The scootering world is rich and varied; with something on for everyone. For that, we should be thankful.
This one mid-September weekend hosted local day events (Nuneaton Pacemakers), decent-sized independent rallies (Flatlanders), a long-running international (Liege) as well as the LCGB’s free-to-enter Coast-To-Coast weekender.
Do it your own way
It seems that the key to this scene now is to pick and choose what suits you, and let others get on with doing it their way. I’ve mellowed in recent years as I realise that none of us are getting any younger.
That’s a point well illustrated by the fact that we set off towards the start-point of Hartlepool in a group of five Lambretta riders, of whom two had already retired from work. Lucky bastards.
Mad Monks and Englishmen
First stop on Friday for our group en route to this year’s C2C departure point was Grantham. While filling up, there came the familiar rumble of 2-strokes. A mixed group of Vespas and Lambrettas arrived in the garage with a back-up van.
It seemed an unlikely place for two groups heading to the same event to meet, and so it turned out. Our paths literally crossed like the white lines on the Scottish flag.
The Mad Monks SC had ridden down from Motherwell outside Glasgow for a night in a B&B before heading to the Flatlanders rally on the fens. They’d already lost one of their crew who was in hospital nearer home after suffering a presumed stroke while riding. Thankfully, he was safely ok in hospital before the rest of the club were given the all-clear to carry on. Best wishes fella.
I’m a de-lever
While setting off from the same petrol station, Smaller Steve had a bizarre incident of headset jousting and snapped Big Steve’s hydraulic brake lever off.
Where do you get a brake lever for a ScootRS type brake at 10:30 am on a Friday in Grantham?
The answer, as a customer in the garage reminded us, was everyone’s favourite local scooter guru: Jon Gilbert from JG Scooters. He’s normally closed on Friday, and was still ill from before the Mersea Island rally – where he ran the on-site dyno and upset lots of folk by running an old Indian Vespa without oil until it blew up, for charity (our Mersea feature will be coming up soon).
However, on hearing our plight he got his brother-in-law to run him to the workshop to open up especially to help out. Top man.
Jon, about to go lever-digging
Jon turned up out of his sick bed and let Big Steve have a choice of levers. After a quick tour of the JG Scooters HQ (careful in the lavs – that’s all I’m saying), and the no-longer-considered-PC ratings board, we were shown the goodies outside.
Popsicle-coloured Luis in the Soweto sheds
Jon is a fellow Luna-tic. He waved under our noses a Lambretta Lui project madder than the one I was riding (more on that later): a Superlui casing to which he was about to fit a heavily-tuned RB260 barrel. Mr nut, meet Mr Sledgehammer.
And today’s star of the JG Scooters Mong Meter is…
With a new lever in position, we were fit to crack on over the Humber Bridge and onwards across the moors to Teesside.
Sitting just south of Hartlepool on the Durham Riviera is the seaside resort of Seaton Carew, and more explicitly the Seaton Hotel; starting point for this year’s jaunt to the western coastline. It is a strange place, but very cheap compared to anything south of Watford.
Departure point
Hartlepool’s most famous son, I was later told, is the ballet dancer Wayne Sleep. Wikipedia tells me he was actually born in Plymouth. Perhaps that says more about Hartlepool than it should.
More famous than the person who wasn’t born there is the monkey who may or may not have been hung there for being a French spy.
In fairness, the LCGB do put on a good do considering the entry price (free). Most of the hosting however is done by the routes of the Pennines and Lake District. They provide spectacular views and challenging roads. You just supply the 2-stroke smoke.
Previously the event has started with a mass departure, whereupon a few riders would take up the challenge of the ‘Special Award’ for arriving first. That’s an illustrious list that twice included another of Hartlepool’s sons.
Those following the official route had a chance to sign-on at each end, and also collect a mid-point sticker from Alston, on Britain’s’ highest A-road.
Wet weather plan
In this drizzly and grim-looking Saturday however, many folk elected to sidle off early in the hope that the weather would be better on’tother side.
Intermittent showers made the roads past Bishop Auckland something of a slippery journey for the first half. At every roundabout a pack of loaded Lambrettas (and other brands of scooters – the LCGB aren’t racist) spewed smog as they tip-toed around. This year would not be a classic.
Feeling undertyred?
I was riding with Alan from Diablo Moto on his BGM RT225. Prior to the event he was espousing the excellent grip of BGM’s new block-tread tyres; made with a modern compound by a very reputable tyre firm. Sadly after one and a half rallies (less than 1,000 miles) most of the tread was now gone and it was wheel-spinning out of wet roundabouts. This is one of the rules of 10-inch scooter tyres. You seem to get grip or longevity, rarely both.
As such, Alan used the Alston mid-way stop as an opportunity to fit his brand new BGM block-tread spare wheel, at which point excellent grip and handling was restored.
Money spent on good quality tyres is never wasted.
What goes up must come down
Not long after the ‘entering Cumbria’ signpost, the weather cheered up, the fog lifted and the tarmac began to dry. We tackled coming down the famous biking road of Hartside Pass in the company of a massive group of Doncaster Hunters; all dressed smartly in corporate orange waterproof jackets. I’m sure all shared our relief that Cumbria meant sunshine. You really need dry roads if the Lake District is to be any fun at all.
From Penrith, the next challenge was to round beautiful Ullswater and climb Hartside Pass, which we did in the company of a load of Germans driving classic British cars. At the peak is a derelict pub, and a fork in the road which turns right and descends very steeply down ‘The Struggle’ into Ambleside.
