Two things to talk about this entry. Pulling the front forks, and readying the body of the bike for painting.

There’s simply no way to replace the front fender without removing the full front fork assembly. The existing fender is so banged up that it just made sense to replace it outright. I have a new one freshly painted waiting in the wings for the task.

I won’t go into the entire process of removing the front forks. I followed the excellent tutorial at Richard Hoar’s VespaMaintenance.com. In short it requires removing the top of the headset, to disconnect the front brake cable, and speedometer cable (both of which run through the fork to the front wheel hub. This allows you to get under the headset to remove the series of nuts that hold the fork in place on bearings.

The toughest challenge is that the task requires lifting the bike a good 12 to 18 inches off the ground to pull the fork assembly down through the front section of the bike and clear. I did it through shear brute force, and a near-hernia. I don’t recommend it. It’s definitely a task for two. It also a messy one because the bearings are heavily greased inside the frame and there’s a lot of built up grime in and around the front forks.

In retrospect, I would have made my life easier by first removing the front wheel which would have bought me an additional 3-4 inches for me to lower the forks. I’ll certainly be doing this when I re-assemble.

The other lesson I learned is that my particular PX has an electric switch about 3 or 4 inches along the front brake cable from the front brake caliper, to turn the brake light on when you depress the brakes. I wasn’t aware of this from Richard’s tutorial and for a while there, it was the one remaining connection that was preventing me from pulling the forks. In my tugging before noticing I hopefully didn’t damage the switch, I haven’t seen aftermarket versions for sale. Through my tugging the switch had also caught on the top bearing racer and had bent it out of shape. This will need to be replaced. Fortunately these are readily available and it’s not a bad idea to replace 25 year old bearings while I’m in there anyway.

With the fork removed, there's some play in the cables to lift the headset an inch or two above the legshield.

Finally the front fork assembly came clear. I spent some time wire-brushing this and cleaning it down, and of course removing the front fender which unbolts intuitively enough. I spent a while investigating disassembling the front shock but the Haynes manual warns you that you need a solution to putting the shock back under pressure for re-assembly. With visions of this thing popping loose and jumping with 25-years of pent up pressure into my face, I thought better of it and forgot about pursuing it.

The front fork assembly clear of the bike.

For now, the forks are set aside, but before adding the new fender, I’ll clean them up further and with some aluminum spray paint clean up the rusty parts. The fork will also need re-greasing before re-assembly. I can’t say I’m looking forward to putting this back in. Definitely the toughest job so far. But at least on re-assembly it won’t be such a mucky job.

With the front fork (and wheel) removed the scoot is now relying on its center stand to stay up. A few minutes later and I had also removed the back wheel. The back of the bike held off the floor by wedging a milk crate under the back of the wheel arch. Don’t ask me how I got a milk crate – I think it was in the house when I bought it but man it’s come in useful. It’s exactly the right height for the back of the bike. Other restorers online were the one’s who recommended its virtues.

Balancing the back of the bike sans rear wheel.

Since removing the assembly, the past two weeks have been spent removing as much as I can that remains on the bike in preparation for painting. Including removing the battery assembly and putting the battery on trickle charge on a battery tender so it doesn’t drain while decoupled from the bike.

I’ve decided against dropping the engine and removing the gas-tank both of which feel a bit too advanced for me especially after the front fork. So I’ve masked them with both kitchen foil (a useful trick) and masking tape after thoroughly cleaning the engine exterior.

The engine masked with kitchen foil.

Then it was on to the messy job of degreasing the bike. Like the cowls the body required a lot of soapy water, some Comet cleanser, plenty of soap sponges and plenty of patience. I was then able to set about sanding down the rust, especially in the foot well, fill where necessary and wet-sand everything as smooth as possible.

Like the cowls this process was a matter of two steps forward, one back. It definitely went more smoothly now that I’ve gotten the hang of things but at this point I knew that there’s no way to hide imperfections with paint. After sanding and filling it was a matter of smoothing down trouble spots until they were absolutely glassy smooth under my finger before being confident that they were ready for painting. I deliberately set aside two sessions just to sand and wet-sand. And then when I was done, I did it again. It’s boring work but seriously you can’t spend enough time doing this.

Given that I’m using the Rust-oleum mix I decided to forgo priming and hit the body with the first roller cover. Again, like the cowls this revealed some areas that still needed attention with either more sanding or a touch of filler. After tackling these the bike now has a total of three coats applied. There are more nooks and crannies on the body than on the other sections I had removed so several spots are requiring me to use a foam brush.

Not pulling the engine and some of the battery assembly and front wiring harness (behind the horn cover) means that this is not going to be an A1 paint job in the sense of 100% coverage of every part of the body. But when the cowls are back on and the horn-cover is back on you won’t see the areas I wasn’t able to paint. It’s also helped by the fact that the original color of the bike is also red, albeit a little darker.

After two coats of paint, the once rusty footboard is looking promising. The brake pedal is masked with foil.

The next week or so is going to be about slowly but surely adding thin coats. Given my experience to date this looks like it’s going to take about ten coats. I gave the cowls eight in total but a little test polishing with polishing compound has already lifted the paint in places. Fortunately this should just be a matter of gently sanding and adding some additional paint in those spots. Apparently other color choices such as Rust-oleum’s Black and Canvas White cover in fewer coats but something about the suspension of the pigment in the red paint makes it a dog that requires more coats. Oh, and more patience.

Work accomplished:

• Front fork assembly removed.
• Back wheel removed.
• Spare wheel and battery assembly removed.

Lessons learned:

• Remove the front wheel to gain extra clearance when removing the front fork assembly.
• Make doubly sure that every connection has been disconnected in the head-set before attempting to drop the forks.
• Milk crates are the secret tool of every scooter restorer.

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