Cold Week Ahead

With Angelle facing a cold week down in Invercargill, we thought it time to share a few of our photos from our recent trip to Bali. It was wonderfully warm there and there were scooters for Africa! About 80% of the traffic in Bali is made up by scooters - a lot of modern scoots but we managed to find some vintage scoots riding around and restoration workshops.

Waiting for Salvation

Scenes From the WorkshopVespa Garage with Ape's Out FrontShowroomShowroomCustomization ServiceTypical Street Parking

We have plenty more photos of interesting scooters from Bali to come. For now, however, it's back to packing and other errands.

Bring Out Your Dead

Last Sunday we indeed attended the Bring Out Your Dead scooter show we last posted about. It was a bit of luck that we were indeed able seeing how we'd just returned from holiday the afternoon prior and had a 2 year old in tow.
Also in tow was Simon's dad's Maicoletta. Simon has spent some time on it and it is now running relatively reliably and the electric start is (almost) working. It does need some more work to be reliable enough to ride around on for any length of time and to be road worthy, but that is coming.
At the show, we were treated with the sight of two other running Maico's and a Maico Mobil body. We got to meet the owner of the other roadworthy Maico and another chap who at some point in the past owned the pile of parts which is our second Maico. The owner of the Mobil body is the fella we bought the parts off, and Chris (who we've written about before) is the owner of the roadworthy blue Maicoletta.
The show was excellent with heaps of bikes we'd not seen around before. A lot of cool Lammy's, customized Vespa's, and some rarer bikes as well.

Just outside the show
Simon riding into the show
Ape to greet you at the gate.

Scoots and peeps

Maico Corner
Maico owners

NZetta between a Tigress and the Mobil body
Customized
"Orginal"

Seen better days
Rare bird
Reshaped
Bubble CarAnd we're off...

Even if you're not a member of Facebook (evil as it is), you can see more photos of this event by clicking this link.

Riding 2 Up

So, Simon's brother Tim found himself a Vespa. None other than JC, Simon's ET8. While trawling Trademe one afternoon, we came upon a bargain we couldn't resist and organized the sale so we could act.
Yesterday was spent zooming around, 2Up on our latest aquisition. Meet "Judas, the Betrayer":





So, Judas, as we are calling it for the moment, is a Vespa GTS 250 with a custom bright orange paint job. Sweet...

Faux pod mod

We love the look of the side pods on our classic Vespas and decided to create this look on our ET8s. Angelle had done a similar mod to this on her Yamaha Vino 125 in Canada a couple years ago using chrome autobody trim. We weren't able to find any of the same product she used back then, but decided pinstriping would work to create the desired effect.

The big decision was what colour and width of pin striping to choose? We wanted something that would suit both our scoots and wouldn't be overly ostentatious.
Angelle pondered over 3 different choices for the pinstriping as Simon spent time browsing the other auto accessories.

We decided fuzzy dice wouldn't really work on the scooters even if they are super cool.

In the end, we chose 6mm chrome finish pinstriping to create the faux pods on our scoots.

Before applying the pinstriping, it was inspected for flaws.

Simon was really keen to get going on modding JC out, so he washed and dried the scooter thoroughly.

The pinstriping needs to be carefully applied along the contour of the bike where you'd like the pod to stand out.

Extreme concentration is required at this stage to make sure the pinstriping is smooth and straight.

We found a heat gun and heat resistant spatula were very good in helping to smooth around the sharp curves at the front of the pod.


The look from the front of the pod.

And this is how we finished off the back.

Of course, this procedure was repeated on the other side of the bike and other bits and bobs were added for an overall classy effect.