What's The Longest Period That Your Scooter Has Been Broken?

[az_slynch]

I hope this one isn't redundant; I promised I did some searching before posting.

For some of us, not being able to ride due to seasonal weather is agonizing. I postulate that it's even worse when riding is in-season and your scooter is inoperable. Whether you fix it yourself or drop it off at the shop, is very likely that you will be waiting for the mechanic or waiting for parts orders. If you have found yourself in the broken bike doldrums, please share. How long was it?

I'll throw this out there to start:

I loaned my '87 Elite 80 out to a fellow scooterist to ride while my vintage club worked on her Vespa 150 Super. We spent a few weeks of sporadic time troubleshooting her electricals and charging system before her Super was ready for pickup. I didn't get my Elite back right away. In fact, it was several months later and I had to borrow a truck to repo it. It's been down ever since.

I've been buying OE parts for a while, when I have a bit of mad money to throw at repairing it. When I first looked at the motor after repo, I estimated $600 in parts to fix it. To a sane person, this is essentially the street price of an Elite 80. Spreading the purchases out over time helped me forget just how spendy that rebuilding it would be.

Over the holidays, I started at the back of the case by installing all-new Nachi bearings, Honda seals and gaskets.. I'm now working on the driven clutch and variator. The cylinder and new piston are at the machine shop (I'm ignoring this cost...).

Last night, while searching through photos, I found snaps from my initial engine autopsy. they were dated November 27, 2011!

Yikes. My goal is to have my Elite back on the road by spring, assuming I don't get any more picky about the rebuild.

Any other long-term broken scoots out there?

[BuddyRaton]

First off...the words"sanity and "scooter" should never be used in the same sentence!

My first post on the Vespa GD project was on May 04, 2011.
topic18355.html

The motor is built but the frame of the 64 GL is still completely torn down. That scooter had been down for a year or 2 before that with a blown seal.

Good thing it's a hobby!

[Syd]

Mine has only ever been down for the day, or maybe two.

Someone trashing your Elite while you were working on her scoot is really shitty. And forcing you to repo it to boot. I think bad karma is due.

[az_slynch]

Mine has only ever been down for the day, or maybe two.

Someone trashing your Elite while you were working on her scoot is really shitty. And forcing you to repo it to boot. I think bad karma is due.

Oh, karma has had some level of delivery. I wasn't looking for much; just a "I'm sorry." That never came.

That same scooterist had an '80 Vespa 100 Sport at the garage too that needed a full engine rebuild. I do the smallframe rebuilds. After I got my Elite back and saw how wrecked it was, I borrowed the truck again and dumped her unrepaired smallframe back at her house. I have no intention of ever repairing that bike so long as it belongs to her.

[az_slynch]

First off...the words"sanity and "scooter" should never be used in the same sentence!

Rules of sentence structure allow it, so long as the writer/speaker does so with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

My first post on the Vespa GD project was on May 04, 2011.
topic18355.html

The motor is built but the frame of the 64 GL is still completely torn down. That scooter had been down for a year or 2 before that with a blown seal.

Ouch, and I was feeling guilty about my P being parked since August due to a holed piston. Finally toasted my first 2T. The teachable moment was that 75mph, 117-degree weather and 87 octane should never be allowed to work together. Still trying to decide how I want to sort it.

Good thing it's a hobby!

Verily. Keeps me out of trouble.

[ericalm]

Three or four months? Helps having more than one, but still…

I miss 'em!

That's not counting the one that came to me broke that never got fixed. Had that for a year before it was passed along like a fruit cake to make room for the Helix.

[az_slynch]

Three or four months? Helps having more than one, but still…

I miss 'em!

That's not counting the one that came to me broke that never got fixed. Had that for a year before it was passed along like a fruit cake to make room for the Helix.

More than one helps, but yes, I miss my Elite. It's neither the fastest, best handling, or most-storage-equipped one, but was my first bike when getting back into scooters and I've had a lot of fun with it. Rebuilding a good stock motor for now, and working on an over-bored, stroked and tuned one for later.

Was the never-fixed one a P125X?

[BootScootin'FireFighter]

the "mothership" has been down for coming up on 6 months now.

I had a minor crash back in late July. Spent the first almost month waiting on a shop estimate that ended up being more than I was able to pay for the job that I felt like tackling myself. I got it home and went to ordering a new set of forks which were bent in the accident. Once those came in, sometime around late August, I spent a few days back and forth on the manual, trips to autozone for a wrench, then again for grease. Finally I got it apart, swapped, and back together.

Next issue was he front wheel was warped as well, something I had just learned, which would've inflated my shop bill even more. I ordered the wheel, it came about 2 weeks later. I didn't realize that I had to order all of the individual hardware that goes with it, so I submitted another PO. Here we are in early October now. I got all but one of the components, which was on backorder until finally arriving around Christmas.

Finally, the month of January has been hectic with wrapping up the holidays, unrelenting cold (no motivation to be outside wrenching, as I don't have an enclosed garage). I put the wheel together in my living room, inflated the tire, and it's just on standby until I can break this nasty flu-like crap that I got going on now and go put it on. The battery is inside and has been on the tender periodically.


