Soul Surfer
Charlie Edmonds
Super Monza engine scooter
NC500
Scotch mist
Go Full Throttle
Ride of a lifetime
Dealer Spotlight
#366 December 2016
Amy
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inside Events, dates dealers
WinnehoIBuUsTEe STUNNING TR LAMBRETTA
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BRIDLINGTON RALLY REPORT 7-PAGE SPECIAL!
VESPA VESPA UPGRADES AN F1 RACING
POLE POSITION
BGM177 FITTING LEGEND TRIBUTE AND DYNO REPORT Vespa World Days update ■ Casa Lambretta insider interview part 2 ■ Scooter Trader ■ Event Guide ■ Show Us Your Scooters ■ Southsiders SC spotlight ■ Darrell Taylor: Tech Torque ■ Sprinting ■ BSSO race reports and more…
CONTENTS 03Letter from the editor
92Club Focus
06Kickstart
95Tech Torque
– stunning tribute 14Amy custom scooter
– The Oddball 100Theo Vespa
A warm welcome to December Scootering.
The front section with all the latest news, views and product reviews!
The Queen of Camden realised in scooter art.
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Rally report
BSRA – Bridlington seven-page special report.
We go down under with Southsiders Scooter Club.
Stu Owen continues his new winter feature – Scooter Restoration Guide – Part 2.
An unusual custom Vespa… you’ll see.
102Tech Torque
Dan continues the Vespa tuning and upgrades section – this month to fit and dyno the BGM177 kit.
31Letters
108Disc Lambretta
36Soul Surfer
115Tech Torque
46Dealer spotlight
120Pole Position T5
Feedback and full throttle responses from the readers. Cool as you like, Super Monza surf scooter. This month we nosey behind the scenes of Piaggio dealer Go Full Throttle.
five-speed 52Javelin custom Lambretta
A very shiny SX five-speed peach of a scooter.
58North Coast 500
Wee Stevie Adair shares the trip of a lifetime.
Inlet flappy things 63for power
Stu Owen delves into the history of the first reed-valve Lambretta.
A Lambretta that’s made almost entirely out of, well, discs!
Darrell Taylor takes us through service schedules, with a few surprises in store!
A Vespa tribute to F1 racing legends.
Sprinting 124Scooter Report
Darrell Taylor reports on recent sprinting shenanigans.
128BSSO 2016 review
Paul Green looks back at an amazing year on the track.
131Scooter Trader
Your sales and classifieds section – including Specialist Services & at a glance.
of Velvet – a Sting 68ofA Touch Brass 144DNCC Inspiring AF Rayspeed themed custom from the AFSC.
Dave’s Nostalgic Custom Corner with another historical gem.
74Show us your scooters
146Way Back When
The best of the rest from the readers stunning rides.
Classic images from the archive.
77House of Lambretta: Part 2 Christian Giarrizzo investigates the 250cc racer with Vittorio Tessera.
82Club Do’s & Events
Your essential guide to the scene – What, Where & When!
87
Scootering Words & Sounds
The best of words and music as reviewed by Nik & Sarge.
4 | SCOOTERING | DECEMBER 2016
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ry Tearsr OD wn On Thei
There are many different reasons behind both the creation and theme of custom scooters. Over the years I’ve heard most of them, however this one really is a bit different. Read on…
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ears Dry On Their Own has a dual purpose, firstly to promote the work of the Amy Winehouse Foundation, and secondly to eventually raise funds for the charity via auction, once the various promotional events have run their course. The name of the scooter, Tears Dry On Their Own, has been taken from a track off the seminal Amy Winehouse album Back To Black. It’s hardly surprising why this name was chosen, given Amy’s tragic death in 2011, and over the coming months this Lambretta is going to be utilised as a promotional vehicle for the foundation. First outing for the finished machine was at an event in Camden Market on what would have been Amy’s 33rd birthday, five years on from the charity being set up. Creating this particular scooter was in effect a three-way split between the key people involved in the project.
