Rockrant

Argo USA

Argo USA formally Bajaj USA has finally announced their scooter replacement for the Bajaj Chetak and the Bajaj Legend. Bajaj was the first metal bodied, manual transmission scooter to be sold in the US since Vespa pulled out in the early 80's. The Bajaj was very popular in Minnesota as well as the rest of the country until Genuine Scooters introduced the Stella, a virtual clone of the PX150. Califorina was the only state that didn't allow the 2-stroke 150cc Stella so the Bajaj still sold well there. But the US scooter market is only a small drop in the bucket compared to Bajaj's domestic market. And the Indians are done with the Chetak and have moved to motorcycles. So Bajaj decided to end production of all of their geared scooters in 2005 leaving Bajaj USA holding the bag with no new scooter to sell.

Long story even longer, after over a year Argo USA had announce that they will be selling a TN'G Milano/Barron/ Schwinn. After so long and they could't get anything else? The Bajaj dealer network that has been set up is still there, but is any reputiable dealer going to want to sell another Vino 125 stepchild? Many larger dealers have already one on the floor or have gotten out of Chinese scooters of questionable quality. Argo says they are of a higher quality than all of the others, but I don't think I would wait around to see it.

I think that I just saw the last nail put in Argo's coffin, bury them with the golden fleece.

2 Stroke Buzz

I try to read as much about scooters as I can to keep up on all of the latest bikes coming out and news about the different scooter companies and whatnot. But I don't have access to a computer all day long so my first stop when I am looking for scooter news is 2 stroke buzz they are really on top of it over there.

Getting Back on the Horse

Although there isn't any snow yet, it is still damn cold. So I thought it would be a good opportunity to start writing on this blog again. A few things have changed since I wrote on here in May 2005. I traded my green smallframe Vespa for a Lambretta Cento. I got the Cento running and drove it around a little bit, but there was a terrible noise from the transmission when the clutch was pulled in so I decided to rebuild the engine. I am still in that process.

I also found a couple of Vespa 400 cars that I bought and have been slowly working on. I have had them for almost a year now and there has been some progresss. The engines have both been removed from both of the cars and I will be able to make one good one out of the two. I wrote about the restoration process a little bit on a free blog, but I think that I will transfer all of those posts over here just to make it a bit easier.

All of my MMM articles can be found on the Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly website.

Halogen Conversion

Stopped over at MAS racing last monday to see if they had any parts that I could use on my car. Specifically, I was looking for headlights and some dynamat or something else that would work for sound deadening in the engine compartment and in the floor. Well I found some Toucan brand headlights for 19.99 per side. I bought them and then proceded to fit them to the car. The Headlight has a pliot in it so I had to drill a hole for it. Otherwise it fit in perfectly! I am happy that something has worked. I plan to make a new wiring harness to make the headlights work along with a few other things that I have planned.

Cleaning and Measuring

I am pretty low on funds for parts for the 400. But I still want to work on it so I have been cleaning and figuring out what I need. I started by pulling out the seat and pulling up the rubber floor mats and the insulation.

OH NO! Rust. When I first looked at the car I saw some surface rust on the floor, but now I found a soft spot on the passenger side that turned into a hole the size of a quarter. I don't know if I will fiberglass or weld the hole. I am leaning towards welding in a patch. After that I am planning on using a rust inhibitor/ converter like POR-15. After that I plan on putting down some dynamat or something and then finally the rubber mats.

I have been pretty scattered when it has come to working on the car, I have taken both of the engines i have apart. I have gotten the generator rebuilt and I have also rebuilt the oil pump.

I think one of the hardest things about restoring the 400 is that there isn't any company that is making parts for the car. So for the most part it is using parts that will work and refurbish or make new parts.

So in order to figure out what I need, I went around and measured many parts. Tonight I measured all of the control cables because I plan on having Motion Pro make me a set of cables. Or else use Vespa scooter cables where I can.

Here is what I found. The Emergency Brake inner and outer cable is the same as diameter as the Vespa scooter rear brake cable.

The inner is 2.4mm and the outer is 6.4mm.
The rear brake outers are 32" long or .8128m.

The throttle cable outer is 73" long or 1.8542m.
The throttle cable outer is 5.08mm in diameter.

I am going to look for after market headlights that aren't sealed and hopefuly halogen. Right now there are 7" GE sealed beam headlights in there.

In the Rear

When I bought the car I was told that the engine was in good condition. I looked at the engine closely and found that the bolts on the cylinder head were loose. Well, I took the head off and found that wasn't the case at all. I will get into the engine details when I start putting it back together. But tonight I was working on the engine compartment. I removed the oil injector and tank. I cleaned out the tank and found that I needed to make new cork gaskets. I found 1/8 cork gasket material by the roll at my local auto parts store. Using the cover and the oiling body itself as a template I made two gaskets that will work very well.

