Parts bike for the CV80, Son!

So, cruising craigslist, like I do probably 30 times a day, I came across an ad in the motorcycle section for a Yamaha Razz for $100. Well, I really had no interest in buying a yamaha Razz, but I checked out the listing anyway. As it turned out, the person was not selling a Razz at all, what they had was a complete 1986 Yamaha CV80 Riva! So, still struggling to get the Mantis up and running strong and reliably, this was too good to pass up simply for the parts. Here'a a pic of my two CV80's side by side.

It doesn't look too pretty but with only 2900 miles on it, pretty much all of the engine parts are in great shape, if a little dusty.

So the plan for the rest of the memorial day weekend is to change out the exhaust and petcock, which are two of the parts that I think may be keeping the Mantis from being able to idle correctly. We'll see if that helps. If not then the next step is going to be to just change the carbs out.

There were two other great results of this that were somewhat unexpected. First, I realized that the ignition wire on the Mantis is not stock. The one that it has sticks out too far and rubs the engine panel as you ride and eventually will rub it off of the plug. I always wondered what was up with this obvious design flaw. So, I'll be salvaging that off and will solve one more of the minor issues with the Mantis. The other realization came as I looked at the way the vaccuum hoses were attached on this one. It's hard to describe and I'll post a pic later, but if the connections are correct on this new scoot then I've had mine hooked up wrong for some time. This alone might be the trick to the funky idle problem. I'll be posting more pics and an update on the repairs porbably Monday or so.

Scoot on bro.

Scoot'n time is back.

The weather in central Texas is getting nicer and nicer by the day and that, of course, means it's time to fire up the old two stroke and get back on the road. Well, in all honesty I've been riding all winter, since it doesn't really get too cold around here, at least not for more than a day or two at a time. But, with the consistent weather of spring and summer the daily scoot commute will be in effect.

There's something about riding to work at 7 am on the scoot that is so much more enjoyable than driving the car. There's no radio and traffic reports or news of the day bombarding me and I get to work feeling a lot more relaxed than when I drive a car. The 15 minutes of reflection without the distraction of information coming from the car speakers gets me centered and ready for the day. So, its gonna be really nice getting back into that routine.

On another note there's a killer rally in Austin next weekend called "A Fist Full of Scooters". There will be rides, BBQ, raffles and gymkhana and a whole lot of fun. This is being put on by the Riff Raff Scooter Club in Austin. Hopefully the Piston Broke Club will be holding the River Rally again this year as well, although I haven't heard anything about it yet. I'm going to try and make it to at least 4 or 5 rallies this season. We'll see how it goes.

And finally (and I'm sure they'll never read this, but it helps me mentally to at least write it), if you are the person(s) who stole my helmets from out of my car port, I want to say you're a real A**hole and I hope you catch swine flu and die and go to hell. Ef you.

More posts to come as the riding gets frequent, the temps climb higher and my odometer increases.

Both scoots under one roof...

I finally went and picked up the Green Machine (a.k.a. mantis, friendly mantis) from the Typewriter Museum (a.k.a. Bryan's house) and got it home and off loaded. Despite Yagi's best efforts (Bryan's pet goat) it's tenure there didn't result in much damage due to neglect. She did collect quite a bit of dust though. After some lubrication of the throttle cable, some fresh gas, a spark plug wipe-down and 8 or 9 kicks, she started right up. 30psi in each tire and 2 minutes later I was cruising around the neighborhood on the twist and go again.

I kind of miss riding that scoot. I've nearly, completely sold myself on keeping it. I don't think you can ever have too many scooters, too little space under the carport maybe, but never too many scooters.

Ya'll Can Go To Hell, I'm Going to Texas Rally (if it don't shift and smoke don't bring it)

I attended the Piston Broke Scooter Clubs Ya'll Can Go To Hell, I'm Going To Texas vintage only rally this weekend. It was a great time. Friday night I had to bail on the festivities early but got to hang out with some really nice folks, some of whom I already knew, at Home Slice Pizza on South Congress. That night about 25 or 30 people showed up and the bikes lined the entire wall of the building. I'd never been to a rally before and seeing that many awesome bikes lined up was really cool.

On Saturday the rally met up at Jo's Coffee Shop, also on S. Congress, for the long ride of the rally.



The long ride was a long route from Jo's to Ski Shores on Lake Austin. The route took us through some pretty fun areas with lots of hills and tight turns. We also did a short part of it on Capital of Texas Highway. I think the round trip was close to 60 miles. I seemed to get fantastic gas mileage.

There was a young lady there, I regretfully have forgotten her name, who had her little yorkie looking lapdock in a puch on her chest for the whole ride. It was quite funny. The little pup had its own tinted goggles.


Here are all the bikes out at Ski Shores and one of the surroundings in which we ate lunch and had the rally's raffle at and one of yours truly, complete with horrible helmet hair.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a P200E? Frankenscoot?

I've been having this problem with my right rear turn signal. It won't flash. We've checked everything imaginable and it has come down to this one little part inside the frame where the cowl post goes in and clamps. Well, off course, despite the ready availability of tons of Vespa parts these are hard to find. Before I realized that it was this part I thought it might be the cowl post so I bought some cowls from a P200X. They're a little scratched up but no dents so they'll be easier to work with when repainting time comes. Anyhow, this did not fix my turn signal problem but I think the time saved was worth it. I bought them from a really nice cat in California who just happened to be the web designer for Independent Skateboard Truck Company. I've been riding Indy's since the late 80's and so he included a little present for me. At the bottom of the box, below all of the packing material was this rad book chronicling the 25 year history of the company. It made my day. I've been thumbing through it all evening. It's brought back all the memories of pouring over the latest Thrasher or the California Cheap Skates catalogue. Here's another look. So, back to the scoot. The new cowls are silver and in pretty good shape but the Vespa is starting to take on a new look. In addition, I'm currently winning an ebay Ausction for a new headset complete with the speedometer. However it's red. So Imagine that coupled with the other mismatched colors and it is certainly going to look interesting. So for now I feel like calling it the Frankenscoot or something - Seems appropriate.

