Finito Veneto

Ahhhhh, do you smell that? No, it's not another butterfly fart, it's the sweet smell of success! We have completed the Verucci Veneto's restoration!

After all the sanding/painting/sanding-properly/painting-again we set aside a few hours last Saturday to assemble the body work. In my mind, while the act of assembling is easy, putting the right bit in the right place with the right screw was going to be tough. We had approximately 15 pieces for the body work and what-might-as-well-have-been a million screws, nuts, bolts, etc. All in one pile.

Fortunately, if you start from the middle and sort of work your way out, it's pretty obvious what needs to go where and - most of the time - there tends to be only one type of screw/bolt for each purpose. Either that or we just got lucky.

Here she is fully-assembled:





We had a couple of stray screws left over (I figure they must have multiplied somehow like bacteria) but everything feels very sturdy and it all came together nicely.

Oh, and despite vowing to never work with fibreglass ever again, we did decide to do some additional work on a couple of structural pieces to make sure they're as secure as they can be. And this time round, it really wasn't that bad. Prior planning and preparation prevents piss poor phibreglass, as they say.

Here's the before-and-after pic:



So, thanks for following our blog! And here's to many more successful (or not) fixits!

Stay tuned for our next project…

Enter Sandman

It's been a while... but we've still been busy.

A few weeks ago, we tackled the surprisingly-theraputic job of sanding the body parts. Most of the old paint was peeling off and our fiberglass work left some residual resin in a few places, so we figured it was best to strip everything thing down to the original plastic.

A bit of elbow grease plus a couple of orbital sanders made light work of the paint-removal and we were soon applying the first coat of our stealthy-black paint, spraying the pieces of bodywork underneath the reassembled (useless) gazebo/paint-booth.

A week later and we examined our work. Unfortunately, black paint isn't very forgiving and it certainly didn't cut us any slack exposing the nasty side-effect of using an orbital sander (with 200-grit paper): swirls. They were all over the place.

We figured we needed to go down to a finer grit and settled on using 600-grit, thanks to a recommendation from a man who's done this kind of thing before (I thought we were the only ones). We used the paper dry at first, then wet. It worked like a charm. The swirls disappeared and left us with a perfect surface to apply our remaining coats.

Not sure how many we ended up applying in the end, but with some expert guidance from Jason's mum, we had everything painted in no time.



We left the parts to cure for a couple of weeks before tackling the reassembly.

2 scooters, 1 garage

Who out there thought we'd stick with just the one scooter?

Go on, admit it, you all thought we'd struggle to get the mighty Verucci Veneto up-and-running and would end up with her parts strewn all over the place, cutting a forlorn figure of her former glory, while we gave up and moved on to the next fix-it-thing.

Well, our blog wouldn't be so-named if we weren't a little skeptical of our own ability, but as we've made excellent progress so far, we decided to buy another one.Cheap scooters are hard to come by: first, running ones tend to be out of our budget (not such a big deal as we are trying to restore here); second, many are without a title (some are even without keys and have been "acquired"); and third, anything that's actually worth restoring isn't "for sale" for long and tends to also be out of our budget. Did I mention we were looking for really cheap scooters?

Jason found a post on Craigslist advertising a working Yamaha Qingqi for $250, with title and all. The guy was getting rid of it because it wouldn't go fast enough and needed to reliably get to work. Slow and unreliable - exactly what we're looking for.

We rocked up to his place and, having just got out of bed it seemed, he showed us what he was selling: a pale-blue, slightly-scratched-and-cracked-but-working Verucci Qingqi with a step-through frame. Wait! It's not a Yamaha, but... a Verucci? Perfect.

He pulled out a handful of papers ranging from the bill of sale to the user manual, but unfortunately there was no title. (note to those reading who are thinking of selling their scooters: hand-written piece of paper with the VIN <> title)

Despite that, we knocked him down in price a few bucks and went on our merry way. Once home, we put in some fresh fuel, gave her a kick or two, and she purred into life. Well, I say purred, but this one's a 2-stroke.

