One of my workers was looking to buy a Vespa to restore. It took him quite a while, but in the end we found not one but three Piaggio Vespa 50's for sale in various states of decay. The triple combo purchase ended up saving us some money.
All of the scooters were fully disassembled and we made extensive lists of all the parts needed. Bodies were sandblasted, welded where the rust had gotten in, then we painted all three of them in factory colours. This process resulted in three pristine Vespa bodies well above the factory standards of the 1960's when they were made.
While restoring these scooters we knew we wanted a little bit more power so we converted the engines to 75cc from its original 50cc with better induction and exhaust, bigger carb, longer gears. This made the scooters a lot more fun to drive in the end. We ended up using more than 150 brand new parts per one scooter and all old original parts got the usual treatment of zinc plating, powder coating, polishing, glass blasting and so on. The final result is essentially new scooters, restored to a higher than factory specifications.
One of these scooters is currently owned by my worker who uses it for his daily commute and joy rides in summer, one was shipped to Estonia as a birthday present to the buyers’ wife, and the red one remains unsold. If you would like to purchase a pristine classic scooter with quite a kick to it, a red Piaggio Vespa 50 1965 is available for purchase. Message us for more details.
You can also find more progress photos on our Facebook page.
