I have completely dismantled what was left of the engine when I picked it up from the guy I bought it from, he was picking bits and pieces of engine out of boxes all over his shed.

I am presuming that half of the parts are not from the original engine on the basis of this, in fact when I got home and went through what was in my engine lucky dip box I found that there was over , this is what was missing:

• End plate
• Gear cluster
• Gears
• Flywheel
• Stator plate
• Kick starter
• Carby
• Clutch spider
• Crown wheel
• Clutch flange
• Rear brake drum
• Rear hub
• Hub back plate
• Key for the headset lock

What this means for me today is that the engines themselves require a lot of new technology to bring them up the the modest standards that I had with my 1983 PE200, however, I was expecting this and was excited to see so much “kit” on the market to choose from, way too much kit on the market.

After reading through the books mentioned in the last post and coming to grips with what was ahead of me I wanted to reacquaint myself with two-stroke technology.

So I did what most people do, I searched the “interweb” (not googled it) - my search engine of choice is Bing for the time being as I feel Google is not doing very well with returning relevant results any more as it has become bloated (work related rant over).

Seriously though, Bing turned up some great sites for me to look at that had the type of content I was looking for, the best for me was a really simple site Free Engine Info, it had a few good articles on two-stroke technology that I was looking for - particularly on porting versus reed valve induction, carb tuning and exhaust pipe tuning.

A lot of this I had vague memory’s of from my Vespa riding days, I did have a tuned expansion chamber on my 1993 PX200 although back then I thought it was to make the scooter sound louder, not make it go faster.

• Instant Messaging - Best one I found was Adium, you can add just about ANY IM account to this including Facebook & Skype
• FTP - Tested a few over the years but by far the best is Transmit
• DVD Ripping - Never had much luck with this and usually went back to the PC for this until I discovered WinX DVD Ripper for Mac
  • This rips DVD into a variety of file formats and I ripped quite a few movies a few weeks ago for my trip to the US last week
• Password Reminder - 1Password was the best I could find and it allowed me to upload my old list of sites and passwords from my PC
• Bit Torrent Downloader - Azureus seemed to be the best one
• Back to PC - Still not sure, both VMware and Parallels are shaky.

So there is a small list, hope it helps.

So I had a steep learning curve ahead of me.

One of the great things about the global scooterist community is that it has been going for a long time and as such a lot has been written about restoring scooters - Lambretta and Vespa.

The initial starting point for me was Scootering Magazine, I had been a reader of Scootering 20 odds years ago when I was zipping around town on my 1983 Vespa PE200 and later on my 1994 PX200E, I actually found it useful for the ads as much as the articles and scooter showcases it had. So off to Humphreys news agency in Manly for the latest copy and I was all but set to learn what was happening in the scooter scene since I last bought a copy, needless to say the ads were as helpful as ever.

One of the ads I saw was for a DVD by Scooter Techniques, so i jumped online and bought myself a copy of the Lambretta Engine Rebuild, this was well worth the money and the guy who I assume owns it Ian Skinner seemed like a nice bloke as well.

Disc one deals with stripping the engine and covers in details the following:

1. Intro
2. Engine removal
3. Cowlings removal
4. Top end removal
5. Flywheel  / stator removal
6. Magneto housing removal
7. Brake shoes / hub retaining plate removal
8. Chaincase removal
9. Clutch / front sprocket removal
10. Gearbox removal
11. Crank removal

Disc two covers the actual rebuild, and is very detailed.

1. Silent block replacement
2. Rear hub bearing / gear selector fitting
3. Gearbox (inc. shimming)
4. Crankshaft / magneto housing (inc. bearings)
5. Front / rear sprockets and chainguides
6. Clutch
7. Kickstart  / chaincase
8. Stator / flywheel / brakeshoes
9. Top end
10. Timing
11. Refitting engine / gearbox oil

I cant say how much I enjoyed watching this when I first got it in the post, it really immersed me in the project and made it feel less daunting and will be a permanent feature in my workshop during the rebuild.

Next purchase is what most scooterists, well those that ride Lambretta’s consider to be the bible - the Complete Spanner’s Workshop Manual By Martin ‘Sticky’ Round, this was hard to find and recently only found out that the original version is now out of print and that a revised version is due out later in the year.