VW Style Fuses and my longest ride yet...

So, I was having some electrical issues. Dang. Nothing major though. My old battery just wouldn't hold a charge and so if I accidentally left my turn signal on and then turned off the ignition, the battery would die. And for some reason I was blowing some fuses. These fuses are weird, I must say. They have a plastic core and then the fuse element sits on the outside of the core. It seems weird to me. Leave it up to the Euros...

I think the fuses were blowing simply because I was hooking up the scoot to the trickle charger while the battery was installed. It's the only explanation I can come up with right now. So, I've got about 8 or 9 backups in the glove box in case it turns out to be something else, although, since my last real charge and fuse change I rode about thirty miles and so far so good. The deal is, if the battery is dead, the stator will still make enough power to run the electrics but with the fuse blown, no circuit, no power, no turn signals or brake light. The headlight will continue to run but that's it.

Yeah, I rode about 30 miles today. It was a beautiful day for a scoot in central TX. I rode out of town on S. First street until it comes to a dead end and then up a little county highway to Manchaca St. and then back into town. Then in to my office in downtown and then a long scenic route back home through town. I filled up right before the little trip and checked my fuel when I got home, as this scoot has no fuel gauge. It hadn't really put a dent in the volume in the tank so I suspect that my estimates of around 70 mpg are probably fairly accurate.

One thing that I've found that is not accurate is my speedometer. I think that it reads about 5-7 mph slower than my actual speed. When I am going the posted speed limit according to my speedo I just fly by the other vehicles on the road and if you know anything about drivers in Austin, you'll know that it is highly unlikely that everyone is just driving slowly. Another problem with my speedometer is that the light doesn't work so night riding is a little bit difficult, checking your speed each time you go under a street light. I may replace it with another, but I'm going to try and restore this one first. I'd like to keep the original. The neutral light doesn't work either but that's far less of a problem than the main light and the inaccuracy.

Well, the weekend is nearly done and tomorrow I will make my first commute on the the ride and hopefully get it inspected and legal after work (hope she passes). Shouldn't be a problem.

Late -

Introducing the Vespa P125X - My new scoot -

So here it is - The P125X that I bought a few weeks ago. I still have the Riva, but it became the proverbial money pit and finally a few weeks ago when I had a severe throttle issue that nearly made me run into the back of a car at a pretty good clip, I decided that I needed something more reliable and with more parts availability. So here we have it. I haven't named her yet, haven't known her long enough. I just got her back from Austin Moto Classics and she is running like a dream. There wasn't anything major wrong, but after months of neglect by the previous owner, she definitely needed a good going over. Here's a quick list of what they id to achieve utter and total bad-assitude:

1. New brake cables
2. New clutch and shifter cables.
3. New front brake pads
4. New intake bellows
5. New rear tire tube
6. Cleaned and re-jetted carb
7. New floor mat
8. General inspection and once over - minor replacements, cleanings and lubes, etc.

Now she's running like a champ - super quick and responsive and idling real well. I'm so incredibly stoked its unbelievable.

So here's what I know:

This is a US version of the Vespa P125X that was manufactured in 1979. The primary differences between the US models and the Euro models is the speedo, the US is obviously in MPH and the fuel tap is different. Other than that I don't think that there's any differences.

This one has had at least 4 owners before me. That's not usually what you want to hear, but here are the details. The 2nd owner, I've actually spoken with. He is the sales manager at a Vespa dealer and knew how to care for and maintain it. While he owned it he put the red sparkly seat on it and got the 2-tone paint job. He also had the engine rebuilt by Gary Fisher, a local scooter mechanic that is actually well known for the quality of his rebuilds. So the 2nd owners tells me that he put maybe 500 miles on the rebuild - so he just really got it broken in. During that rebuild it was upgraded to the 177cc Pollini kit, the Sito Plus performance exhaust, a 20/20 Dellorto carb and some thing upgraded to the crank. This all ads up to it being super quick and powerful.

He sold it to finance a killer 60s Allstate. I've seen it and it is really killer. He sold it to a nice girl who realized after about 70 miles and dropping it that it was too much bike for her. So she, in turn, sold it to another nice girl who after about 50 miles or so and dropping it on the other side that it was too much bike for her. After letting it sit through the winter and hottest months of the summer, she sold i to me.

The old P is pretty much right on mechanically and with the small effort of general maintenance she should have thousands of miles of scooting in her before I ever really have to bother with any engine repairs.

The primary difference between the P and the CV80, besides power, is that the Vespa's are manual shift. Once you've driven the manuals you'll never want to go back to a twist and go.

The amount of control over speed and power is just incredible in comparison. Sure, on the automatics you can customize the roller weights to get the shifting more to your liking, but there's just no automatic that can change gears like you can, to match the driving situation. I test rode one out at the moto shop and just never looked back. It basically is geared just like a motorcycle except to shift you twist the handle on the left. It's actually a hell of a lot of fun. I'm getting better at it each time I ride, but so far I've only driven it about 20 miles or so. I'll probably double or triple that by the time the sun goes down today. I'm having a hard time not coming up with errands I have to run.

Meanwhile the CV80 is stranded at the Typewriter Museum over in East Austin until I can figure out what I want to do with it. More to come I'm sure as I learn new stuff and work on the new Scoot so check back or some crap if you want.