As you could read on the wheels page I am in the slow process of restoring my first Vespa. When the Vespa got too bad to drive I could not part with it. After having it hanging from the ceiling of my brothers storage I finally had the guts to take a good look at it. Knowing rust had eaten away the back shockbreaker mounting point when I put it away I knew it was not going to be any good. For the first time in year I saw the Vespa and it was BAD!
Rusted floorboard fixed with glasfiber, big blisters under the pain. Thick filler over bad bodywork. The frame was not even sandblasted and I could poke my finger through holes and chip of flakes of metal.
When the frame was backed and blasted pretty much all was lost. there were some part however that I could not let go still. A rare compartment door that was more common on a other type of Vespa, the handlebars and the frame number could not get lost, but those couple parts don’t come close to a whole Vespa. I had to go look for frame parts.
Since this Vespa was going to be a “Frankenstein” I decided I wanted to go for the older look, the plastic original nose is going to be replaced by a steal nose. I bought a Vespa 50 frame that crashed but only the front had damage. The ass of the Vespa will be replaced with the crash Vespa’s ass, but the area were the little door was will be taking from my old rusted Vespa. The floorboard and the leg shield I bought new. All of this together looks like just a collection of worthless parts, but in the end should be the body of my Vespa.
After some time the frame was welded together by professionals. Not something that you should leave up to me because when this is done wrong the endresult might be a Vespa that is out of balance. With just a primer to prevent it from rusting the whole thing started to look like something.
By this time only the frame costed me a fortune already, if I knew on forehand what this Vespa would cost me I am sure I would have never even started. Sandblasting 100,- the crashed Vespa 100,- steal nose and leg shield 150,- welding 600,- even writing down the costs now makes me feel like an idiot but hey, better finish what you started! To spend that much money on a Vespa 50 does not make sense so the idea came to mind to put in a ET3 engine.
A ET3 is the fastest engine made by Vespa for the small frames, it is a 125CC with an electric ignition, the cylinder has 3 portals to let in the gas/air mix, therefore the 3 instead of 2. An Other 350,- was spend on an incomplete engine and 250,- on parts to make it run. It needed a new carburettor new ignition and a new exhaust. But now she purrs like a kitten.
After the frame has been restored to a hard metal shell all the seams needed to be sealed and parts on the front needed to be filled. sealing the seams was a doable job, but sanding down the filler to finish the new nose is a professional job. I tried 3 times and after a lot of sweating and dusting off I decided to let a professional body shop do the rest.
Throughout the whole process up till now I did not make up my mind on what colour to pick for the Vespa. There are a lot of vintage looking colours that I love but the Vespa has always been black. In the end I had to pick from 2 options black or lime green, it turned out the best Vespa is a Black Vespa. All the frame parts will be black and the additional parts the normal grey as is standard for Vespa’s.
Now it is on to installing all the parts.