Check out the pics:

Financial Update

I know you've all been waiting for this, and who could blame you. Keeping track of the money is probably the most exciting part of the project. I mean, it's far more fun than getting to ride the scooter, you just fixed, for the first time. Right?

Well, probably not but here it is anyway.

There's still plenty of work to be done, but I'm happy with our expenses so far.

Thanks for reading!

-Jason

She’s a runner!

Well folks, we recently had a very exciting day. When we got the scooter, the chain wasn’t included. Fortunately, the guys at Barney’s Motorcycle & Marine were able to get us the correct chain based on the size of the front sprocket. They actually opened up a couple of chains to make sure we got the right one. Turns out it was a 428-120L. It was just 2 links too long so we used the chain breaker we just purchased to pop out a couple of pins. After that, we were able to fit the master link. At this point, though, we still weren’t ready to ride. We still needed to fit the sprocket bracket for which we’d been so patiently waiting. It always amazes me how a little $2 piece of metal is all it takes to keep you off the road. Anyway, here’s what it looks like installed:Thanks to this little beauty, the chain will stay on. Once the chain and bracket were installed, it was time to put the exhaust back on. I have to say, I’m really please with the way it looks.
With that, we were off. James was kind enough to let me take it for the first spin. It was glorious! I can’t describe the feeling of accomplishment we had at taking something that hadn’t functioned in 2 years and getting it back on the road.
After my quick spin, it was time for James to have a go. Unfortunately, we were so excited, we didn’t notice that the inner tube in the rear tire and almost completely given out.
Once we put some more air in the tires, James was able to take it for another ride, before the tire when completely flat. It was great day and it mades all the hard work well worth while.

Thanks for reading!
-Jason

The long pole in the tent: building our paint booth

Have you ever seen a "portable" gazebo tumbling over and over propelled by a mild breeze in a park or at the beach causing havoc as people try to avoid being speared by its flimsy pole legs?

That's the look I'm hoping for when I eventually take my not-bought-for-the-scooter-project-at-all-darling gazebo to said park or beach.

For now, though, with some plastic sheets to fill in the sides, it'll be used as a makeshift paint booth to turn our faded, flaky scooter body into a gem.

I picked up the cheapest gazebo I could find at Target and we started assembling it inside the garage.

If you've ever erected (stop sniggering) a tent, you'll find this gazebo a breeze to put up. There are approximately 500 million pieces to it, but they all fit together logically.

Our biggest problem was the sheer size of it (that's what she said). Fully erec... umm, assembled, it's 8.5' tall (at the peak) and 10x10' square. Plenty of room to maneuver inside, but it won't fit in the garage.

We shuffled it out the garage door until it was sort of half-in-half-out, then set about taping the world's thinnest plastic drop sheets to the "tent pole" legs.

Fortunately, last Saturday was a hot, humid, windless day, so we taped one side of our booth without any trouble. Unfortunately, 30 seconds later a butterfly flew past and apparently farted (it's the only explanation I have), causing the entire sheet to billow out like a sail and peel off our pathetic attempts at taping.

Having built the workbench at the start of this project, we luckily had some 2x4 off-cuts, so set about using them as weights to keep the sheet pinned down as best we could, before quickly putting up the other sides in a vain attempt to block the butterfly farts. It worked well enough for us to hang the exhaust and give that a second coat, but soon fell apart.

Not wanting to experience "death by tumbling gazebo" just yet, we simply moved on to other project tasks. If at first you don't succeed... give up, is my rule.

Actually, our plan is to remove 4 of the 500 million pieces from the legs to lower it sufficiently, so it will fit in the garage. Then we'll try putting the sheets up again and hope for the best.

We'll see...

Working with Fiberglass is HARD!

