Okay. Well, there's good news, bad news, and potentially good news eventually, regarding the resurrection of the !Vespa.
Not even 900 miles on this scooter. Sheesh.
You might recall a few pages ago the variator pulley had self destructed, separating the starter ring gear from the pulley and breaking the little tabs that held the two pieces together. I attempted a repair by refitting the starter ring gear to the pulley using red Loctite to hold it, and reinforced the outside where the broken tabs had been with globs of Loctite "metal and concrete" epoxy, or was it JB Weld? Something like that. So file that data.
Also, another mod I had made long ago was to the Dellorto "ECS" -- "Electronic Carburetor System". This thing uses a little air injection solenoid to allow extra air into the carb to auto adjust the mixture in a closed-loop fashion. I had removed this air inlet hose and capped the input because the hose broke and with the airbox in place it was impossible to get to the valve to replace the hose. File that data too.
The problem WAS that after winter storage, yes that is like 7 months ago, the scooter wouldn't start. After lots of work and even trying a replacement carburetor, I got it to run, but it would only go like 3 mph and wouldn't rev above about 2k rpm under load. The tank was packed with rust and I think also the vacuum fuel pump got clogged with rust, so I laboriously cleaned the tank and then went through a jillion hoops trying to get a fuel pump to work. Finally the last one I put on was a Kohler-type fuel pump for a lawn tractor. Remember, this is a scooter with no manufacturer in existence, so original equipment parts are essentially impossible to get in many cases.
So, yesterday and today I intended to get it running again. I got sick of pulling the carb out with the airbox in place and actually broke the airbox last time I was working on it, the rubber outlet hose came loose from the airbox, so I had to remove it, and. that's no small feat. Once I repaired the airbox and discovered how lovely it is to work on with the airbox removable, I decided to make a mod so the airbox can come on and off when the carb has to come off. Anyway, that just made me happy to work on it. Scooter wouldn't start yesterday after lots of effort. I even pulled the spark plug and cleaned it with a wire brush on the Dremel, it was very black. Since I had the airbox actually off, I decided to investigate that air injection solenoid, see about reconnecting a new hose, since apparently it had been running really rich at idle. For kicks I pulled the carb off and gave it a cursory cleaning again, then put a new hose on the air injection doodad, put it all together, and after a lot of cranking, IT STARTED!!
It was running quite badly though, so I tinkered with the air screw finally settling on two turns out and rode it up and down the road in front of my house about 50 times. It got better and better running, and by the end it was finally running 95% back to normal! I think the problem was there was still some leftover bad gas or maybe water or who knows what in the little fuel reservoir that had to get cycled through before it would run right. It started back up on an instant bump of the starter several times. So I actually decided I was going to go ride and give it a real blow-out-the-cobwebs ride.
Then it wouldn't start. Starter bendix is not engaging the ring gear. I haven't pulled it apart, but it sounds like the ring gear has been knocked loose again and it is just not straight on the pulley. I'm going to crack it back open tomorrow, I guess. It got too hot to work on it. So that's the bad news. I can attempt another repair, maybe see of I can figure some other better way to get it to hold together. However, I have no faith in this part. It's broken, jury-rigged even when it was kind of working, and it's a crummy design anyway.
Good news though, it looks like SIP Scooter Shop in Germany has an aftermarket J.Costa outer pulley. The stock part is a cast aluminum part with a separate ring gear pressed on and hooked up to little fingers with roll pins, those fingers are now broken off on mine. The J.Costa part is one piece, all steel, so there's no way to break the ring gear off of the pulley. SIP has this J.Costa part in stock, and it's not astronomically expensive. They also have a slick J.Costa variator that's a rollerless design with more gearing range, lower gearing at take off and taller gearing at top revs. I sent them a message confirming these will fit this year model scooter, and once I get confirmation, I'm going to order the whole rig. Then if it all gets here and works right, I'm going to order an entire extra set including a couple of new belts while they are available. I'm sick of this lack of parts business.
So, scooter season is coming, and I might just find a way to have a working scooter by the time the temps are topping out in the 80s.
I got really ambitious about other projects, but 100+ degrees was just too much and I gave up after doing only an oil change on my Scrambler.