I ended up finding it online via a German scooter shop of all places, I also bought the English version of their catalogue and that in itself was a worthy resource as it was packed with heaps of information about the various parts that you can buy along with some great comments about what to pair various performance parts with, the only downside was the way it was written, this ha obviously been translated from German to English and had some serious typos, but some funny ones as well.

Two other books I bought were the Innocenti Lambretta Restoration Guide by Vittorio Tessera & The Lambretta Bible by Pete Davies, both were useful in there own way from a pictorial perspective but not as good as the DVD, Sticky guide and the catalogue.

So my advise, if you are thinking of doing the same thing, start with the DVD, Sticky guide and a catalogue of some sort and buy the other later when you start to think about what colours and style of scooter you are going to rebuild.

Here is the book & DVD list:

• Complete Spanner’s Workshop Manual By Martin ‘Sticky’ Round
• Scooter-Center catalogue
• Lambretta Restoration Guide
• The Lambretta Scooter Bible
• Scooter Techniques Lambretta Engine Rebuild DVD

Back in the day I was in the Sydney Mod Scene and I was banging about on a 1984 Vespa PE200 that I bought 2nd hand of a local Mod on the Northern Beaches, I had always wanted Lambretta and was always envious of the Mods that did have them, even if they were covered in mirrors and tat, they looked so much more stylish than the Vespa, although at the time I loved my Vespa and I did upgrade myself in 1994 to a brand new Vespa PX200E, this had an electrics starter and I loved it.

But, I had always wanted to own the same scooter as Jimmy, the main character in the 1979 movie Quadrophenia, he rode a 1964 Series 3 Li150, this recently sold action in London for close to GBP35,000, seen here to the left.

A few months ago during a chance conversation with a local scooter dealer brought me to the attention of guy selling a Li150 project, I got in contact with him and went to visit what would become my very first Lambretta and to top it all off it was the same model I had always wanted, a Lambretta Series 3 Li150.

After a few weeks of research on pricing and talking to a few local folks about the authenticity of frame and engine numbers I decided to buy it, well buy the bits, without a doubt this was a restoration project. Although quite a lot had been done to it I still realised I had a lot of work ahead of me in the future.

About the Lambretta Series 3

The series 3 family includes the Li125, Li150, Li150 Special, SX150, TV175, TV200, SX200, Grand Prix 125/150/200 (also known as 125/150/200 DL) models produced after 1962.

Personally, I think the SX 200 is one of if not the most beautiful scooters ever made and I could have replaced 75% of the body work on my S3 to make it look like one of these but I have decided to stick with all the original panel work on my for a variety of reasons, who knows, maybe one day I wil find an SX 200 to buy for myself!!

The Series 3 scooters are commonly called the Slimstyle Range, Series 3 models are distinguishable by a speedometer which is of a sort of clam shell shape. It is flat on the sides, tapering out larger at the top, and the top and bottom are rounded. Another distinguishable feature of the Series III is the separate horn grille which attaches vertically to the front of the horncasting with two countersink screws at the bottom.

Li125 & Li150 models have a round headlight and rim, the popular Grand Prix models have a rectangular headlight and rim, and all remaining Series 3 models have a round headlight with a hexagonal rim.

The first Series III models produced in 1962 share several characteristics with earlier Series II models. When this is the case, the earlier variation of the part is called the pre-mod part. Mid-1960’s models will often share pre- and post-mod features. By the end of the production run of Italian Series 3 models (which included all GP and SX models), all of the post-modification features (such as 6 pole ignition systems which have 4 wires coming from the magneto) had been adopted.

My Series 3 Li150

Based on the frame and engine number I can place my scooter as coming out of the factory in Italy sometime between the end of 1964 and the early 1965, this is based on evidence of the frame number and the fact that it has a chrome ring between the leg-shield and the handlebar, mine also has the side-panel anti-vibration buffers which were  fitted from mid 1964, the chrome ring was eliminated in mid 1965 thus placing my model between these two dates and makes it version three of four version updates.

It is not much to look at at the moment but here are a few shots of it the day I picked it up.

Anyway, that all for now so keep coming back for updates & you can also check out the most recent posts about this restoration project:

• The Lambretta Li150 Series 3 Rebuild - Part 2, Building the Knowledge Base
• The Lambretta Li150 Series 3 Rebuild - Part 3, More Learnings

While sitting here I have started doing some custom wok on my new blog theme and it is not as easy as advertised, as usual.