The first step was to prepare our work area. We laid out the pieces we intended to repair, the Bondo brand fiberglass resin and hardener, and some fiberglass cloth. We then cut some strips of fiberglass cloth to the lengths we needed. After putting on our masks and gloves, we began mixing the resin and hardener. From the directions on the can of resin, we figured about 12 drops of hardener to 1/8 cup of resin. Once mixed, we began dipping the strips of cloth into the resin. Once a piece had been saturated, we placed the strip over the crack on the non-visible side of the body panel. Using a small paint brush, we smoothed out the strip and added or removed resin as necessary. Once the resin/cloth combination set, the repair was hard as a rock.

Wow, that sounded pretty simple, right? Well guess what, it was just about the most frustrating process I’ve ever been a part of. First off, this stuff is messy. The resin gets all over your gloves and will stick to anything you touch. This isn’t too much of a problem, unless you’re trying not to get it on a piece you weren’t intending to paint. “Ugh! It looks like we’re going to need to put a sticker over that piece.”

Another frustration is that it takes just as long for the resin to harden on the piece you’re working with as it takes for the rest of the resin you mixed to become hard as a rock in the container where you mixed it. Don’t even think about working with this stuff if you don’t have a way to hold the cracked body panel in position while you move on to your other pieces. If possible, I would recommend tacking things together using some sort of super glue and then laying the fiber glass over that. This is especially true when trying to fix a price that’s broken completely off. Use the glue to get the piece in place then use the fiberglass to give it some strength and structure.

All in all, I’d call it a successful first try. However, we did learn a few things:
1. Preparation is IMPORTANT. We thought we were prepared, we weren’t.
2. You have to work quickly and efficiently. Plan out every move you’re going to make or the resin will harden before you’re done and you’ll have to mix more.
3. Make sure would work area is big enough. You don’t want this stuff getting on tools, the floor, your work bench, etc…
4. If possible, fix the cracks with some kind of glue first and use the fiberglass to add structure.

Of everything we learned through this experience, this is the most important thing, “Working with fiberglass is not the same as working with glue.” Get your pieces attached first and get your cracks glued together before you even open the can of resin. Trust me; it’ll save you a lot of headache! The happy ending is that the repairs are super strong and are going to hold up really well.

Thanks for reading!
-Jason

Total Exhaustion

By any measure, it had already been a great day. We got our girl running and learned plenty in the process. Anything else would just be icing on the cake. Since we only had a few hours left to work, we decided to take off the exhaust and see what we could to to get that cleaned up.

Although it looked pretty rusty, there weren't any holes. A wire brush, some sand paper, a little elbow and this thing should clean right up... Our first step was to head over to the local ACE Hardware for some supplies. While we were there, we picked up a small wire brush bit for the drill. The idea was to use it for the really rusty parts. The next item was a can of Rustoleum High Heat Spray. This stuff in generally for use of BBQ Grills so we're hoping it will hold up to the heat of the exhaust.

Once we got back to the garage, the work began. Although the bit we bought for the drill worked pretty well, it was just a little too small to cover the surface area we needed. We used it to get as much of the rust and old paint as we could before the drill battery died. After that, it all came down to sandpaper and elbow grease.

If you ask me, it was worth it. There was some pitting in a couple areas due to the rust, but we figured a couple coats of paint and no one would notice. So we gave it a quick wash and here's what we were left with...At this point we got some rope, hung the exhaust from the garage door and started painting. After a couple of coats, here's what we were left with. We were really pleased with the mat look of the paint. We're planning on doing a gloss black for the body so it should be a nice contrast. Hopefully the High Heat Spray paint will hold up for a while. The work it took was, in a word, "exhausting," but the results make my shoulder hurt a little less.

Thanks for reading!
-Jason

Gentlemen, start your engines!

