Vespa Engine Rebuild
It's now 7 weeks after the end of the Scooter Cannonball and I just finished a full engine rebuild on the P200 and took it for a couple of laps around Potomac Park in DC.
On the last day of the Cannonball I put a hole through my piston and decided rather than just install a new piston I would rebuild the whole engine just to make sure there weren't bits of piston down in the engine and I'm glad I did. After taking everything apart there was a very fine sludge/sand in the crank case and it was in the flywheel side bearing which caused it to make a wonderful grinding sound when it spun. Also someone had advanced the ignition timing on the bike and that's what probably caused the piston to blow. Very tempted to tear apart and rebuild any bike I buy at this point because you never know what the hell was done to it beforehand. And while I had the cases split and the engine off the bike here's everything that ended up getting replaced.
- All Seals (Flywheel side, Clutch Side, and Hub)
- All Gaskets (Everything, a full gasket kit was totally worth it)
- Cruciform
- Gear Selector Rod
- Flywheel Side Crank Bearing
- New Piston 1st Over
- Cylinder Bored by Hotrod Al to 1st Over
- Wrist Pin Bearing
- Stator Rewired by Motorsport Scooters
- New Ducati CDI
- Helicoil in Oil Plug Threads (definitely the way to go rather than tapping for a larger thread)
- Replaced the Fuel Line
- New Fuel Tap
- Fixed some old grimey wiring and connectors
- Running a B8ES Spark Plug rather than a B7ES
- Switched to a 118 main jet from the stock 116 jet in the 24/24 Carb
I'd estimate the total time it took me was about 40 hours or so and now I've got 470 miles of break in left since it's pretty much a new engine at this point so no whacking the throttle for a month. The bikes feels snappier, but I'll wait to really push it and find out how fast it actually is in the CORSA this fall.
Below are some photos from the rebuild.
It's been fun riding the Ninja 250 around since it makes a great city bike, but it's damn good to have the Vespa back.