Knocked over in the street

Got to my scoot yesterday, chained to the lamppost opposite my house, to find that the weatherproof cover had pools of neat fuel hanging down like incendiary saddle bags. The bike had also moved. And what's this? The side panel was loose, and the front mudguard was dented and hanging off.

Conclusion - some arse knocked it over while parking. I suspect it was a van as the mudguard dent is too high and square for it be a car. I guess they (or somebody else) picked it up, which is a relief as it would have just lay there leaking fuel.

The stand has also bent which means when I kick start the lever hits the floor. Total damage, if I were to get it done properly, runs into hundreds.

Looks like my decision to 'keep it shabby' has paid off. I'll bend the mudguard back, and re-attach it as it's dangerously loose. Not sure about the stand though, that might need a little more work :(

I guess I'm lucky there's no snapped levers, broken lights etc.

mylicenceplate.co.uk - very poor indeed

I know there was somebody there at mylicenceplate for the following reasons:

• they took my money
• I have their fingerprints permanently on my number plate

I know there's still somebody there at mylicenceplate.co.uk, because despite them ignoring all my emails and telephone calls, they recently had the tenacity to send me a marketing email.

This came somewhat as a surprise to me because I'd actually decided that they must have gone out of business. I thought this because a few weeks ago I was trying to contact them about said fingerprints. And here they are:

Nice huh? These prominent and indelible marks passed their non-existent quality control and actually got sent to me.

So I emailed them a polite email informing them of my problem, with this picture attached. No reply. I emailed them again. No reply. I emailed another email address. No reply.

Then I phoned. No answer. I phoned another number. No answer. And another number. No answer. And then I phoned them all again on a different day just to make sure. No answer.

Then I used their contact form on the website. No reply.

So, after using their website, and after three unanswered emails to two different addresses, and six unanswered phonecalls to 3 different numbers, all over a period of about 3 weeks, I decided they must have gone out of business. Well they haven't, as last week they sent me a marketing email. It's now clear they just don't care.

My advice? Whether you're looking for number plates, decals, stripes, sunstrips, graphics, then go somewhere else. If you buy from mylicenceplate.co.uk you'll be met with a wall of silence if you need any help.

Lambrettas everywhere

A Friday off work and it's a beautiful September day, so it was high time I took the scoot for a fast run up the Long Ashton bypass to check that everything is working as it should be. I had to fill her up with fuel first and here's where I made a mistake. I expected to be putting in 6 litres of fuel so I dropped in 250ml of oil prior to filling. Unfortunately the tank was full after 5 litres, so I'd miscalculated, and now had an incorrect fuel/oil mix of nearly 5%. I figured this shouldn't matter too much so carried on with my ride.

I sped along the bypass and it ran really well, keeping up with the traffic probably at around 55 or 60mph, although with my kph speedo and non-standard tyres it's difficult to tell.

But then, pulling off at the first junction the engine died while coasting, so I bailed out to the central reservation and started poking around. Compression was ok, and everything sounded ok, but it wouldn't start. The only tools I'd bought with me were some pliers, crimpers, meter and screwdriver - I was planning only to tweak the erratic rear light!

I'd been there 3 mins max when out of the blue a chap called Geoff pulled up on his S3 to lend a hand.

He had a spark plug spanner, so we removed the plug, gave it a wipe, cranked the engine a few times with no plug, and then refitted it. Geoff had the honour of trying to restart it - and start it did, with Geoff's 'full throttle' technique. Although I did have to increase the idle speed to keep it going, and my theory is that my problems were down to the fuel mix. Thanks to Geoff who turned up at just the right time!

Geoff went on his way and just as I was about leave, another Lambretta rider turns up. This time it's a chap called Ian:

It turns out he lives just down the road from Geoff, but they don't know each other. Ian was tentatively running in his GP and had only a few weeks ago suffered a seizure on this same stretch of road.

So if you want to meet other Lambretta riders, break down on the Long Ashton bypass on a sunny Friday morning. From now on I'll be carrying 200ml of oil for a 4.8 litre fill-up, giving me my target 4% ratio.

Jetex carb air mixture screw

The setting for the Jetex air mixture screw is different to that of a Dell'orto, so don't blindly follow advice for the wrong carb. For a Dellorto SH carb we are told to start off about 1 ½ turns and go from there. For a Jetex however, there's a label on the side that clearly states we shouldn't be going more than ¾ turns out.

To set the mixture properly, first warm up your engine. Then set the throttle idle screw (no. 26 in the diagram above) so that it holds the throttle open with the engine slightly fast. Now we need to set the mixture screw (no. 13) so that the engine is smooth and regular. Turning the screw in will make the mixture leaner, and out will richen it. When you have the smoothest tickover try opening the throttle. If the engine splutters or stops then a little more adjustment, probably to make it richer, is needed to eliminate this.

You'll probably end up somewhere between ½ and ¾ turns out.

