This thrilling Vespa commercial from the 60's has taught me a couple of things. According to this film riders of Vespa's are:

A) Well groomed.
B) Barely able to keep the bike from crashing.
C) Knowledgable about where Women like to hang out in the woods.
D) Douchebags.

On my beloved Vespa p200e I can ride around town for almost 2 weeks on a $3.00 tank of gas. That's beyond cheap, I don't even think about gas half the time. In fact, I have to get fuel so infrequently, that when I do have to actually pull into a station it's a huuuge bother. And my scooter is from 1979, so it doesn't even get optimal gas milage for a new 2 stroke motor, like the ones in the new Stellas that get around 90 mpg.

I just read an article about Piaggio, Vespa's parent company, testing 2 hybrid versions from their line of new scooters in Milan. A hybrid Vespa LX 50, and Piaggio X8 125. They are even saying that you can switch to lower speed "electric only" running, and emit practically ZERO emissions. Making the scooters viable for interior riding. Especially practical if you live in a giant penthouse loft.

more scooter posts.

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Behold:

There it is, in all it's repainted glory. This represents three weeks of hard work involving sanding, scraping, cleaning, priming, painting, more sanding, more painting, and of course the infamous wet sanding, then a little more painting.

This is not to mention the 2 1/2 weeks Kirk spent working on it.

Kirk at Scooter Parts Direct, along with dañell, stripped the old bad wiring out of this scooter, and put in a fresh central nervous system. Kirk also tuned the engine, and replaced a cracked oil pan. They also installed a modified horn that runs at about twice the voltage of a standard p200 horn.
It's LOUD.

I just got the word from dañell at SPD, she thinks Kirk will be done with my beloved scooter on sunday. Prepare for a new barrage of scooter posts.

Yeah it runs, well the engine runs, but it's got no lights. The scooter that is.

I'm saving the "Big Reveal" of the new scooter paint job until I have that sucker in full working order. So expect a few less scooter posts (I know it'll break everyone's hearts) until those kind people at SPD have a chance to put a new central nervous system in my dearly beloved.

In other news: The New Year quickly approaches.
We'll be ushering in 2006 at PushPush Theater's New Year's Party featuring the talents of DJ Rene spinning black circles... and also playing records...

Here is something interesting, these guys at SpaceTimeTravel.com have created a computer simulation illustrating what we should see when moving at nearly the speed of light. When you begin to move as fast as the light surrounding you, your field of vision would expand, everything you passed would not in fact move behind you, but would become squished at the edges of your vision. And get this... When you go fast enough (theoretically) you could actually see things that are BEHIND YOU. You'd be "cathing up" to that light coming from behind you.

It is physically impossible for humans, or anything besides light, to travel at the speed of light, and in fact even approaching those speeds would surely cause serious problems associated with being alive... But through these simulation we can speculate on what it would be like.

This subject was also covered with similar detail in Episode 8 of Carl Sagan's Cosmos: Travels in Space and Time.

Hey guys.

Well, there has been a lot of activity around here lately, and not any of it has produced a running scooter. Yes I finished my custom DIY paintjob, and I'm totally happy with it.

BUT...
when I was replacing the damaged headlight casing I discovered a badly taped green electrical wire. This wire does an important job, as all the wires do, but it was so damaged that fixing it myself didn't seem to be an option. (even though I tried)

So it is with a heavy heart that I am handing my baby over to Scooter Parts Direct, and the capable hands of Kirk and Dañell. They will hopefully be able to install a new set of wires in my scooter, which it is in great need of. This is called "installing a new wiring harness." It sounds like a lot of fun, hopefully it doesn't sound very expensive.

I am trying not to be depressed about the whole thing. This bad wire is something I couldn't have known about until I removed the headlight case. It is also something that should be replaced and not rigged. This was going to happen sooner or later, better now than when it's sunny and warm outside yeah?

Also, a big thanks to Dañell, who answered all my vague and desperate emails with patience and knowledge. Even up until the point where Kirk told her to tell me to: "Stop messing with it." It was good advice.

So we're shutting down until after Christmas. We'll be traveling to the frozen tundra of Delaware. Have a Merry War on Christmas.

I spent the wee hours of the morning last night sanding, cleaning, and taping off the frame:

The taping was the most tedious part. I had to be very careful to cover anything that could potentially be damaged by painting. Little screws that might need to be removed someday, instrument panels, even the original serial number plate, a flimsy metal sticker... That little plate has all the information that confirms the authenticity of the bike, including the original manufacture date, October 1979!

Because there can never be too many posts about the scooter.

The Respirator

So I don't poison myself. Even with the mask, I get a little light headed during some of the more intensive sprayings. That body filler/primer is some toxic shit. No joke.

I got the first coats of green paint on the side cowels, headset case, horcast, and glovebox. Shew:

Oh, and I'm pretty positive I broke the horn. When trying to remove the horncasing I was unscrewing what i thought were some simple electric contacts when I heard an ugly *sproing* from inside the horn. Looks like I'll be buying a new one of those...

You can see more photos in the flickr set.

I'm planning on doing some paint and body work to my Vespa p200e, so I'm building a temporary spray booth in my garage.

This wood was cannibalized from an old futon frame. I even used the screws from the futon to rescrew the boards back together:

The rest of it will consist of a plastic tarp from Lowe's and a cheap ($12) bathroom fan and a dryer duct for ventilation.

After some thought I decided to use aerosol spray paint (rattle cans) to paint the scooter instead of using my bosses compressed air paint spray gun. I did order the good stuff though, Krylon spray paint and top coat.

I'd like to acknowledge JPM at Redhaus for his Vespa p200e restoration page. Every time this project looked like it was going to be too big I would reference his pages. But let's not get ahead of ourselves here, I still have a long way to go.