WELCOME
S
o what grabbed your attention first, the sheet of free stickers or the fine selection of Lambrettas riding across the front cover this month? Hello and welcome to the June edition of Scootering, with apologies to overseas readers in some countries as apparently you don’t get the free stickers I’m referring to here – sorry! Nevermind though, because you still get the same fantastic content which this month includes our first test ride of the new Vespa GTS 300 Sport which features both anti-locking brakes and traction control. Who’d have thought it, eh? Sticky’s also been busy, very busy in fact, getting together a selection of GT kitted Lambrettas to offer a group kit test you won’t see anywhere else, getting the real feel of the bikes that we all ride, rather than something prepared by a shop. Elsewhere Barrie follows up last month’s guide to scooter suspension (which if you missed it you’ll be pleased to learn that back issues are available from Scootering’s online shop at www.scootering.com) by changing his Lambretta engine mounts in
Back to Basics. We also take a look at ceramic coating exhaust pipes and go shopping with the ladies to see how hard it is to get some riding kit that looks good, fits well and does the job. On the social side we have reports from Whitby BSRA scooter rally and Modfest from the Easter weekend, and hot off the press a review of the Tenby scooter rally too, from deepest Wales. Speaking of ‘the latest news’, there’s also a scooter racing report from Cadwell Park which also took place over the May Bank Holiday weekend, as well of course as all the usual amazing scooters, music reviews and some exciting product information. Enjoy… Andy
Next month…
We’ll have more scooter racing, a report from the BSRA scooter rally at Kelso in Scotland, more Back to Basics, a test ride on the new Piaggio MP3 scooters, some more gorgeous scooters to drool over as well as a rare 1920s British Unibus scooter!
www.scootering.com www.scootertrader.com Editor: Andy Gillard Email: editorial@scootering.com Publisher: Steve Rose Contributors: Sticky, Richie Lunt, Barrie Braithwaite, Iggy, Sargie, Jordan Lewis, Dave Oakley, AM, Tori, Cindy, Isabell, Lobby, John Woods, Lee Hollick and Lee Daniels. Many thanks to all other scooterists and clubs that have also contributed to this issue in some way. Cover: Photography by Sticky Designer: Charlotte Turnbull Reprographics: Simon Duncan Group production editor: Tim Hartley General queries and back issues: Tel: 01507 529529 24 hr answerphone Email: help@classicmagazines.co.uk www.classicmagazines.co.uk Archivist: Jane Skayman Tel: 01507 529423 Email: jskayman@mortons.co.uk Subscription: Full subscription rates (but see page 28 for offer): (12 months 12 issues, inc post and packing) – UK £47.88. Export rates are also available – see page 28 for more details. UK subscriptions are zero-rated for the purposes of Value Added Tax. Distribution: Comag, Tavistock Road, West Drayton, Middx UB7 7QE Tel: 01895 433600 Printed by: William Gibbons & Sons, Wolverhampton
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The advertising deadline for the next issue of Scootering (July 2014) is Thursday, June 5, 2014 On sale in newsagents June 26, 2014
Free ads, personals, club do’s & events These are all to be booked via the website at www.scootering.com or via post to: Scootering Magazine, PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincs LN9 6LZ The next free ads deadline is Wednesday, June 4, 2014
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Subscription manager: Paul Deacon pdeacon@mortons.co.uk Circulation manager: Steven O’Hara sohara@mortons.co.uk Marketing manager: Charlotte Park Email: cpark@mortons.co.uk Production manager: Craig Lamb Publishing director: Dan Savage Commercial director: Nigel Hole Associate director: Malcolm Wheeler SCOOTERING (USPS:020-245) is published monthly by Mortons Media Group Ltd, PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincolnshire LN9 6LZ USA subscriptions are $60 per year from Motorsport Publications LLC, 7164 Cty Rd N #441, Bancroft WI 54921. Periodical Postage is paid at Bancroft, WI and additional entries. Postmaster: Send address changes to SCOOTERING, c/o Motorsport Publications LLC, 7164 Cty Rd N #441, Bancroft WI 54921. 715-572-4595. chris@classicbikebooks.com SCOOTERING is published by: Mortons Scooter Media, a division of Mortons Media Group Ltd © 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any way without the written permission of the publishers. ISSN 0268 7194
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CONTENTS 03Hello & welcome...
92Ceramic Coating
06Kickstart
94Specialist Services
It’s June, the rally season is well under way, and here’s the latest edition of Scootering!
