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2020 has been a slightly unusual year, COVID has kind of messed things up. We’ve had hardly any events, no National rallies, no meaningful places to ride to and as a result haven’t had to spend time fixing things.
The good news is that the extra time at home and the money we’ve saved by not going away all the time has meant we’ve had more time and cash on our hands to spend on scooter projects. I bought this Lambretta cutdown (above) during the first lockdown after seeing it advertised on Facebook (minus an engine). It was delivered by courier and to be honest, didn’t look like much of a scooter, that’s the thing about cutdowns, there’s not much to them. Even so, it did have most of the right parts, including a front disc brake, BGM front shocks, R1 rear and a long-range tank.
Still Sick
Still Sick is quite an apt name for a scooter in 2020 so I left the signwriting on the legshields. I’d been fancying a 1980s style cutdown for a while and this one came up at just the right time. I already had a spare 200 engine so that was rebuilt by Rob at Simply Retro. The plan was to keep the engine fairly standard so we used a Challenger Equipe tuned stage 4 top end, 25mm Dell’Orto and a Micron exhaust I picked up for £100.
Paint it black
Whilst the engine was being sorted I took a few bits and bobs off to have powder-coated. The rims, hubs, rear shock, cowlings and a few other parts were done in gloss black to get rid of the yucky green. I’ve also swapped the homemade rearsets for a set of Keith Newman’s from K2 Custom Classics and changed the standard gear linkages for JPP Lambretta ones. Plus I put one of our SLUK Racing front mudguards on.
More new parts?
That’s it for the time being but over winter we plan to make a front and rear hugger and hopefully a set of prettier looking drops.
PX 210 street racer
The second lockdown project is to sort the engine out on my street racer PX 210. This scooter looks great (thanks to the paintwork by Jubilee Scooters) and the Ryan Saxelby tuned engine is a beast but it’s around 16 years old and has been giving me grief for a while. It’s become a running joke (or not running as the case may be) amongst my riding friends. My original plan was to rebuild a Malossi top end using new Pinasco or Malossi casings but that changed when the Pinasco 251 was released.
Duecentocinquantuno
A few weeks ago I got most of the parts together, including new casings, top end, crank, clutch, ignition, carb, reedvalve and an exhaust. The casings went away to be powder coated by Midas Touch just before the second lockdown. I’ve got them back now and the black edition 251cc ‘duecentocinqantuno’ engine will be built by Al at Diablo Moto.
Video build
We’re going to show this build, warts and all! We’ll video the build process, including dyno/setting up and road testing.
Our third project is one that you may remember from a couple of years ago, it’s the Brogue Trader Casa SSR 265. It’s long overdue, almost three years in the making, thanks to a few hiccups along the way but it is actually finished.
Built by Rimini Lambretta Centre this scooter has a few nifty touches and is finally on the way back to England before Christmas.
We’ll do a full feature on it in the New Year…
Show us your lockdown/winter projects
I’m sure plenty of SLUK readers will have been busy and we’d like to see what you’ve been doing. Email a photo of your build with a few details and we’ll add them to the bottom of this page. You can send them to: editorial@scooterlab.uk
Sorry if you’d already uploaded a photo
If you’d already uploaded a photo of your project can you send it again please? We had some behind the scenes gremlins today and this post has been re-written again and the photo uploader has had to be disabled. Grrrr, stupid computers.
Thanks
Iggy
SLUK readers rides
Here is a picture of my Spanish Series 2. I bought this running on 6v 4 months ago, an unregistered standard scooter. It has had a complete makeover consisting of a Ts1 engine built from scratch from Jerome at Readspeed. Upgraded suspension, disc brake, SIP rims, mid-range tank, absolute full nut and bolt rebuild, sign-written the list goes on etc… Fantastic rat scooter absolutely love it.
Framebreather SST265
I bought a Lambretta S1 Framebreather that looked ok in the photos, made the classic mistake of not going to see it first (will I ever learn?) it was not as good as I had thought it was. So I stripped it down & sold most of the parts & the engine, leaving me with the frame, side panels, forks & some tubeless rims.
I then sourced decent parts, had the frame checked in a jig & the bodywork beaten into shape & took it up to Dave Dickinson for the paint, I have got a full SST265 Casa Performance engine built by Micky & the team at RLC, a set of PM Tuning forks & double-disc & a nice seat from Streamline Seats & a few other nice bits to go on it. Hopefully, it will all come together into a finished scooter by Jan/Feb next year (probably before we will be able to go rallying again).
Cheers, Bugs
BFA 306 lockdown project
I got the majority of the work done whilst on a 3 week furlough in April, I’ve just been refining it since. Warren Wilkinson gave it a once over and fitted a new SIP Vape ignition and an MRP carb manifold and
V-Force reed block. Its making 45hp and 31lbft torque on Warren’s dyno.
I’ve had the engine over 2 years the initial build in my old favourite matt black street racer PX frame I was unhappy with. It was unrideable with the drop bars and the 5-litre SS90 tank gave me a 30 mile range. The clutch was ridiculously heavy. My elbows aren’t the best either after 30 years on the tools as a joiner. So this new cutdown has been built to solve all the initial issues.
Time, trouble and lots of money
The standard green and orange frame breather came to me as a bare frame tube only. No loop, struts or hangers – pained met blue with red spots and just short of a centre tube to become a full 80s’ chop [which is where it seemed to be going prior to rescue]. 2k in parts and god-knows how many hours of my cack handed spanner work later and here it is. V5 arrived mid lockdown and all ready to roll.
Thanks for looking.
So how long will it be green then ? i remember when you nearly had a different colour scooter every day at one point , the pink LI (not the pink chop) was my fave one of yours, not that id admit it at the time. after all you were a mod back then !