A couple of small things to wrap up and then the scoot is ready for its test run.

Painting the remainder of the headset
With the majority of the bike re-assembled all that remains in the paint department is the lower half of the headset. I’d left this alone when I painted the body of the bike because it needs a brush to get into all the nooks and crannies and I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of my roller work on the majority of the bike.

In addition it needed a lot of masking - the turn signal switches, clutch caliper, grips etc. Rather than disconnect all these at this stage I’d prefer to work around them hence the masking. I’ve decided to look into renewing the clutch and gear cables later once the bike is completely re-assembled and I know my front brake cable and speedo cable are operational so I don’t want to unhook them for now.

Masking around the area needing paint, and protecting the majority of the scoot with plastic.

Given that the majority of the unit is either covered by the top or the leg-shield, I felt I could get away with brushing the paint on and leaving a few brush-marks, but as it turns out it goes on quite smoothly if you take the advice of many of the $50 paint-jobbers out there and use a disposable foam brush rather than a bristle brush.

In total I gave the headset 8 coats over a 3 day weekend. I found that the paint was drying fast enough to put on a coat in the morning, at lunchtime and again in the evening about four hours apart so that sped up the process.

After a couple of coats of paint.

Once it was dry and unmasked I found a few areas where the paint had leaked onto switches, but these will clean up easily enough with paint thinner. More problematic is the top inch or so of the steering column is a little messy where some of the paint dripped onto the plastic sheeting and dried. It’s only cosmetic and easy to get to so for now I’m going to re-assemble the bike and clean it up at a later date with some sandpaper and fresh paint.

Headset re-assembly
The paint-job on the top half of the headset was finished several weeks ago. The speedometer unit clips back in very simply and then it’s simply a matter of reconnecting the wires from the lower half of the headset that connect up to the speedo indicator bulbs. These are  in the form of a plastic plug and only plug in one way so it’s foolproof. Finally, my new speedo cable plugs into the bottom of the speedometer. Again this is a simple click into place. This was also the time to bolt down the new halogen headlamp that I had previously tested successfully but had removed to make room for painting.

With everything in place, the headset top cinches down into place with four retaining bolts accessed under the lower half of the headset.

The headset re-assembled.

Front brake connection at the front hub
Different PX models have slightly different methods for connecting to the front hub. In my case it’s a small metal linkage that cinches the end of the brake cable tight with a nut and then hooks around an arm on the front hub with a pin and a worryingly tiny split pin. In my case the linkage comes in six parts, a back plate, front plate, pin, spit pin, threaded bolt (with a hole in it for the brake cable) and a locking nut.

You should never re-use a split pin so I had ordered a new one (and a couple of spares) online for a few cents. I also used this opportunity to buy a new back plate. The original one had been eaten into by the old front brake cable and was in danger of either breaking or shearing the new cable over time.

The arm on the front hub is the front brake slack adjuster. The idea is to pull this as tight as you can get it before tightening down the front brake cable. It took me a few tries to get it sufficiently tight. You need to get it so that once it’s locked in place, you can feel the pressure on the front brake lever and to only just be able to squeeze it down to the grip.

If you can easily squeeze the brake lever down chances are you haven’t tightened up the slack adjuster enough so do it again. It’s easier to do this with a friend. One person squeezes the slack adjuster as tight as they can get it between their fingers while the other tightens down the bolt on the brake cable while pulling the brake cable through tightly with their other hand.

Photo credit: Richard Hoar's VespaMaintenance.com. This is from old cable removal but it shows a good shot of the linkage.

Once I got this nice and tight I gave myself an additional insurance policy on the front brake. The Prima scooter cable set I had came with various pieces of hardware for capping off cables. While theoretically not necessary I added a barrel end cap to my brake cable. It’s basically a bolt with a hole in it. You thread it onto the end of your cable and then lock it tight with a nut. I tightened this up against the linkage so that if the linkage should ever fail, the barrel should be enough to keep the brake in place.

The rear-end
With the front re-assembled all that remained were a couple of minor cosmetic issues on the rear-end: putting on a new rear bumper, and …wait for it… a nice shiny new Piaggio badge for the back of the stock seat as the cherry on the top of the restoration.

I replaced the rear bumper with a new one. The old one had cracked and wouldn’t stay in place. It’s clear that these are easy victims of a misjudged parking. As supplier Scooter West says “If you own a P200E or P125X, odds are you need a new one of these. If you don’t, then buy a spare one while you still can.” The bumper easily clips into place with two grip washers.

Finally, the Piaggio badge is actually a delicate silver sticker. A few minutes with a flat bladed screwdriver was it all it took to remove the remains of the original, and the new one went in place after a couple of attempts lining it up.

The original Piaggio sticker before replacement.

Done and Done
Well here we are folks. Step 12 and the rebuild is complete. In total this took some on-again/off-again weekends and evenings here and there over about eight weeks. Fortunately this didn’t involve stripping down the engine and was mostly cosmetic so that’s one of the reasons it went quickly. In addition, remember I was going for a solid rebuild of a daily runner rather than an award winning exhibition scooter restoration. In fact it’s more fair to call this entire exercise a rebuild rather than restoration which insinuates achieving a factory or better than factory finish.

All that remains is to roll the bike outside, cross my fingers and fire her up. I can’t get the bike through the doorway with the rear-view mirrors in place so technically those will be the very last items to complete the bike. Again I bought replacements online given the original ones while in reasonable cosmetic shape were rusted into place on their brackets and so not adjustable.

Stay tuned to see if the final step, step 13 is a lucky or unlucky number…

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