14 posts tagged “lambretta”
Wow, they kind of nailed my demographic...
I'm not sure what it is about scooter rallies which makes people think that everything will be fine if they do an Evil Knevil jump across the Snake River on their scooter... Oh yeah, the beer... right...
This is a musical after my own heart!
I just got tipped to this from Ian... oh man, this is so rad... It is a kids show (yo gabba gabba) which has a total rude boy singing a ska song about cleaning up your room. Never has the throw away ska phrase "pick it up" had so much literal meaning!
This has been a great couple of weekends for my vehicle hobbies. I've done a little wrenching in the garage, helped a good friend get a classic BMW motorcycle, and gone to two scooter rallies. The Bay Area is so awesome for this stuff. There are so many events going on for classic vehicles that I have to really prioritize which I go to.
Last Saturday I went on a 100 mile ride with some of the East Bay scooterists. We rode up through the East Bay hills all the way down to Castro Valley. Those are some pretty awesome roads, and it is hard to believe that they are just 5 minutes from Berkeley and Oakland. Towards the southern end of Skyline road, there are people with horses stabled at their houses. And this is in Oakland! Crazy. After Castro Valley (which is a dump) we drove up to Pleasanton. Talk about a "white-bread" suburb! I guess it could be worse. In any case, we drove through some pretty amazing backroads going through the Livermore wine country, and eventually ended up back in Berkeley. Lots of fun, and it was a full day of great riding in amazing weather.
A few weeks ago I went to a really excellent scooter rally in Santa Cruz. This is my kind of rally. It is classic-scooter only, and pre-1960 scooters are highly encouraged. This rally was awesome. There were the most 1950's Vespas on that ride that I have ever seen at a rally... and this includes the big 300+ scooter rallies. People just don't ride these old scooters around much, mainly because they are slow and hard to keep running. I brought my '59 Vespa G.S.
Here are a few pictures. If you care, you should click the bottom picture which will bring you to a "collection" of a bunch of great pictures from the rally.
I should also mention that these photos were taken by Monterey Pete while riding his scooter through the rally. Pretty amazing. They are stored on scoot.net's image gallery.
I have been on vacation for the past week, and am getting ready for more... but I wanted to post a few pictures of the Moto Melee while it was still fresh in my mind. The Moto Melee is a three day 1000 mile vintage motorcycle ride through the state of Northern California. It goes through the back roads, and covering some territory which the average person never sees. The roads are chosen for their twistiness and for the beauty of the landscape. This has got to be the best vintage ride in the country, and it is certainly an unbelievable experience. There is nothing like challenging yourself and your riding skills on crazy mountain roads astride a 50 year old machine. It is exhilarating, that's for sure. Add to that the bonus of seeing some seriously amazing motorcycles the way they were meant to be - on the road - and you have the ingredients of a great weekend. See more pictures by clicking the photo/folder below which will take you to my photo collection.
I'm sure that all of my scooter friends have seen this already... but just in case you haven't...
Last weekend was a blur of errands... I think I pretty much blew Friday and Saturday with housecleaning and various errands and shopping. Lame. I made up for it on Saturday afternoon and Sunday with a bunch of wrenching. I pulled some stuff out of the satellite garage to set up my work schedule on Saturday. I still have it packed with stuff, even though I've been trying to get rid of bikes. Every time I finally sell one, another one seems to fill its place. It'll be better when the two bikes that I have "sold" finally actually end up in the hands of their owners!
I had to change the tire on the P, because that thing was getting seriously bald! It was a good thing that I did, because when I pulled it, I realized that the people who put it together (Monarch Scooters/Este) totally screwed the girl who bought it from them. The rear rim, which you can't really see too well, was not the original Piaggio rim. Mind you, she bought this bike NEW from them, and it would have had the original rim. So they swapped it out with some other rim they had lying around. This particular rim had several of the studs broken off, so it was seriously bent, and was close to exploding! Danger danger! Then, I took off the spare, and realized that it had a two inch nail stuck in it, so it was useless. Man, what a bunch of theives. So what was supposed to be a 10 minute job, ended up taking quite awhile. I took apart the spare, and installed a new tube. Then I put that on the bike, so it is now rideable. Time to get a new rim for the spare...
Then I went over to Dano's, and we did some work taking apart his G.S. for painting. That sucker is coming fully apart, and he needed some tips on doing that. Taking stuff apart is the fun part, its the reassembly that can get tricky! His neighbors were having a Cinco de Mayo party, so we took a little break for some cervezas.
Sunday, I pulled some of the bikes out of the garage. I took the BMW for a short spin. That thing needs some adjustments, that's for sure. It was kind of a bear to start, and it normally starts on the first or second kick. I'm thinking the valves need to be reset. So I left that in my garage so I can work on it this weekend. I also pulled Ian/Alicia's bike because it was leaking pretty bad. I pulled the tank on that one, and tried to tighten up the fuel valve. Hopefully that takes care of the problem.
Steve came over, and we replaced the top end on his rally. It had like 75 psi, and it was starting to really bog down at high rpms. The options were to try out new rings, or go for a new piston and rebore. Steve wanted the POWER, so he got a new top end, and we did the work on Sunday. Dano came by for the assist. No word yet on how crazy fast it is now...
