole and let it flow for a few seconds. I even cranked mine. Put the check valve back together. Crank motor over on starter until oil light goes out. Do this in 5 second bursts. But mine pretty much went out straight away. Good to go...

End result, no ugly wiring cable tied to struts or the frame, all hidden under the fender.

Hiding the wiring inside these aluminum channels I roll formed for the job. Once again, ridiculous amount of time and effort, but I think its worthwhile as it'll look pretty clean because of it. The holes are all multipurpose, they hold things above, like struts, stop light etc...and the opposite side holds my aluminum channels for the wiring to hide in. Looks super clean.

View of plate holder/axle slide mounted on the bike. I'll paint the braket black, so it doesn't stand out.

Number plate bracket, and axle block multi function part. Without reliving it too much, a stupid amount of work went into this, probably 12 hours or more. The block, not very visible on the side has a lot of engineering time put into it. The bits you can see only took an hour or so. Its a really complicated solution to a straightforward problem.

Rear mini Bates stoplight fitted. Matches the iconic Bates headlight, so as far as stoplights go its not the worst I've ever seen. Once again, I read the rules around placement and it needs to be seen from certain angles and also has to comply with certain standards (E marked, or SAE, DOT etc). My indicators, headlight, and taillight are all compliant with the standards, so hopefully thats one less hassle to deal with.

Made fender struts today. I'll either powder coat or get them chromed eventually. My mind had been going in circles with turn signals, as whatever I try...its ugly. Unfortunately the rules for these require them to go in the worst place visually to be compliant. I'll run these for now, come back to it another day (or not?) If I still hate them in the future.

Pretty stoked with this belt roller, solves a problem and doesn't look out of place. Ive designed it to only be in contact when the slack side whips around, normally if you chop the throttle harshly. The rest of the time it won't touch the roller.

More rides, more hero shots...no dramas...taking it easy - but its got enough ponies to be fun to ride.

Fuck the fender...I can ride it without one. First test ride went smoothly. Nothing weird happened, and the ride quality was better than expected, especially taking into account that I've got 36psi in both tyres to set my fender gaps off.

Setting up rear fender. Im redoing all my original ones, as they were set up on a 16" rear rim, but im now running a custom 17" rear rim (harley softail hub, laced into a modern 17" rim) to add extra ground clearance.

Need brake fluid, then could ride. But ideally I'd like to mount the rear fender before riding...but we'll see what happens

Big day...big fucking day... Some outside shots:

Oil lines plumbed up, exhaust mounted, basically its ready to start. I might hold off until I've run the rear brake lines and bled them etc...but in theory I could put fluids in and hit start now. Still a few niggling issues to resolve like fender struts and rear wiring to be fully ready. But fuck yeah!!