Packed full of information from news and reviews of products and events, to archive material, opinions, rumours and whispers, Workshop Essentials, old custom scooters from yesteryear, handy hints, readers’ letters, personals and plenty more.
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Scootering Oddballs
A very rare BMW prototype scooter from the early 1950s.
Nuclear technology for your humble scooter, via Formula 1. Intrigued? We were too. Whatever you want, from platers to painters, you’ll find them all here.
97Scooter Trader
Classified and business advertising, for all your scootering needs.
Going Shopping – 114 do the ladies get a rough deal?
We go shopping for female rider gear to see what’s what.
30Lambretta GT Kit Test 130Modstock 2014 First Road – The new 382014 Vespa GTS 300 134Lambretta 400 Five scooters, five kits and one day to test them all back to back.
Antilock brakes, traction control, Bluetooth technology... on a Vespa?
– 44Flamebreather Keeps on Burning From high mileage resto to custom Series 1 Lambretta.
50Club do’s & events Coast to 52LCGB Coast Run
A calendar of scooter related events.
Celebrating 60 years of Mod in the media. If you were consider tackling your first scooter engine transplant, is a V4 Honda motor the best to begin with?
Racing 143Scooter BSSO Rounds 2 & 3 The 2014 season continues in Anglesey and Cadwell Park.
146Into the Sunset
Another of your tales of trials and tribulation. Keep ’em coming folks!
Same direction, different route.
60Whitby Scooter Rally The Easter break in a picturesque seaside town – if you were there, we hope you enjoyed the ride!
70Tenby Scooter Rally A trip to Wales for the May Bank Holiday. Tidy.
78The Tartan Cypriot
When was the last time you saw a restored Vespa Primavera? Here’s one from Cyprus.
82Back to Basics
Following last month’s suspension guide, Barrie changes his Lambretta engine mounts.
Scootering – 88Practical Staff Scooters Barrie’s preparing for the Tre Mari in Italy.
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LAMBRETTA GT-KIT TEST Next year is the 30th anniversary of the TS1 going on sale. AF’s kit brought two innovations that transformed the Lambretta world: the wide power spread of reed valve induction and the superior cooling properties of a Nikasil-lined aluminium barrel. Why then, after all these years, would someone launch a new reed valve kit for the Lambretta 200 engine made from cast iron? A PILE OF IRON ING I’ll admit to having my reservations about the Gran Turismo GT186 kit when Richard Taylor launched it way back in 1997, but my worries proved totally unfounded. His cast iron kit – once it was upgraded to take the Yamaha RD350 YPVS piston – has proved itself endlessly. When set up correctly the GT186 performs brilliantly and is perfectly capable of being held at full throttle for long periods.
WHAT ARE TH E ADVA N TAG ES? The GT kit’s greatest asset is its flexibility of assembly in different configurations. This adaptability comes from the use of a very wide and shallow reed valve derived from a kart. If you want to maximise performance you can fit a large manifold and carb (30-34mm) on the right hand side like a TS1, but Richard’s smart solution was the squat 90º manifold that exits on the left allowing you to fit a smaller carb (25-30mm) and even, if you wish, still utilise the standard airbox. Another benefit of a GT kit only comes should you wear it out or break it. That is a challenge in itself due to the quality of both iron and piston used. If you damage the plating on an alloy kit then you are looking at a bill of around £150 to replate it and often around £90 for a new piston. If you do the same to a GT kit then you can get a rebore and a new piston for less than £100, often with many more oversizes left. In terms of practicality and economy, cast iron still has some plus points. For the big-block version of the GT, Richard has maximised this potential for upgradeability by supplying the kit as standard with only a 66mm piston, making it the same capacity as an original 200cc motor. In theory there are 20 possible oversizes before the barrel is worn out. To put it another way – you’ll probably be a dry bag of bones before a GT200 cylinder ends up a pile of fins on a machine shop floor.
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W H AT W E T E S T E D
Above: GT Kit crew: John, Dozza, Mik, Eden and Ted (riding Paul’s scooter). Left: The old 186 manifolds at the rear (30mm right-hand and 25mm left-hand) are still usable on the GT200. In addition there are two new ones (front): 34mm right-hand and 30mm left-hand. Right: The Big Block GT200 utilises a wide, shallow reed valve from a kart. Below right: Like the RB kit, the GT200 features ‘Boyesen’ feeder ports from the reed valve straight into the main transfer ducts. Unlike other kit launches where the manufacturer has a chance to optimise the test scooter before we ride it – and certainly some have come straight from the dyno in the past – we thought we’d do this test a little differently. Rather than perfectly prepared demonstrators, what we’ve assembled here are a selection of road scooters belonging to the first brave souls who invested in the GT Big Block project. They aren’t necessarily optimised for power output, but they do cover a wide range of possible configurations from small carb and restrictive exhaust through to a tuned big-bore 230cc version. A lightly tuned GT186 was also included into the mix for comparison. The plan was first to dyno-test each scooter before going for a 50 mile group razz while ‘hot-seating’ between them to try each one in the real world. Not only did we GPS test for speeds but we also checked fuel consumption at the end. All riding was done on minor roads at a mixture of speeds.