So I now have a Western Digital 250 GB drive to replace the old 80gb drive that came with the Mini when I bought it of Ebay a two years ago. On top of the extra space I’ll end up with a speed boost as well, the old drive was a 4200rpm & the new one is 5400rpm, so win win.

That’s the easy part done, now I have to install the mother and Apple do not make this process easy, they would much prefer that you go to a shiny Apple store and have your purchase your HD upgrade and install from them at a whopping $500, could almost buy a new mac for that.

There was a huge amount of controversy concerning the filming of this movie as the production company really messed with the original script idea, originally the film plot was based around four guys, one of whom had cancer and wanted to see the new film from the second trilogy. Apparently the whole cancer idea did not sit well with the Weinstein Group so they re-shot a lot of the film with a new plot.

This caused quite a lot of angst in the Star Wars fan community as the sneak peak that was shown to a large audience at Star Was Celebration a few years back had the original plot, so they felt betrayed by the film company.

Anyway, that seems to have cleared itself up as it is being released with the original plot.

I am not sure when the film will be released here in Australia but I will make sure I see it when I go the San Francisco later next week, lucky me, US cities listed here.

Preview below

I also do a lot of photography at my Search Marketing events like SMX Sydney, SMX Singapore & Search Engine Bootcamp, of course all the speakers want to see the photos so its makes sense to stick them up on Social media sites like Facebook, Flickr & Picassa, although I have not yet used Picassa and strangely iPhoto ‘09 does not support it. I say strangely because Google Maps is central to the new iPhoto ‘09 feature called “Places”, more about that later.

SO anyway, I installed iLife ‘09 today and hit my first issue.

My Macbook Pro that I use for work does not have all the conference photography on it anymore as I ran out of space on my hard drive, a few months ago I uploaded all of conference shots to Flickr, then moved them to an external back up hard drive and deleted them from the Mac - space saved and happy Barry.

Along comes iPhoto ‘09 with all its whizz bang features that i want to use and I cant, why? Because all my conference shots are on Flickr, compelte with keywords, tags and comments.

So this is a big issue for me as i want to ultimately control everything from the Mac Book Pro rather than online at Flickr.

So I scoured the forum looking for a solution and i found one, only problem was it is an article that was originally written in French, now I know how to order a beer in Paris and get direction to the Rugby grounds but that’s about it, so I used a translation site and got a passable set of instructions, here is an example of some of the translated text.

“The division before was very thought to send and divide photographs, but it is however not envisaged to be able to synchronize already existing albums on Flickr. This article shows you how to recover the photographs that you would have already put on line on Flickr, as well as the key words that you associated there”

I think it means that iPhoto ‘09 allows you to divide you photos into events and upload them to Flickr, but it does not allow you to sync any current Flickr Sets. these instruction will help you learn how to recover your Flickr Sets with all the keywords intact.

So here Part 1of my step by step instructions.

1. Create a new Event using an image that you don’t mind loosing later on.

2. Once you create the Event select the photo and click the new Flickr button on the bottom right hand side iPhoto ‘09

3. Make sure you select “actual Size” in the Photo Size drop down.

4. You will see that it is uploading as a new indicator on the left hand side of the screen shows you the upload progress, do not do anything in iPhoto while this is happening, previous plug-ins in iPhoto that did this tended to crash if too much was going on and I have not had the chance to play with this new version, so safety first.

5. Login to your Flickr Account and select “Organize”

6. By default you should be in “Batch Orginize”  - Now select the Flickr Set that you want to sync back as an iPhoto Album

7. Highlight the shots you want

8. Drag them up into the grey batching area (cant think of a better word for this)

9. Click on the “Add to Set” drop down and the shots to an existing set

10. A popup will appear, click the one you originally created in iPhoto and then click “Open Set”, the photos are now added to that set

11. Go back to iPhoto ‘09 and you will see that it will sync with Flickr. It takes a little time to do the first sync as it is downloading Hi-Res shots.

This is a time consuming process but at least you have all your photography syncing in one place.

Part 2 will deal with getting the naming structure right across both iPhoto’09 and Flickr.

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