Making a Lambretta exhaust quieter

I have a KBA exhaust, and it's pretty noisy. I have a theory that disrupting the air-flow near the exit point, and making it more turbulent, might reduce the 'pop' which is I think is the source of a lot of the noise. I also reckon this will have no impact on performance.

Now this is just an experiment at this stage, but I've dropped a discreet pop-rivet into the end of the exhaust to create the turbulence. I'll let you know a later date if it seems to have worked or not!



If it doesn't work then I'll have experiment with a baffle of some sort.

Gear oil change

While it was off the road I though it might be a good time to drain and change the gear oil. This hasn't done many miles but I was keen to see if I was getting any fuel contamination (indicating a leak via the drive-side bearing) or there was any alarming debris in there. I was relieved to see and smell everything was normal.



My oil-draining technique is a funnel and a plastic milk carton.

Lost compression

After about 50km of gentle commuting over a couple of weeks I noticed that the Lambretta had become difficult to start, and I'd had to adjust the idle setting and the mixture screw quite a few times in trying to get it all to work properly. So yesterday I decided to have poke around to see what was wrong.

My suspicion was aroused by what looked like oil on the fins where the head meets the cylinder. A check underneath revealed oil dripping from this area; this was pointing to a leak around the head gasket. So I did a compression test, and got a reading of 70psi. But what should it be?

Don't you remember Boyle's Law that tells us at a constant temperature 'PV = constant' where 'P is pressure and V is volume? So if you're compression ratio is supposed to be 7:1, then you're decreasing the volume of the gas in your cylinder (at atmospheric pressure, say 14.7psi) by a multiple of 7, which means the pressure reading at TDC should be a multiple of 7 higher than atmospheric, about 100psi.

Clearly I had a problem, and no wonder I was having to bump start the thing every day.



So I decided to remove the head and cyclinder with the engine almost in situ. By placing a trolley jack beneath it and removing the exhaust, inlet manifold and carb (just leave it dangling on the air hose), and then the engine bar you can lower the engine just enough to completely remove the top end. This is without having to undo any cables or wires, and I managed to leave my footboards in situ too (althoug I don't have a precious paint job!). Here's a pic of the oily fins after I removed the cowl. You can see all the others are clean but the top of the cylinder is clearly more oily:



Alarmingly, ny head nuts didn't offer much resistance when undoing, and although the head gasket wasn't damaged the cylinder base gasket had virtually disappeared:



I've no idea why my head nuts were loose. They either worked themselves loose (and I did notice that my wavy washers weren't very wavy at all), or perhaps I forgot to torque them up properly? I guess I'll never know, but when rebuilding it I cleaned all my gasket faces and this time used some sealant on the new base gasket but left the head gasket dry. I also made my wavy head nut washers more wavy in an effort to keep them tight.

After a long morning's work it was finished and back together, and to my amazement it started on the first kick! Time to take it out and do some plug chops.

With hindsight there was another symptom that should have alerted me to this problem earlier, but I'd simply made a mental note to 'keep an eye on it' - that was I seemed to get through a tank of fuel a lot quicker than I should have. Now I know why!

Note to self: Always have a spare set of gaskets for last-minute rebuilds.

Throttle return spring

The throttle handle on Lambrettas is returned to its stationary position by the slide return spring in the carb. In my opinion this is a big ask, and this became a problem when I fitted my new light switch. The cables for the switch were chunkier than the one I replaced, and I couldn't stop them interfering with the rotation of the throttle handle. It wasn't noticeable other than the throttle not returning when letting go, meaning a hairy moment when I forgot this on my first ride with the new switch.

To overcome this I fitted a spring from the end of the junction block to a nail inserted into the pin holding the nylon throttle wheel in place. The picture below shows the new switch wires and the spring in the foreground.



Not pretty to look at, but it works a treat, giving that extra bit of help to bring the throttle back to the closed position.

Adjusting the speedo cable

I never found the time to make the speedo work prior to my MOT, but this was ok as rather surprisingly you don't need one.

When I finally got the time to look at it it was apparent that the square-ended inner cable wasn't quite reaching home at the wheel-hub end. This was easily fixed by removing some of the plastic outer casing and winding the olive 5mm further along the cable.

Breakdown

Went for my MOT re-test today. Arrived well on time only to be told that I need to bring along my failure sheet. "Surely its on your system?" I asked. Apparently not. What a stupid system.

So I rushed back home to pick it up, but had a breakdown on the way back - the sound of scraping metal and then the engine stalling. This didn't sound good at all - I tried a light kick on the kick start and heard the same noise, and stopped straight away. So I pushed the scoot back home.

On closer inspection at home it turned out the flywheel cowl had come loose and was resting on the flywheel - what a relief! There was me thinking I'd holed the piston or lost a piston ring or something similar. So £2 on a set of new cowling fixings, but back to square one with the MOT.