Something else that I found interesting with the oil injector. Was that a previous owner made spacers to go into the bracket and the whole oil injector was on the left side of the bracket. Basically moving it over to the left about 3 inches. The outlet for the oil meter also had a 90 degree bend in it so that the tube would be straight. I am going to leave it this way because, I'm sure the owner found this to be a lot better solution for putting oil into the tank. The car has 38,000 miles which is a ton for a micro car. Thinking that the car has a top speed of 55mph the minimum amout of hours spent driving the car would be over 690 hours.

Vespa 400 Getting Started

I have been fixing and riding scooters for almost 10 years. But I haven't done much with cars before. I have always been very interested in the Vespa 400, when I had the oppertunity to get one I jumped at the chance. The information about the 400 minimal. The 400 was introduced at the Paris Motorshow in 1957. And started production soon after from 1957 to 1961, 30,000 Vespa 400's were sold around the world before production was shut down. Although Vespa is an Italian company, none of the Vespa 400 cars were produced in Italy. Instead they were produced in Fourchambault by A.C.M.A. becuase of an agreement between Piaggio and Fiat.

So, only 5 years of production and very few cars produced makes for a difficult time finding parts, here and all over the world. But there are a couple of sources. www.microcarlot.com is the place were you are immediatly drawn to if you do any research on the internet. It seems like Larry @ microcarlot has bought up just about every spare part that was available in the US. He is also making some new parts that are commonly missing or broken on these 45 year old cars.

The 400 isn't the easiest car for my first restoration, but I feel after this other cars will be a lot easier.

Spring

Word. It is a lot easier to write when there is snow on the ground and there is nothing to do. I have been following my college's lacrosse team. The Gophers defeated UMD 10-8 to win the UMLL championship. I went to the game the day before where they just pulled off a win vs. UWSP, at one point they were losing, but came back to win 14-12. From what I saw I thought that it would be difficult for them to pull off the win, but I guess that you always have to pick up your game for duluth.

What is more exciting about the win is that they will play the USLIA national tournament at the National Sports Center in Blane. So the best club lacrosse teams in the country will be playing here. This may be the best lacrosse that Minnesotians will ever see live, Swarm included. The Gophers recieved a 15 seed, that means that they will play the second seeded team, Colorado State. Which will be a tough hill to climb, Colorado State was ranked #1 until their loss to now #1 BYU. Should be interesting.

Scootering

I am going to be starting to write a scooter column for Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly. Pretty much the same thing of what has been done in the past. Rally reviews, scooter news and maybe the new bikes that come to our shores from around the world.

It looks like Vespa introduced a new line of scooters to take over for the ET2 and ET4s. The LX line is similar in design to the GT 200 which was introduced last year.

TGB a new scooter company to the US, probably best known for having riders race across the country in pizza delivery scooters will introduce a new scooter to go along with their pizza bike, 101s a bike that competes against the Yahama Zuma and the Laser a sporty styled bike. The new scooter, the R50X is in the sport style but has angular lines and is a 50cc. I'm sure the US spec version will have different blinkers on the front and maybe on the back. What is intersting about this model is that there is a big tachometer right in the middle with a smaller digital speedo off to one side.

#6 Every Second Counts By Lance Armstrong

This book starts up where "It's Not About the Bike" left off. Lance has battled cancer that no one thought that he would beat, needless to say he did beat it and then went on to win the Tour de France a record 6 times. I read "It's Not About the Bike" after my accident and when my mom was going through cancer treatment and it was very inspirational for me. I wanted to get up and ride even though I couldn't even get out of bed. He made me want to keep going and believe in myself and my doctors.

Of course since then I haven't gone on to win anything but that book still stays with me. "Every Second Counts" has a different tone. I don't know if he is just cashing in on his fame at the moment but it didn't have the same passion as his previous book. But the subject matter was also a lot more interesting, his life and death struggle with cancer and then getting on his bike and winning the most punishing race imaginable. It is nice to hear about what he has done in the time since the first book. Like starting the Lance Armstrong Foundation and meeting with all of the different cancer patients around the world. He also talks about his different teammates on the USPS team and the training that they have to go through in order to help him win the tour.

Maybe it was just the situation that I was in when reading "It's not about the bike" but I was really disappointed in this one. Maybe a few years should pass and he could have written it with a bit more objectivity. It is hard to be insightful when you are in the middle of the situation. If he writes another book I hope it is 5 years down the line after he has retired and can give the whole scope of the cancer and racing. But I may be asking too much, because he is after all only a bike racer not a writer.