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Whitby Scooter Rally Easter,2014
When the Bible was written, it seems that specific dates did not count for much. Fortunately this means that Easter is as fluid as the Nile – last time we rode toWhitby we encountered knee-deep snow on top of the Yorkshire Moors, this time the bank holiday fell in mid-April and we were blessed with glorious sunshine all weekend.
F
our Lambrettas set off on the Friday morning from our corner of the southeast, and we picked up another one at services on the A1 from the same county. To while away those slightly tedious miles on the dual carriageway before we managed to escape south of Doncaster I did some number crunching between the five scooters now riding in convoy; seven people, 10 wheels, 24 gears, four hydraulic disc brakes, and what appeared to be a lifetime’s supply of Putoline synthetic oil. Except that it wasn’t, and as Lloyd had already broken one scooter that day and was now on his second, he doubted he had enough to get him home after the weekend. Oh well... Arriving in town in the fashionable part of late afternoon (that some may call early evening), I scraped the oil and petrol off my
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left leg after almost 300 miles of an over-rich carb and headed down toward the pier for some famous Whitby chips followed by a pint or three in the Pier Inn where the Whitby Soul Club were spinning some tunes to a capacity crowd. With friends from all over the country arriving as the evening wore on, we stayed longer than intended, possibly taking the piss out of some sights we saw trying to dance, while deciding who would next fight their way to the bar. Later on at the VFM do at the Pavilion we found ourselves among Scottish, Irish, English from Cumbria to the southwest, Welsh and Belgians, which just goes to show that the national scene is alive and kicking despite what some people may think or say. Saturday morning gave me time to think how much I’d drunk the previous night, including a lengthy walk to find a toilet just feet
away, so I headed back to the Pavilion to check out some scoots and buy some stuff. As it was at the last Whitby rally, the scooters outside were in danger of outshining those in the show, the sun adding extra sparkle to a lot of paint. The queue down to the hall snaked up to the cliff-top car park but it didn’t take long to join the masses inside (masses of people, not religious services). After procuring some clutch plates and receiving a new spark plug in exchange for one handed out on the ride up, the show scooters were next on the list, which is also where the BSRA signing on stall was, which was nice and busy for the start of the season. The show was small but impressive, although spaces between some machines suggested a few no-shows. Restorations appear to be growing in popularity again, and it was good to note a couple of
Lambretta
400
If ever you consider tackling your first scooter engine transplant, it’s always best to start simple. Exactly the way that Aubrey didn’t.
Anglesey Circuit
For the first time since 2009, the BSSO was back racing scooters at the Anglesey Circuit in the far north-western corner of Wales...
1: Gary Peacock (Group 6), 2: Stuart Day (Group 6), 3: Brothers group Bert and Steve Conneely battle it out in Group 4, 4: Mike Bonett leads from Chris Geyton and Darren Conneely (all Group 4), 5: John Woods rides his Gilera Runner (Group 6a) up the inside of Ryan Clipstone’s Piaggio Zip (Group 10), 6: Packed grids make for some exciting scooter racing in 2014, and well worth a day out spectating. 1
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R E S U LT S Race 1 Autos 1 J Woods 2 R Clipstone 3 M Shirley
Race 1 Geared 1 D Tunnicliffe 2 R Conneely 3 S Conneely
Race 2 Autos 1 J Woods 2 M Shirley 3 M Hardy
Race 2 Geared 1 S Day 2 D Tunnicliffe 3 R Conneely
Race 3 Autos 1 J Woods 2 R Clipstone 3 C Cook
Race 3 Geared 1 S Day 2 R Conneely 3 S Conneely
Race 4 Autos 1 J Woods 2 C Cook 3 M Shirley
Race 4 Geared 1 S Day 2 R Conneely 3 S Conneely
Race 5 Autos 1 J Woods 2 R Clipstone 3 M Shirley
Race 5 Geared 1 S Day 2 S Conneely 3 R Conneely
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