After a quick chat with the Germans – one of whom was also the owner of a very rare Hoffmann Konigin Vespa – we descended into Ambleside. Near the bottom was one Lammy owner parked up who gave us the thumbs up. Al stopped to check on him and found he was merely letting his overheated brakes cool down.
Scooter skittles: a runaway success
Shortly afterwards, we were followed down by Mag, Roy and Chris from Wearside Wanderers. Chris was leading into Ambleside on his Lambretta and sidecar outfit before that too succumbed to overheated brake fade. Mag said that Chris suddenly overtook a scooter and a car before swinging into a side turning in an effort to stop. In the end he crashed into a building, not before knocking some poor lass through a window.
Everyone survived relatively unscathed. Without Chris’ quick thinking it could have been so much worse; particularly if he’d continued onto the main road in front of moving traffic.
Yobbos in town!
After some small directional confusion, we made our way towards the next lake – Coniston, with the official route directing you around the top of the lake leaving you to ride down with the water on your right-hand side.
This proceeded via the beautifully scenic ‘unnamed road’. I suspect that it’s unnamed chiefly because it’s little more than a glorified, bumpy path. Certainly Alan gave it a few new names in the brief gaps between cursing me for leading him that way. Still, if you don’t do the C2C for the challenge and the views, what are you doing it for?
Quite a lot of riders skipped this bit and went straight to the finish point at a sports club in Ulverston. So many bikes went past that a nosy neighbour called the police to complain about lots of yobbos racing up and down the street on scooters. Ironically the road leads to the district of Outcast.
The bobbies arrived at our hotel only to find a mass of fellas (mostly) old enough to be their parents, chaining up scooters and getting a pint or two in the bar.
Yobbos, us? Not this century officer…
Lantern lunacy
Ulverston was heaving thanks to the 40th-anniversary lantern festival which is both a splendid cultural occasion and also a drum-beat-driven mating ritual for the local teenage chavs; of which there were many.
The rhythmic Samba beat followed me to the Red Rose Club, spiritually twinned with Peter Kaye’s Phoenix Club, where the scooter hordes gather to share tales of derring-do across the moors and mountainsides of northern England.
If you are into scooters for a love of riding, rather than a love of posing, and you’ve never done it, then this event should be on your bucket list. Just don’t take it for granted as the roads and distances are often a serious challenge, and more so every year that goes by.
Sticky
See below for details of what Sticky cobbled together and rode for this event.
Twin tank terrorism. If you don’t want to stop every 40 miles then it’s either that or one of the enlarged tank options now available
Can the SLUK Racing Quattrini motor survive a 550-mile road trip?
Those of you who remember back to SLUK’s Project Superlui of 2019 will recognise the machine used for this event. The Lambretta Lui converted to take a Vespa smallframe motor was built together with my son Sam, who subsequently used it for a few rallies. Lately, he’s got himself a rather lovely girlfriend and has pinched one of my Vespas better able to be used 2-up. This left the Superlui spare for the weekend.
‘Why don’t you stick the race engine in it?’ – said Alan, like the demon that sits on your left shoulder offering stupid advice. Without any adequate persuasion from the other side, the Quattrini 144 was duly stolen from my SS90 chassis and inserted into the little Lambrettaped.
Mocking-up the manifold
‘Inserted’ glosses-over the effort involved slightly. You can’t fit a Quattrini M1L 60 S engine straight into a Lui conversion because the angled reedblock design puts the carb where the frame already lives. The only solution was to create a Frankenstein bodge using a machined-flat Quattrini manifold and a 30mm RLC Lambretta manifold to instead hang the carb out over the kickstart.
The SLUK Racing engine was ‘fresh’ from an outright win in a 6-hour BSEC endurance race, followed by a 5th place in the 8-hour at Whilton Mill. I never even took the head off to check the piston rings. The only change was to put back the taller gearing we used at Teesside and change the gearbox oil. Thanks to the new Crimaz clutch, the oil came out so clean that I was almost tempted to put it back.
Throughout the C2C the engine was impeccable. In the short, tall Lui frame it’s virtually unusable in first, wheelie prone in second and bloody quick in the top two gears. The chosen primaries were a little short for open roads, but perfect for the actual Coast to Coast, where a gearing-limited top speed of about 78mph was plenty. It would climb every hill without dropping out of the power between gears.
Angry wasp
The only real niggle of the journey was having the Franz exhaust screaming in my ear all the time like an angry wasp wedged in my crash helmet. That and the incessant turbine-like whirring of the straight-cut transmission. Earplugs from Bigger Steve were a godsend.
On the way home via the M6 we sat for long periods at 70-75mph chasing a fat knacker on a 230cc TS1, which left the little Vespa engine screaming for forgiveness. It would do those speeds on part-throttle. What it really needed was a 5th gear. I may have to speak nicely to VMC.
Now and then
To begin with I felt concerned that an air-cooled race engine wouldn’t survive being held at 8-9,000 for sustained periods on the motorway. Then I remembered all the rallies everyone did in the 80s on Vespa T5s fitted with Mikeck and PM pipes. Those little 125s loved being thrashed around the British motorway network at a gazillion rpm. If they could do it then, then a high-quality smallframe engine could do it now.
So, in answer to the question that nobody in the UK ever really poses: yes. You can high-speed tour on a modern air-cooled Quattrini smallframe engine if you set it up right. I’m sure the same goes for an Egig 180 too.
Now perhaps the Quattrini deserves a strip-down, some new bearings and a piston ring as a thank-you.
Well done little Vespa, er, I mean Lambretta, or whatever mixed-up trans-scooter creation that you are…
If you don’t know what’s going on here, go and look up Salad Fingers
Salad Fingers 😳 WTF is that all about