Lots to talk about this post. First off, I can declare the $50 paint job a resounding success. I’ve spent the past week carefully painting and sanding and while this has taken longer than a spray booth method, it’s something I’ve been able to do at home without either fumes or needing over-spray containment.

Not buffed and polished yet, but the paint job is looking sweet.

Each morning before work I would wet-sand any debris out of the dried coat of paint and then apply a new coat before work, then in the evening I would rinse and repeat. Wet-sanding was done with either 600 or 1000 grit paper - just enough to address issues, not to cut back into the existing paint. Generally speaking runs needed 600 grit, debris such as hairs, dust knocked out with 1000.

In total I applied 7 coats to the cowls, horn cover and glove box. I had also purchased a replacement front fender from Scooter Works and was able to get a similar finish in 5 coats because I was starting from a clean surface. I didn’t even need to prime the fender given the nature of Rust-oleum and was able to lay the coat right on the bare metal.

Tips? Well, I’d read as much else where, but yes the secret is applying thin, thin coats. Applying paint from the roller should require a little pressure to squeeze the paint onto the subject. If it just rolls straight on, chances are you have too much paint on the roller. Typically it was a case of soaking up paint in the roller tray and then using the ridges in the roller tray to roll back out the majority of the paint before applying with an almost dry roller. This, of course is in addition to the fact that the paint is thinned 50/50 with mineral spirits to a milk-like consistency.

I also learned that the tack cloth is your friend. About half-way through the job I switched to a regular cloth and this ended up leaving way to much lint and debris on the pieces, needing more sanding to clear them out later. I later switched back to the tack cloth. The more methodical you are about keeping dust off between layers, the less sanding you’ll need.

I’m going to leave the painted pieces for a week to completely cure before polishing them with compound (which, according to the $50 method is where the magic happens,) but hopefully you can already see from the photographs that these are looking good and gleaming. Given the relatively small size of the body panels, I’m going to polish and buff by hand rather than use a buffer so we’ll see how that goes. Assuming the polishing goes well, I’ll them re-assemble the turn-signals, horn housing hardware etc. and set the pieces aside for final re-assembly.

Moving the project indoors
Confident now that the $50 paint job is a viable solution, and one that is relatively mess free, and combined with the fact that the nights are drawing in darker and colder - it struck me that a more effective method of turning my attention back to the majority of the scoot might be to get it off the street. With the cowls already stripped off, with some cursing, and with some finagling of the handle-bars I was able to bring the bike into my apartment.

One of the luxuries of having your own place, driving Vespas into apartments.

With the bike now in a warm dry place I could set about work that I hadn’t been able to get to outside in the evenings after work. In preparation for further sanding and prep-work before painting the body of the scoot, I’m stripping the bike down as thoroughly as I can without dropping the engine, and without decoupling every cable from the headset. The $50 method will allow me to paint around these, and I could do it indoors.

Carefully labeling and bagging hardware as I went, in addition to taking photographs of each section I was working on, I removed the seat, seat hardware, spare wheel, tail-light and a number of other bits and pieces.The battery will have to stay in place for now until I can get a battery tender to hook it up to so it doesn’t drain while it’s away from the bike.

Marking tail-light wiring so I remember how it all goes back together.

Bagging up hardware in zip-locks with clear marking.

Next steps? Over the weekend when I have more time on my hands I’m going to then drop out the front forks which will be necessary to add the new front fender but will also allow me to clean up the front shock, wheel hub and other pieces. Then it will be on to giving the bike a thorough clean, de-greasing and further cleaning up the rust, sanding and priming trouble spots all in preparation for painting.

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