Taking the bike apart

I take a three-day weekend and devote as much time as possible to prepping the bike for paint. I take every body panel off I can to make the paint job better. Because this bike has been stored outside for so long, most of the metal screws holding the sheet metal together are rusty as hell. PB Blaster is no match for the screws. So I waste an entire day hacksawing 20 nasty rusty screws off the floor rails on the bike.

I decide not to remove the leg shield. I could take the foot brake apart and get it off, but I need to do some work on a few dents so I figure I might as well leave it on. Some of the original paint is still on the hard to reach areas, I'm going back with the original color, so I leave well enough alone and focus on the parts of the bike where the paint is gone.

Lambretta purists scoff at Indian Lambrettas because they weren't produced in Italy. But SIL bought Innocenti's Lambretta plant in Milan, lock stock and barrel in 1971 when the plant shut down. When I started looking at the parts, over 60 percent of them were stamped "Innocenti" including the horn cast, the headset and the engine casings. Bonus.

But again, who really cares where the parts were made as long as they work? Yet I love that I know this because I was stupid enough to take the bike apart myself and have a look around.