The way I see there are three types of restorers and we all fall somewhere along a continuum with Anoraks at one end and Kitters at the other end with the Soul Builders somewhere towards the center. I am no Anorak -- not because of a lack of dedication or interests, but because of a lack of money for the most part. I am not a Kitter, because I believe in the "soul" of the bike. I guess that makes me a Soul Builder? I restored my wife's
1967 Vespa SS180 from the ground up. It has only one modern item -- PX HT Coil. I rebuilt the shocks for God's sake. The colors are not true per an Anorak, but exactly what my wife wanted. I left the speedo completely original to honor the history of the bike -- the soul if you will. There are two holes in the leg shield, I jokingly said were for a gun rack on the farm, and those were accidently not filled when the body work was done. So I chalked the lesson up and convinced myself, that's part of the soul of that scoot. Now I am not saying our mistakes in restore can be called "soul capturing," but I can understand how and why restorers leave the body as-is with original paint and a ding here and there. The patina, if you will, tells the history of the bike and honors the "soul" of the scoot. I get that and see that argument. Plus, fully originally is more desirable and valuable. To be honest if I did not buy my scoot in pieces and if assembled as-is it would not be three different colors, I would skip painting it and honor the original bike. Unfortunately, that is not what I bought. If I had, it would save me thousands of dollars in my restore and produce I more desirable scooter than I will have in the end.
So where is post going? Per my previous Vapor Blast post, I was really pissed about the ground down area (not chipped after all) on the NOS chain case I bought. I couldn't just get over it. It does not look good and it was a bad financial investment as well. So I wrote Gene M, who I bought it from. I "HIGHLY" respect Gene and all of my mentors do too. He is knowledgable and shares his knowledge freely. He helps so many of us. He is honest and trustworthy and all around a good guy that I will continue to do business with on my Vespa and Lambretta.
With that said, I wrote him and asked if the wrong chain case had been shipped to me by accident, because my case had a chip on it and I expected it to be cleaner as an NOS case and he knew that I was going to vapor blast it as well.
His response was insightful for all NOS parts:
"We only had 1 NOS Chaincase cover - which is the one you got. In the 25 years I have owned and been working and selling parts and scooters I have never seen another.
NOS means, New Old Stock. So it is an original, unused stock item. That means it has had 30 years of sitting around on a shelf. Even back in the 60s when they were making these things new, they were never treated in such away as to prevent minor blemishes and chips. They were literally just stacked on top of each other - I've seen videos where the complete engines were piled on top of each other in the factory waiting for install into the frames.
Check out the movie "
Mafioso" - the first 5 mins shows a man walking through the Innocenti factory while they are assembling the scooters - it's a real eye opener.
We tried to take the best possible pic of the cover as well, if you look at the original pic, versus the nice vapor blasted cover now you can see it looks miles better now, originally it was a bit scuffed.
Check out that movie though - it’s a good mafia movie as well but the factory images are amazing!"
So what does this mean for my Lammy? It means, this case is here to stay at least for now. It's cool that it will sport an NOS case and if the blemishes took place in the Innocenti Factory, then am I honoring the "soul" of the bike am some way?
My commission for picking up the tire is the spare tire holder -- actually I asked Mike if he was married to it and he gave it to me. Now I need to determine if it is considered period correct for my restoration.
I think he paid a fair price for what he bought.
Along with my Christmas Gift exhaust pipe I received Surflex clutch corks and the up-rated springs. The philosophy of both my mentor Mike A. and Peter L., Mods & Rockers Vapor Blasting, is it is better to build up the lower end in the chance that I upgrade the top-end at a later date. It will save me time and money this way . . . not to mention up-rated springs will run just fine in my stock bike I have been told.
With that said, I opted to put a budget-friendly Big Bore pipe on it. I was very close to buying the recently-released-again Tutto pipe and honoring the stock TV for a truer purer restore. But at $230 plus for the Tutto and $130 for the AF Rayspeed/KBA/Uni and a mild power adjustment I opted for the Uni. I'd like this bike to leave my garage a couple days per week if possible.
After hunting for a year plus, at times more aggressively, I came across a Series III Li brass throttle pulley. I bought it from Rudy in PDX for $12.50 including shipping.
He took care to package it so nicely. That's the best packaging I have ever received.
I need to buy some Brasso or appropriate cleaner (after I research options) and I suspect this lil' guy will clean up nicely. The teeth are in good shape, which I made sure before buying. 
You always hear the "right tool for the job makes all the difference." When working with Chris B. on my wife's 1967 Vespa SS180he really encouraged me to purchase these spanners from Snap-On's Thin Line and I must say, though terribly spendy at $25 per wrench, they saved me a ton of time. The third wrench is made by Park, a bicycle brand, and is a great cheap wrench to put in your bike's tool box.
Mike in Portland, Oregon sold me his. The teeth look good, but I do notice some difference and wonder if that could be a problem or not? For example in the photo below -- my original is on the left. The one I bought looks like it was ground down and is missing the lip. Is that a problem?
Here's another view of the ground down area.
Continuing with the idea of different molds for the casts notice the difference in thickness of the bases pictured below and the overall slopes of the raised areas. Could this mean these are different shafts? The measurements are almost dead even and the later type Li and the GP styles measure totally different as per Stickey's Manual.
Looking at the two side-by-side you can see differences.
I will ask my mentors to make sure I did not buy the wrong kickstart shaft.