The Payoff

Three months later, this is the final result of non-stop Lambretta tinkering.

I thought putting the bike back together would be easier than taking it apart because there would be no need to saw rusty screws off. And it was easy for the most part. But I ran into some problems putting the trim on. I learned that to get the rubber on the bike it's best to let the rubber bake in the sun for a while to loosen it up.

I kept the hole in the legshield so I could put this old-school 70's bolt on mirror which I think turned out to be the right move.

And I didn't have a rivet gun so I got a buddy at Vespa Dallas to do the honors (I couldn't bare botching up as set of new-old-stock SIL badges that I'd ordered from England because I didn't have the right tools.)

I got the bike buttoned up just in time for a huge classic car/motorcycle cruise night that was happening 20 miles from my house. I rode two-up with my girlfriend on the Princess without a problem. I easily hit 50 mph on busy Dallas streets. It felt great!

But as soon as we started back home, I snapped a clutch cable. And in my hurry to reassemble the bike, I didn't put the spare cables back in my glove box. So, for nearly an hour, I rode two-up in first gear topping out at a maximum 12 mph. I got a mile and a half from my house before I completely ran out of gas (Holly was not amused.) A friend was passing by and took us home in his pickup.

I got the cable changed. And a few days later I rode the bike to meet some friends and I lost both the headlight and the tailight! At night. Of course.

Anthony rewired the bike and sort out my singed junction box.

Now I'm on to changing the clutch --- it's slipping pretty bad --- and putting in a real gas tank and a fuel tap so I don't have to take the panel off and manually turn the gas off everytime I shut the bike down.

Wish me luck.

Reassembly

The paint is now as good as it's going to look. There are few or no runs, but there are some minor imperfections and a few spots where the finish isn't even, but it looks way better than I thought it would for a first time paint job.

Frankly, I couldn't wait to put the bike back together. Having shit all over my back yard while I've been painting the bike has kept me motivated. I had to clear out my garden shed to use it as a paint booth and had nowhere else to put the contents for the shed other than underneath the car port. Looking at a bunch of refuse every day kept me focused to put that bike back together if for no other reason than so I could reclaim my shed.

I started with the floor boards and worked my way up.

I debated repainting the air and tool boxes, but decided to leave them alone. They both shined up fairly well. I'd rather save original paint where ever I can --- just weird that way. However, they look pretty stupid sitting next to the orange lawnmower gas tank on the bike. But that will hopefully be gone as a new tank is in the mail to me.

It's exciting putting everything back together. I've never seen a black GP 150 before (that's certainly not what showed up on my doorstep two months ago) and it's coming together before my eyes.

I'm already running into a couple of issues. The first one is that the leg shield rubber is a bitch to get back on. I fool with it for nearly and hour and decided to move on to something easier and come back to that. I'm going to leave the rubber out in the sun and heat it up to see if that will help it loosen up enough to fit on the shield.

Also, one of the floor rails is not matching up correctly. I'm going to have to cut it a bit and drill a new hole for it to make it fit. And it's really hard getting the rubber into the floor rail without bending the crap out of the rails. I'm probably doing it all wrong, but I've got two of them finished.