Wow, I cant believe I have not posted anything about this rebuild since Oct 2012!

Well to be honest I’ve had nothing to post about really as summer got in the way & I was also waiting on the final three panels to arrive back from thre painter.

Collected them yesterday & they look awesome.

The LI on the front legshield panel is actually painted on useing a mask.

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Test fittimg the Side Panel

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Left hand side of the scooter

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As this is the first time I have done a full restorstion of anything let alone a 50yr old scooter I am finding that with a lot of this project I am having to go back and re do certian parts that I fitted incorrectly (quite a lot!) or felt the original part was not geed enough.

This weekends retro job is to replace the rubber gasket that came with the Casa Lambretta rubber kit.

To begin with the Casa part was a complete pain in the backside to fit as it needed to be heated in hot water then stretched over the rear light assembly whilst trying to keep that all in place you then needed to add & tighten the screw/bolts onto the frame on the scooter.

In the end I had to cut the rubber to get it to fit & I was never really happy with the way it looked.

After jumping onto a couple of scooter forums I found out that there was a brand called Tutto Lambretta that makes a better version, I managed to find a scooter shop in the US that sold them so i ordered two, one for the Li150 & one for the SX150.

Here is the Tutto Lambretta version.

Here are the two together, the Tutto version is at the top.

This set of pictures shows you how bad it looked with the Casa version.

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Here is the Tutto version after the 2min installation (Casa one took me hours).

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Job done & it looks great. 

Word of advise for anyne rebuilding a scooter – Dont buy the Casa one, buy the Tutto Lambretta from Scooters Originali.

Note:  Casa Lambretta parts are generally are of excellent quality & I have used quite a lot of their remade parts in this rebuild, it was just this gasket that was crap.

Spent the last few weekends cleaning up the garage after a winter of neglect & even managed to do a final stripdown of the remaining body work on the Lambretta SX150, so that all ready to go off to have the bodywork done for an eventual respray.

After the tidy up I was able to get the workbench all cleaned up plus make a tool rack to make it easier to access the most needed tools during the rebuild process.

Cleaned up workbench

The first jobs were essentially going back and fix a few mistakes I made with the a few months ago.

I originally rushed the headset rebuild & forgot to put the steering lock in + the ignition switch wasny fitting properly at all, so I had to strip it all back to the casting & start from scratch! 

Headset Rebuild

I had to use the Dremel to grind off some of the extra material around the ignition switch housing & tat only took 10min which was a relief, fitting the steering lck was easy also so what I thought would take hours only took around 30min, bonus.

Fiiting Forks

Next up was the reffiting of the new forks that I had Dampner mpunts added to, also a fairy easy task as I have done it about ten times this year, also made sure to use libelral amounts of grease.

Only real issue came when I fitted the headset as it was grinding against the chrome ring, I ended up taking the headset off and with the aid of the trusty Dremel ground off some excess paint near the steeering lock and applied some grease & now its working like a dream. 

Front Hub Fitting

Fitting the front hub was also relatively stress free as was fitting the dampner mounts to the hub.

Refitting the Petrol Tank

The biggest pain in the backside today was refitting the petrol tank, this wasn’t that hard just a little fiddly. Glove box & air filter fittedMy homage to Jimmy inside the glove box door.

Thanks to Phil on the Lambretta Club of GB, I found out that those little barrels are called hank bushes, this is a threaded boss riveted to the Y bracket & are used to put a threaded fixing on a light weight bracket.

Now as my horn seems to have had holes drilled wider then most they fitted around the hank bush & not over as is normal.

So all I did was turn the bracket around & with the aid of a oversized stainless washer was able to bot the horn into place then mount it onto the scooters frame. 

After digging out the original horn (see below) you can see that the bracket is in a right old state full of rust, i tried painting rust inhibitor over it but that ended up looking nasty.

In my most recent order from Lambretta Resoration in the UK I added a new horn bracket.

I managed to get the old horn off the bracket by heating it up which worked quite well, BUT now I have no way of bolting the horn onto the new bracket – off to the forums to find a way.

Updated today

Every time I go to start a project on this scooter I end up having to buy more parts!

This time around it was primarily the headset area that I started with as after further inspection of the bulb housing it turned out that the one that I had was for an SX/TV & they are different shapes.

Actually an aside, the quality was surprisingly very good even though it was Vietnamese copy, it was just for the wrong model & had been hacked to fir the Li headset.

I also needed the actually bulb holder and a few other bits, so it was off to the Scooter Restorations website & yet another two part order that turned into a 15 parts order!

I ended up getting a complete set of floorboard runners + a heap of other little parts.

The two major items were the Series 3 CEV Head Light Bulb Holder & LI Series 3 Headlight Unit (Marked Innocenti CEV), even though these are reproductions they are the correct items that would have been on the scooter when it rolled out of the Innocenti factory 48 years ago.

Headlight unit & all the little parts

Floor set, looks like I have some polishing to do before installation!

So I finally got my second set of forks back from the painter as the original forks had a kink in them and they would not turn completly, that set will have to go off to be repaired/straightend for a later project.

I had damper mounts welded onto this set before they were painted making it easier to fit the extra suspension parts.

I cleaned up all the internals with the new benchtop sandblasting cabinet I bought recently and also cleaned up the fork links by blasting them with household grade bicarb sode, they can up a treat & it was worth the 30mins it took.

Internal parts before sandblasting:

Internal parts after sandblasting:

Forks all taped up for rebuild:

New Buffers

In go the springs.

Fork spring compressing tool in action, bloody thing scrrated the paint work even through the tape!

Buffers installed

All done, satisfied but as usual a little frustrated as its my first go at this.

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Up next: 

1. Refit to scooter
2. Fit front hub
3. Fit Dampers

The balance of my stainless steel parts order arrived late last week so I was able to get the parts onto the engine and do a test fit.

• Changed the mag plate from the original one as it was to far gone with surface rust with a Mag Housing Seal Kit 
• Replaced the Breather cap as it was shot
• Replaced Front & Rear Brake Adjusters, although I retained the original brass knobs
• Added a new Gear Adjuster Block Cable Clamp as the old one was bent out out preportions
• Grabbed a new 6-12volt AC Horn as the old was was a mess, also need a new mounting bracket as the original is too rusty.

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Test fitted the carb as well, starting to take shape now.

Old & new mag plates, its the little things that make a difference.

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Jobs for next weekend!

• Headset
  • Do some felting with the ignition switch housing so it sits deeper for a better fit
  • Order an original CEV or Carello headlight bulb housing for headset
  • Fit steering lock
• Engine Bay
  • Refit petrol tank & replace the rubbers with new ones
• Front Forks & HubRebuild & refit new forks with dampner mounts
  • Check front hubs brake shoe clearance

Option Three – “Original look” Spare wheel carrier

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Bit boring, but if you wanted a more original look this is it.

Not 100% sure if this is a Series 3 accessory though, but it is a 100% original Italian part, need to look into this more.

Option Two – Sprint Rack

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Looks good but its not fitting too well, might need some fetling to get it in 100%.