The idea
Sharon Judd works on the PR side for the Amy Winehouse Foundation. She said: “It started off as a basic idea, along the lines of wouldn’t it be good if there was a custom scooter with an Amy theme, which we could use for publicity, and then auction off to raise funds for the Amy Winehouse Foundation. From there I put a shout out on social media to see what sort of response, if any, there would be, that was March 2016. “A friend of mine, Graham Webb, came forward and I had a chat with him about what my idea was and would involve. He had a scooter and was prepared to get the work done. He even managed to turn it round from start to finish in around seven weeks! We were both excited about the project; it was a job to keep quiet about it while the Amy scooter was being created.
Bridlington Promenade – a rival to The Green at Ryde?
BSRA National Bridlington October 28-30, 2016
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It’s the season finale, a last chance to get together before retreating to our sheds for the winter and this year beautiful weather brought out the crowds at Bridlington.
ituated on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, Bridlington has hosted the end of season rally for many years. It’s hard to imagine that scooterists were once barely tolerated in the town as they are now welcomed with open arms. No doubt this financial bonus at the end of the season plays a part in the attitude, but the overall feeling is of a town that genuinely appreciates our presence and works hard to retain our continued custom. The rally itself is centred around ‘The Spa Complex’ to the south of the town. Although built in the 19th century, the complex has benefited recently from considerable investment and is the ideal venue for the UK’s largest trade and custom show. Organised jointly by the Lambretta Club of Great Britain and VFM, this year’s event continued to deliver the high standards that visitors have come to expect. Having travelled the length and breadth of the nation this year, the 80 mile trip from home was a very welcome prospect.
With my P2 still on the subs bench and the LML returned to Scootering HQ, I took the opportunity to give my GP its first real run out after rebuild. A snapped speedo cable before I’d got out of my village wasn’t the best start, but other than that, the Lambretta provided one of my most trouble free rides of the year. So much for scooter stereotypes! Thanks to the Vespa Club of Cheshire I’d managed to find a bed within walking distance of town, something not everyone managed to achieve. Being a firm fixture on the scootering calendar brings mixed blessings. Riders can plan ahead but this often means that accommodation is sold out a year or more in advance. Local businesses also seize the opportunity to grasp the scootering pound and this year saw a number of live bands competing against the VFM evening events, with one band booked by VFM also playing a free admission gig at a pub on Friday. I don’t blame the bands for making the best of things but it illustrates the problems faced by rally organisers who need to recover their costs.
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Soul r e f r u S
Imagine the scenario, you’re a 15-year-old Mod, you find not one but two Series 2 Lammies on a farm. You pay £25 for the two, then swap one of them for a backrest. Many years later you strike a deal to buy back the Series 2 of the same person you did the swap with, and have to shell out £2000 to clinch the deal. And the scooter remained untouched for the entire time!
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xcept this isn’t an imaginary scenario, it’s a synopsis of what actually happened to Trev (TJ) Mason over a number of years. “I was 15 years old and I found a couple of old, tatty scooters in the village I grew up in at a place that cleaned agricultural equipment,” he said. “One was a Li150 Series 2, the other a TV175 Series 2. I asked the farmer if he wanted to sell them and we agreed a price of £25 for the pair. I wheeled them home one at a time, and although I knew less than nothing about scooters at that time, I was feeling rather pleased with myself. “My bubble was well and truly burst when my dad came home. To say he went mad would be an understatement, his words went something along the lines of… ‘you’re absolutely not going to be one of those beatnik Mods’ and he gave me two weeks to get rid of the scooters. I spent the next week or so riding round all the local farms asking if there was a corner of a barn or something similar where I could keep them. “Eventually a local farmer put me in touch with a woman who had a couple of disused chicken sheds. She let me keep them both in a corner of one of them. I set about restoring the Li150 S2, and ratting the TV around rough ground. The TV was in a bit of a sorry state, and among other problems with it at that time, the kick-start shaft had gone. Not that I knew much about anything mechanical, let alone how to put things right. “Both scooters were on J plates (1971) and had tax discs for 1974, they’d come onto mainland England from Guernsey in ’71, which explains the J plates, and had laid there unused from ’74 till 1981 when I bought them. I got the Li150 rebuilt and rode it to my first rally, Isle of Wight 1982,
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Images from Spanish 6-Hour enduro race in Spain 2011. Yellow Super Monza won overall and was first place Lambretta, Red Super Monza finished as the second place Lambretta.
