scooter books

kat · Post by **kat** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:30 pm

with the holidays approaching i thought a scooter book would make a good gift. looks like most have some major shortcomings from online reviews. any recommendations on a book with a good overview of various models and basic maintenance and repair?

justscooten · Post by **justscooten** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 9:24 pm

not that i have found yet i have the scooter bible its not bad but it looks at mostly the vintage bikes. and the others on the market deal mostly with the brits and the mod seen. theres nother that really deals with modern automatics.

beelzebubbles · Post by **beelzebubbles** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 9:31 pm

Hmm, based on your query I'm not sure if you're looking for more of a maintenance manual or a survey (i.e. coffee table) book with lots of cool pictures of scooters.

On the maintenance side, I have a copy of "Haynes Techbook Scooters Automatic Transmission 50 to 250cc" - http://www.amazon.com/Haynes-Techbook-S ... 626&sr=8-6

I found it a good general manual for automatic scooters. This and the owner's manual for your particular scooter could get you decently far if you want/need to tinker around some.

gt1000 · Post by **gt1000** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 10:36 pm

I'm looking at 2 scooter related books right now that one of my reference librarian/motorcycling friends passed on for review. One is titled "Scooter Boys" by Gareth Brown and it's an interesting take with pictures on scooter culture. I have not read it from cover to cover but, from what I've seen, it's heavily British-centric with lots of mods-references.

The other is the well known Scooters: Red Eyes, Whitewalls & Blue Smoke by Colin Shatuck (whose name should be familiar to anyone shopping scooters in Denver). This book has no maintenance or repair info but is a really fun book that covers a wide range of models from vintage to modern. Great pictures and period ads as well.

illnoise · Post by **illnoise** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 5:48 pm

All the books out there are pretty decent, but my big complaint is that they're all way too general, and try to cover too much, plus a lot of the "current model" and rally/scene info changes so much, it's out of date before the book goes to press.

That's the only fault with Colin's book, which is otherwise great.
http://www.amazon.com/Scooters-Eyes-Whi ... 0972577637

"The Idiot's Guide" was written (partially) by Bryce, who's on this list, I haven't checked it out yet.
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-G ... 1592576397

I prefer the books about personal experiences, "Vroom with a View" is great,

http://www.amazon.com/Vroom-View-Search ... 1933572019

but I like "You Can See by my Outfit" even better, it's a recently-republished Peter Beagle story about a cross-country trip on Heinkel Tourists in the 60s, very Kerouac-y.

http://www.amazon.com/See-My-Outfit-Cro ... 1585790478

The other option is Veloce's books, which are mostly photo-oriented, though some delve into history and personal experience also:
http://www.veloce.co.uk/shop/index.php.

Here are a couple reviews of their books I've written:
http://2strokebuzz.com/index.php/?p=3813
http://2strokebuzz.com/index.php/?p=20

One of my favorite tech-oriented books is "Motorcycle Electrics without Pain," It's the pits design-wise, and harley-centric, but it really helped me make sense of old vespa wiring, I wish someone would write a vespa-centric version (again, really specific books are what I'd like to see)
http://www.repairmanual.com/catalog/ELEX

Here are all the good books on 2-stroke tuning:
http://www.scooterhelp.com/serial/tuning.books.html

And then there's always the magazines, a subscription to Scoot! is always nice, and a year membership in the Vespa Club of America gets you four issues (though it's not exactly quarterly, ha) of "American Scooterist." I'm the art director, so I'm biased, but it's a great magazine.

The Oregon Scooter Club's magazine Kickstart is also great:
http://www.kickstartmagazine.blogspot.com/

Last year, there were a ton of scooter-girl calendars coming out around now, if you're into that....

and there's always the Haynes manual, if one's made for your scooter, or if not there's there's this one:
http://2strokebuzz.com/index.php/?p=2928
they have some other scooter-specific books, too.
http://www.haynes.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stor ... y_rn=10501

There are also some cool "Mileage/maintenance" tracker books to carry in your scooter, or just moleskines or Field Notes
http://fieldnotesbrand.com/

Or if you have a lot of good photos, you could make your own book at Shutterfly or iPhoto or what have you.

And the final word on scooter gifts is
http://scooterswag.com/
they don't sell stuff, but they catch just about everything scooter-related that comes along and blog about it, so it's great for shopping ideas.

Bryan

Post by **ericalm** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 6:31 pm

+1 for Vroom with A View. This is a great read, even for non-scooter enthusiasts or non-vintage Vespa riders. Just a very entertaining story of a guy's trip through Italy's backroads. He's written a sequel, but it hasn't been published in the US yet.

And thanks for such a thorough post, Bryan!

polianarchy · Post by **polianarchy** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 10:19 pm

Ah! illnoise, your list warms my librarian heart. I've seen a few of these, but not heard of most. Thanks so much!

rablack · Post by **rablack** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 11:30 pm

This should go in the tech section - excellent post, thanks

illnoise · Post by **illnoise** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:19 pm

Thanks everyone, I'm gonna clean that up a little, add a few things, and repost it on 2sb when I get a chance.

Again, "You Can See by My Outfit" is really the best, as far as quality writing and it's outside the whole overdone "mods on vespas" revisionism, beatnicks on heinkels are way cooler anyway.

One of my favorite books ever, in which a Vespa is only marginally involved, is "Absolute Beginners" by Colin MacInnes, I think it's back in print in the US now. It's set in the 50s, sort of the proto-mod era, and it explores so many themes, mostly the rise of the teenager as a socioeconomic power, and gentrification, and racism, and advertising. Sounds academic, but it's not, it's great fiction with a social message. The Julien Temple film version is cute (he turned it into a 80s-ified musical with Patsy Kensit, David Bowie, Ray Davies, Sade, etc) but it focuses mostly on the love story and glosses over the message of the book, definitely read the book first.

Here's a review I wrote for work:
http://www.coudal.com/ftb/bedell.php

(Lots of other great book reviews there, by much better reviewers than me, though nothing else scooter-related)

gt1000 · Post by **gt1000** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:39 pm

beatnicks on heinkels are way cooler anyway.

Love Heinkels. Saw this one at last month's scoot for toys...

SERIES ITALIA RIDER · Post by **SERIES ITALIA RIDER** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 6:39 pm

thanks for sharing andy.... i totally missed that one, i would have loved to seen more of it.... its so cool in the body styling.....

illnoise · Post by **illnoise** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:34 am

I cleaned up my list and added some other books I thought of in the meantime, if anyone's interested:

http://2strokebuzz.com/index.php/?p=3838

Modern Buddy

scooter books

scooter books

i missed that one....