With the main day-to-day running issues of the engine and electrical now running relatively smoothly, it’s time to turn my attention to the creaks, shakes, rattles and rolls of the thirty-five year-old bodywork on the bike. Over the past couple of weeks the noise has become almost deafening as the bike has been shaking itself loose. This weekend saw me addressing a long-overdue piece of this wrenching on the Lambretta Jet 200. Replacing the center-stand feet.

As you can see from the photograph below, the original(?) feet on the bike have severely perished. If it were a cosmetic issue I wouldn’t worry so much but as a result the bike is extremely unstable on its center-stand and a nudge (by a parking car no doubt) would be enough to topple the bike over.

You can see I wasn't kidding about the state of the feet. You can see the pin just sticking through.

What’s neat about the rubberized feet on a Lambretta as opposed to a similar year Vespa is two-fold. One, the feet both have a metal pin that help keep them locked in place. Two, the feet are shaped in such a way that they can be easily accessed by your toe as you rock the bike back onto its stand, something that requires a but more Yogic contortion on other bikes.

The old feet were easy to remove and tore off by hand in pieces. I leaned the bike over (carefully) on its side and addressed each rubber foot one side at a time.

Unfortunately what’s not neat about the pins on the feet is that after thirty-five years on the bike they have rusted and “become one” with the center-stand, and not in a Yogic way.

No amount of pulling with pliers would pull the old pins free so I gave in and hack-sawed them off leaving about a 1/4″ jutting out in the hope that this length would be short enough to allow the new feet on the bike, but long enough to help keep them locked in place. If you have a drill or Dremel handy, better yet is to drill the old pins out a completely replace them with new stock, but this was East Village side-walk maintenance for me and I didn’t have the necessary tools at hand.

Thanks to the folks at Scooters Originali I had a new set of feet waiting in the wings. With the old feet off, and a quick wire brush to clean up the rust at the base of the center-stand it was just a matter of getting the new ones on.

New shoes.

Once I got the lip of the new rubber over the nubs of the old pins it was easy enough to twist them on to center-stand until I felt the old pins plop into place. Not ideal, not as good as a new set of pins but the rubber was sufficiently tight enough that I’m confident that these feet are going to fall off or shake loose.

With one side addressed it was a simple matter of leaning the bike over on its other side to rinse and repeat. Between this and the early morning wheel change the other week I’m seeing way more of the underside of my Lammy than any scooterist ever should.

The new feet on the bike.

I’m pleased to report that while I may not have done cosmetically the nicest job in the world (this is no show-winning bike) the Lammy is now super stable on it’s new center-stand feet and should be stable enough to avoid a fall or two.

The new feet solve the “Roll.” Stay tuned over the next few days for my wrenching to solve the current shakes and rattles. Until next time.

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