The good news?? I've been riding my wife's Buddy 125 since late August and has been a lot of fun. I was sidelined a month due to a broken "big" toe.

[LunaP]

Two years.

The 170i that got creamed is still sitting at the shop. The first several months were because neither my mother or I were ready to try and deal with it, then there were a month or two of negotiations and lots of faxing and emailing, which led to a really really unsatisfactory lowball offer that I spent another several months attempting to argue with in every way I could think of, and when that didn't work it flipped the 'stubborn' switch in me and I gave Nationwide the cold shoulder. It's been sitting there since and I'm a terrible person for having it take up shop space for so long. It's a sore subject but at this point I'm out of money and loathe to be a burden on the shop and longer, I plan to tell Nationwide 'give me the money and go **** yourselves' next week.

[Syd]

Two years.

The 170i that got creamed is still sitting at the shop. The first several months were because neither my mother or I were ready to try and deal with it, then there were a month or two of negotiations and lots of faxing and emailing, which led to a really really unsatisfactory lowball offer that I spent another several months attempting to argue with in every way I could think of, and when that didn't work it flipped the 'stubborn' switch in me and I gave Nationwide the cold shoulder. It's been sitting there since and I'm a terrible person for having it take up shop space for so long. It's a sore subject but at this point I'm out of money and loathe to be a burden on the shop and longer, I plan to tell Nationwide 'give me the money and go **** yourselves' next week.

And an insurance company wins again. So sorry to hear whenever someone gets hurt by the insurance industry's business model.

[craftynerd]

Longest I went was when my old Honda Metro ended up in the shop because she wouldn't start - turned out there was oil in the air filter, probably from the crash I had a few months before. Anyhow, because the place I bought my Metro from didn't really cater to scooters, my little scooter waited for around three weeks at the shop while they got to all the motorcycles and ATVs first. Then again, it also took these guys a week to take care of my first service, too - when it probably took maybe a few hours on my Buddy, and hubby's Stella had to stay overnight for it's first service (although our local scooter shop owner is awesome and let him borrow the shop Buddy to get around!).

[lascooterservice]

Three or four months? Helps having more than one, but still…

I miss 'em!

That's not counting the one that came to me broke that never got fixed. Had that for a year before it was passed along like a fruit cake to make room for the Helix.

i will take all of the fruit cakes you have to spare, sir.

let us know when you need some rack time for that barcalounger on wheels...

*edit to add: regarding how long some of my bikes have been down; you know what they say-- the shoe cobblers' kids always go shoeless!
-g

[az_slynch]

*edit to add: regarding how long some of my bikes have been down; you know what they say-- the shoe cobblers' kids always go shoeless!
-g

Hard to top this chestnut in terms of truth. I have several bikes that have been down for years. I fix plenty of other peoples bikes, but mine largely get ignored until I get down to one runner.

Working on three of mine at the moment: Collecting parts to do a final drive rebuild on my '83 Riva 180, collecting parts/rebuilding subassemblies on my '81 C70 Passport and collecting parts/farming out machining/rebuilding subassemblies on my '87 Elite 80. Shooting to get at least two done by springtime.

About a decade ago, I had a friend in AL who owned a VW Audi service shop. He and his wife both had Audi 5000s. Her car was always immaculate and museum-ready. His looked like a dried-up turd on a bad stretch of road. The cobbler didn't even catch a break at home!

[agrogod]

Since I do my own work and its a matter of waiting for parts too arrive, two days. Thank the great computer that I am somewhat mechanically inclined.

[LunaP]

Two years.

The 170i that got creamed is still sitting at the shop. The first several months were because neither my mother or I were ready to try and deal with it, then there were a month or two of negotiations and lots of faxing and emailing, which led to a really really unsatisfactory lowball offer that I spent another several months attempting to argue with in every way I could think of, and when that didn't work it flipped the 'stubborn' switch in me and I gave Nationwide the cold shoulder. It's been sitting there since and I'm a terrible person for having it take up shop space for so long. It's a sore subject but at this point I'm out of money and loathe to be a burden on the shop and longer, I plan to tell Nationwide 'give me the money and go **** yourselves' next week.

And an insurance company wins again. So sorry to hear whenever someone gets hurt by the insurance industry's business model.

Well, not to say that I'm the only person ever screwed over, surely not... but I do feel like I was a weird circumstance. They were de-valuing solely based on mileage, which was HIGH for a 4 month old scooter since it was my only ride and I had a 20 mile commute nearly daily, assuming I -only- went to work. I was trying to convince them that 3500 miles was nothing and they should meet me between their offer and what I paid for it, since it was only four gorram months old, and even had my dealer independently write them a letter stating what she would have sold it for had she sold it as it was the day before the accident, but they wouldn't budge, not even just to come up a few hundred and meet me in the middle.

Needless to say, when I bought my car I made sure to get gap insurance. Just in case. And I made them pay for a 300 dollar pair of sunglasses that I had gotten for free in the first place, so there's that, too.

[monnoracing]

2 days

[ericalm]

Was the never-fixed one a P125X?

'86 PX 125 EFL. I could have fixed it… could have been a nice beater for around $300 and a lot of time. But I had other priorities. I guess.