Let me remind you of where we left off last week:

We’d got a new battery, put some fresh fuel in, checked the fuel line valve to make sure it was “on” and almost got her started. After lots of head scratching, we decided to pack it in for the day and give it a go the next weekend, starting with cleaning the carb…

Being complete n00bs, we had no idea if the problem of her not starting was related to the carb or not, but we wanted to clean it anyway, if only to see what one looks like. Here’s what we were dealing with, including air filter, prior to dismantling:


Looking pretty grimy, but not too bad:


And here’s what it looked like after dismantling (notice the brass jet in the middle of the float chamber still in there, though – not cleaning it proved stupid and crucial):


And, finally, back on looking shiny and new:


Now, rather than writing lengthy prose about the steps involved, I’m going to list them, one-by-one, so you can appreciate the effort that went into this. Here goes:

1) check the fuel line valve is “on” (as we’d determined last week)
2) confirm we have a spark from the sparkplug
3) try starting her using the electric starter, to no avail, practically draining the battery
4) check fuel line where it’s attached to the carb, nothing coming out
5) discover additional fuel line valve at the other end of the line near the fuel tank
6) try to determine which way that valve is “on” (with a couple of mouthfuls of fuel for Jason… *snigger*)
7) still little to no fuel coming out, so take off the tank
8) drain fuel tank, while cleaning fuel filter as best we can – nothing obviously blocking it, though
9) put tank back on and align both valves to “on” for sure
10) try to kick start it… for ages.
11) spray a little carb cleaner into the carb directly
12) engine splutters a couple of times, including a pretty awesomely pathetic backfire, but she still won’t run
13) checked fuel line AGAIN and there’s no fuel whatsoever getting into the carb
14) fill the tank to the top of the fuel filter to try to get past the apparent blockage
15) now we’re getting fuel
16) try to kick start it… for ages, again, and half the time with the ignition off. D’oh!
17) still no luck
18) remove carb
19) pour small amount of fuel into engine directly
20) she fired up!! Twice!

At this point, we’d eliminated every other possible problem and figured it must be due to the carb. So, we cleaned it again, this time making sure we covered every part. Lo and behold, the jet we overlooked the first time was pretty clogged. A quick spray of the cleaner blew what was a pin-size hole into a proper hole and we reassembled everything again.

Here’s the result (check out our elation quickly turning to panic as we realize the throttle is stuck open):



She hadn’t been run in a couple of years, so red-lining for her first start in a while probably wasn’t the best thing to do, but we fixed the throttle problem (carb wasn’t quite assembled properly), and left her idling gently for a few minutes afterwards while we marveled at our accomplishment.

Step one of this restoration complete!

Money Talks. Guy with Broken Scooter Walks.

Maybe some of you out there can relate to this. You start a new project, could be anything, and for one reason or another, you get pulled away and can't get back to it for a while. If that's ever happened to you, you probably understand how I can't wait to get back to work on the ole' Verucci. We were so close to getting her started this past weekend, and the prospect of getting her up and running has been on my mind all week.

Well, since James and I haven't been able to actually work on the scooter, I thought I'd do a little accounting. I think it's going to be pretty important to keep tabs on what we spend during this project. We have a lot of goals for this project, not the least of which is doing it on the cheap. Believe me, that was a major selling point when explaining the idea to our wives!

Here's what we've spent so far:

With the cost of the can of carb cleaner I'm about to buy, we'll hopefully have a running scooter for about $200. Now some of you out there may be saying, "Hey, you could have bought a running scooter for that much." Maybe yes, maybe no, but if we had, we'd never have learned the things we've learned up to this point. In my opinion, the experience we've gained so far has been worth every penny.

Speaking of learning things, I'd just like to recognize a forum that I've spent a lot of time on lately. It's called Chinese Scooter Club. I can't say enough about this web site. The information, advice and people are all top notch. Thanks again!

Well, that's all for now. More to come this weekend.

Thanks for reading!
-Jason

Will this Tear Down Lead to a Start Up?

As any home makeover or ride pimping TV show will tell you, the first step to any improvement is completely dismantling whatever you're improving. Since we're new to this whole thing, who are we to argue? So after James' work bench mini project (no one told me there would be carpentry), we got straight to undressing the old girl.

