For the scooter newbie, it’s helpful to get a sense of what’s actually happening under the hood (or cowl in our case.) Fortunately YouTube user Iowancamera took a few minutes out of his engine rebuild to show us the basics of how it functions with the crank-case exposed.

Turns out that what I thought was a problem with the flasher unit in my PX was ultimately a simple case of a flat battery. After putting the battery on trickle charge overnight using my Battery Tender everything fired back into life again this morning.

Lately my PX has been having a tough time starting, even warm, with more than a few kicks and the choke full-out to get the beast purring. There are a number of possible reasons for this, but a typical culprit is the carburetor.

I replaced the back drum brakes on my PX150e last night. All in all the job took about an hour and a half, and certainly went much faster than the front brakes did a couple of weeks ago.

What the hell is a greased brake actuator? Click on inside for our top tips on keeping the drum brakes on your scoot in fine fighting shape and boosting your stopping power.

While the Bay Area is a few hours from NYC (especially by scoot,) we’ve added San Francisco’s excellent First Kick Scooters to our honor roll of links.

Coming from scooterlounge.com, an excellent site we haven’t profiled before, is a great tutorial on replacing worn out brake shoes on Vespa P-series scoots and similar.

Click on inside to learn how to change the gearbox oil on your two-stroke scoot. This little extra effort during winterization can prolong the life of your ride.

Finally, some photos of my new purchase. Time for the once over to figure out where and how to start slowly bringing this one back to it’s former 1985 glory.

The principle is the same for most modern scoots, but if you’re an owner of a Piaggio Vespa ET, GT, GTS, LX or LXV, you may want to take a look at these two videos from Jeff AKA “Robot” over at Motorsport Scooters.