Gearchange/rpm light and EGT gauge.
The ride
are made of... Isle of Wight, Millport or tour the North Coast 500? There was only ever going to be one option. The beautiful Scottish roads and the spectacular vistas they offer are among the world’s best, and right on our doorstep. Stevie Adair bucks the rally trend and goes on the trip of a lifetime.
Show us your
Please send your scooter pictures to: Show Us Your Scooters, PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincs, LN9 6LZ (include an SAE if you want your print returned) or email a HIGH RESOLUTION image to suys@scootering.com
Scoots t
Len Hamilton’s Series 2 TV175 of Stone Scooter Club, Staffordshire, caught on film at the ‘Storm the Fort’ scooter rally New Brighton. Len has also sent one in of Stone Scooter Club, which was founded in 2012, getting ready to leave their club base on a Sunday rideout.
Sent in by Colin.
Rich Smythe sent these in of Acomb Retro Scooter Enthusiasts (ARSE) in York outside The Ainsty Pub and his little Li125 awaiting a clutch cable fitting by RT in York.
Dan Whiteford sent these before and after shots of his scoot, a 1972 Vespa 50 Special.
Southsiders SC AUSTRALIA
This month our Club Focus feature takes an international twist, and skips out to Oz to meet a good bunch of blokes from UK scooter clubs, now formed as the Southsiders SC...
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outhhsiders SC (Australia) was formed as recently as 2015 by a group of mates, solo riders, outcasts, pommies and general riff raff… most of whom are the now ex-members of some very well-known UK clubs. The Southsiders SC now stands at 13 members (and growing) and thankfully there are no bigtime Charlies (Oz lingo for idiot) and we are all good mates. Between us we own the following scooters: 13 Lambrettas, nine Vespas and a few other makes. No Scomadis as yet but I’m pretty sure there will be some in the not too distant future... As ever, we are all busy with work and family life but we try to have a ride out at least once a month and also have an ‘overnighter’ as often as possible. We also support both the National Classic Scooter Rally and the National (autos allowed) Scooter Rally scene. Earlier this year we rode to Renmark in South Australia’s Riverland (a round trip of more than 600km) for the two-day National Scooter
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Rally. It’s something we always look forward to as a club, and this year was no exception. By the time you are reading this we will also have held our first, of what we hope to be annual, party/rally in conjunction with our friends Melbourne Crusaders SC. This year’s rally (Run For The Hills 2016) is being held over two nights in November, at Halls Gap in the Victorian Grampians. So, that’s the Southsiders SC – Adelaide... it’s a newer club than most, but a great one, and we are a solid bunch. Essentially we are just a good bunch of mates who not only ride together but socialize together on a regular basis and we all have the same illness: a love of those bloody things called scooters! Anyone on holiday in South Australia and wants to catch up with us can contact me by email pstafford822@gmail.com Paul Stafford ■ A big thank you to Laingy’s better half Karyn Kent for the photography.
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2-STROKE DEVELOPMENT & FEASIBILITY:
HOW MUCH BHP IS TOO MUCH?
Watching the leaps and bounds tuners and manufacturers have made with Lambretta and Vespa scooters over the past few years, the questions have to be asked: Where is ‘development’ taking us, what power figure is best, and what lessons can we learn from history? Darrell Taylor investigates…
From the race track to the road, the Big Four and others knew the limitations of two-stroke power and its reliability. What lessons can we learn in order to build the best scooter engines we can?
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