This is what we started with. It's hard to see here, but there are a lot of interlocking plastic sections that make up the bulk of the body work. On the whole, removing the plastics was fairly easy. However, the plastic itself seems quite brittle and there are a few existing cracks. This, combined with our general lack on knowledge about the scooter, meant we had to be extremely careful not to do any more damage. One of my biggest worries about the project is repairing cracks in the plastic. Although there are a few cracks here and there, at this point, I don't think there's anything we can't fix. More on that in a couple of weeks.


After about an hour's work, this is what we ended up with. All undressed and nowhere to go. She's definitely looking more like a scooter and less like a motorcycle now. We did our best trying to keep all of the different screws and bolts organized. Whenever possible, we taped them to the piece they were used to fasten. This became more difficult around the handle bars though. There were just so many screws holding in the switches and lights. I'm sure it's going to be a challenge getting it all back together. My guess it that it'll be a lot of trial and error.



With all the plastics off, we got our first good look at the engine. All in all, it looks pretty good. Our next mission was getting her running. We knew the engine hadn't been run for about two years so we decided to start with the basics. That included changing the spark plug, changing the oil, and installing a new battery.

We started by hitting a local scooter/jet ski/boat/motorcycle shop called Tampa Bay Power Sports. Even though they didn't have some of the parts we needed, the owner was extremely helpful. He was able to give us plenty of helpful advice and even showed us the proper way to fill the battery we bought with acid. I believe his exact words were, "I'd better do that for you. You two will end up with battery acid everywhere." Being that this was absolutely true, we took no offense. We'll definitely give them any business we can in the future. We ended up getting the oil (10W40 fully synthetic) and the spark plug from Advanced Auto Parts and heading back to the garage for installation.

So did she start? In a word, "Almost." Fortunately, before we completely flooded it, it actually turned over a couple of times and tried to run. Being the newbs we clearly are at this, we couldn't figure out which direction on the fuel cut-off was actually on. We needed to know for sure how the fuel cutoff switch worked so the only thing left was to take it off and find out. Now that we have it off, we might as well take the carb off and give it a good cleaning. More on that in my next post!

Thanks for reading!
-Jason

Bench press

Despite being completely clueless (is that in-general, or just about scooter repair? Yes...), we know that nothing constructive can be done unless we have a decent workspace to use during this restoration. Fortunately, I have a mostly-empty, 2-car garage and a forgiving wife willing to let us scatter bike parts all over it. However, for some unknown reason, it appears this garage was previously used to actually keep cars in it, so is not particularly well setup for maintaining order in our potentially chaotic project. Sure, there are a couple of shelves/cabinets and a tool wall (with very few tools), but no defined workspace.

So, armed with a step-by-step guide found on the Interweb, we set about building a sturdy workbench on which we could tinker with our parts, so to speak. I set off to Home Depot early on Saturday to fetch the lumbar (some 2x4's, a couple of 4x4's, and a sheet of particle board) and got them to cut the various lengths required. Jason, meanwhile, provided our morning fuel in the shape of McDonald's bacon & egg biscuits. I feel that may have to become a tradition!

A few deck screws in appropriate places and we had the main frame put together:

Then it was just a case of securing the particle board to that frame (although my 1/2" miscalculation on the required width of the board made that a little trickier than it should have been! Darn "nominal vs. actual" lumbar sizes!):

Finally, we heaved it into position ready to use (and it can hold a LOT more than me!):


Now the project really starts!

What does a $100 scooter look like?

The fact is, a $100 scooter can look like a lot of things. Unfortunately, you probably wouldn't want to ride many of them. That's where James and I come in. Somehow, the two of us came up the the completely mental idea that two guys, knowing next to nothing about scooters, engines, or body work could miraculously turn a used $100 scooter into something worth risking life and limb to ride.

An now, the "Before" picture:













Isn't she a beauty?

Not to be out done, here's my attempt as starting her up:













Didn't work...

And how about one from the front:













So there you have it. Step one, buy something to fix up, complete. There's a lot of body work to be done but first things first, we need to get her running. More on that in the days and weeks to come.