Fiberglass Fender Repair

My original fender was in need of some work. When I bought it I thought I can repair this easy. I had repaired surf board in college working with Sanding Resin glass and cloth. My work was good and clean, but after speaking to my parent's neighbor Jack, who was a professional with glass and epoxy, and learned what was needed to properly repair this fender I knew it was beyond what I preferred to tackle.

Luckily, Jack offered to take it on. He uses the West System Epoxy. He is a glider instructor and built his own glider. Aircraft folks use this system and he referred to it as aircraft epoxy.

He told me it something like 100 times stronger than fiberglass. Hell the Lammy fender is referred to as "chopper" work in the fiberglass community. It is cheap and fast to produce many many fenders. Jack had to cut back and rebuild the area around the crack by hand. It looks great!

The fender overall was in fair shape.

There were noticeable chips and even stress cracks.

There were chips and the mounting holes had cracked and became too large for the hardware.

I will dry fit the bike after body work and before paint and then line these holes up and re-drill them.

The nose was misshaped a hair and Jack rebuild that as well.

Jack said he had to "feather" (this he said is the lay-man's term. I forgot the glass worker term for it) to build layers for maximum strength.

He reinforced all areas that would be stressed by a vibrating Lambretta.

It feels so good to know the job was done right.

Jack found stress cracks and explained that they would only get worse, so he cut back the source and rebuilt it and reinforced it. It will no longer stress crack.

I am amazed at his precision and accuracy. He told me the entire fender took him two hours.

Looking at it before one last time shows it was decent, but now the fender is something I will not have to worry about thanks to Jack.


Jack is "retired" he says and "not for hire". He is eighty years old. He said he'd do my fender at costs, which was $12.00 (yes, twelve dollars).

Above is a soap box derby car Jack build from scratch with epoxy. Even the steering column and frame he welded. The only thing he bought was the tires.

These old school fabricators are hard to come by now and I hope to get some garage time with Jack and learn at least a little.

For $12.00, a nice bottle of wine, and a framed picture of his soap box derby car winning a race I have an original fiberglass front fender ready to go to the body shop, who will sand it down and fill it up (little to none will be required) where necessary, prime and paint.

In early 2012 I will work with Jack and my dad to learn how to work with the epoxy and repair my dad's Sun Fish sail boat. After that experience I should be confident working with the epoxy and have the ability to make repairs to fenders and such -- of course not as good as Jack did.

Servetta Jet200 frame $200 from Craiglist

I just bought the following for my mentor Mike in So. Cal. who has a set of Jet200 cases that need a frame.

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.

Clutch materials

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.

Big Bore Exhaust

When I first bought the bike I planned to use a DeanSpeed 190 along with a GP Big Bore pipe. The scoot had no pipe nor carb so I figured if I was going to buy these items anyways I might as well mildly tune it for enjoyable riding. Seeing as I slow to restore, due to cash and time, advances have been made in the top-end options and those advances are beyond my wallet at this time, so I plan to run my bike much closer to stock. It will be treated as a rider as opposed to a museum relic.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.

Thanks for the birthday gift mom and dad.

Brass throttle pulley

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.

I have had the part for a few months, but haven't gotten around to posting much lately.

Super thin spanners

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.

Anoraks vs. Soul Builders vs. Kitters

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?