Last Wednesday evening on my way home from work during the sudden NYC mid-June downpour, my PX decided it would be the perfect time to snap a clutch cable.

To be honest, it’s my fault. I had needed to tighten up the slack on it for a few days (more on this below,) and my laziness was putting more and more stretch on the cable as it was having a harder and harder time fighting the clutch mechanism.

I pulled over to the side of the road in Midtown and on to the pavement to get (some) shelter from the rain next to a building.

Luckily I had a replacement cable and a set of tools on the bike, but once I got the headset off the bike it became apparent that this was not going to be a simple matter of threading in a new cable inner. The existing cable outer was so badly gnarled that I couldn’t thread in the new inner. Frustrated, I pulled out the entire cable, outer and all. Big mistake. I spent the next hour desperately trying to thread through a new cable in the dark, wind and rain. Impossible.

Eventually I gave up and pushed the scooter back home 45 blocks in the rain. It sucked. I was stuck in Midtown and there was nowhere to leave the bike overnight without it getting towed. Taking it back to the East Village was my only option.

By the time I got home I was drenched. In the process of attempting to fix the bike my bag of tools was also soaked through, and the photo above is me drying out each tool on the kitchen counter so they won’t rust. I never realized I was carrying so many doodads in the glove-box.

The next day in the daylight I was able to thread the new cable relatively quickly. I threaded through the new outer from the back of the bike and removed the plastic horn-cast to make fishing out the end of the cable at the front much easier. I was then able to direct it up and out of the headset to the clutch lever on the handlebar.

Here’s the secret to the clutch on these Vespas:

If it’s getting increasingly tougher to get the bike into Neutral or First at stand-still, chances are your clutch cable needs tightening.

If you sit on the bike at standstill and put the bike in first gear and then pull the clutch lever all the way in and the bike wants to roll forward, your clutch cable DEFINITELY needs tightening. The gear is engaging.

First: Inspect the cable at both the lever end and clutch ends of the bike to see if the slack in the cable is due to the cable fraying. If you have any doubt, replace the cable outright. Think to yourself: why has the clutch changed?

Either way, you need to cinch up the cable (existing or new) at the engine tight enough so that the clutch disengages completely with the handlebar lever pulled in. Pull the cable taught with a pair of pliers or a fourth-hand tool at the engine end and tighten down either the pinch-bolt or alternatively (if you have it) you can turn the slack-adjuster nut a few turns to take up the slack.

Sit on the bike, start it up in Neutral. Pull in the clutch and let it out G-E-N-T-L-Y without gas. If the bike begins to pull but then splutters and/or dies as the gear engages you are at the sweet-spot and all set.

If the bike wants to creep forward in first gear even with the clutch lever pulled all the way in, you need to take up more slack.

Be careful to take up as much slack as you can before testing this. If the cable is too slack and you put the bike in first gear, it may immediately jump as the gear engages immediately. If this happens and the cable doesn’t feel slack, make sure that the clutch arm at the engine can’t be moved by hand. It also has some natural slack in its range of motion before it operates the clutch.

If it’s a simple slack adjustment on an existing cable and you have the tools, it’s a 10 minute side-of-the-road job at most. If you need to replace the cable inner, you’ll need to open up the headset and it’s about a half-hour job. If, like me, you need to thread a completely new cable, put the coffee on – you’re going to be at it a while.

For non-P-series clutch help, there’s an excellent how-to over at ScooterHelp.com. For P-series Vespas or Stellas, there is a similarly great step-by-step over at VespaMaintenance.com.

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