1955 Allstate 125 - 1978 P125X - 1979 P200E - Booth&Painting With finished restoration. Allston, MA. 11/98 Last updated 18 Dec 1998. 30.August.98 Purchased the Vespa from a fellow in Coatsville PA when I was in Pennsylvania already, about fifty miles north in Lehigh/Allentown area, picking up a different P125X in great shape. This one looked pretty rough and needs about $180 in parts to make it up to snuff, but seemed to run good, start well, and change gears well. With some time, patience, and an order of parts, soon I will have another fixed up Vespa on the road. JPM & Parking lot sale & pickup of Vespa in PA. 8/98 Ugly, sloppy blue spray job over otherwise pretty silver P125x. 5.Sept.98 Got my first order of parts and did some work on getting this thing in shape. I was astounded to find out that this scoot used to have an apparantly fine original silver paint job that was very poorly spray-painted, un-prepped, blue over. Agh! What a waste. So now I will spend 50 hours trying to make up for this.. but will paint it more to my liking anyways. Still pleased with how well it seems to start, run, and select. Makes me feel better about having bought this Vespa for $725 when it looked pretty poor. Going to get some photos of it up on the page, soon. 15.Sept.98 The vespa's been moved down into the basement workshop now to start in on the serious restoration process. I've gotten all the parts I need, except the paint, and the replacement battery and spare tire plastic plate. I anticipate getting this scoot done in the next month. Ran it the other day before we moved it into the basement and it was still doing great. Started first kick after two weeks sitting, idled great, selected great, and drove it around the block five or six times gleefully. 15.November.98 Finally getting back into this restoration. I actually have been doing some work, but its only now that I am getting to document. I spent almost a full day today working in the workshop-- primarily preparing and priming and painting the Vespa and its parts. The spray booth that Eric and I built has turned out to be very excellent. It has an exhaust fan and hose that leads to the outdoors, is totally enclosed by plastic (with three flaps in the front,) and an optionally sectioned off one-third side for already painted and still drying pieces. Eric joked that it was like a nursery-- we look in through the window at all our newborn parts-- freshly painted and smiling at us. I think I already commented on the exceptionally poor quality of the blue spray job over the otherwise good original factory silver paint on this Vespa. Taking off the parts I realize how little time and attention was spent repainting this scooter before. There was a lot of overspray, for instance, on the cowl and glove trim, which had to be repainted. (I repainted them with a flat matte black spray, which actually worked very well and ended up saving me $30 on buying new trim!) So far, I stripped the scooter down to its neccessary extent to prepare and paint. This afternoon and evening I took off all the floor rails, removed the glovebox and cowls and trims, removed all the turn indicators. I painted the horncast (ivory white) and the glovebox (metallic seafoam green.) Those are the two colors of the two-tone color scheme I chose for the scoot. Its looking really sharp. Over the next few days I plan to continue the fairly grueling yet very rewarding process of preparing and repainting the Vespa and its parts. Painting prep-work in progress. Booth in background. 18.Nov.98 Been working on it everyday for the last few. The prepping and painting is going much quicker and easier than I imagined. I found from my experiments with the glovebox that wirebrushing the rust, sanding the already re-painted surface reasonably well (but not entirely off) sufficed well enough for getting a good paint adhesion. This was quite a relief as I was not looking forward to having to paint strip and get all the surfaces down to metal. The sanding and preparation process for the frame and bodywork (not including masking) took about a total of ten to twelve hours. I've found that it takes about three decent coats of primer, three medium-light coats of color, and then three good coats of clear gloss. In other words, I've made a lot of trips back to the auto and hardware stores to get paint. Yes, I am doing this all with aerosol, but judging by the quality of the job I'm seeing and the way it looks (and based on the fact that this is a P,) I'm quite satisfied with my decision to go with the 'rattle-cans.' So far, I've got that whole scooter shoved in the booth, as the picture suggests (top) and am in the process of priming the frame and body. JPM w/ First-coat of primer, in "Das Booth." 22.Nov.98 Practically finished the restoration today. It looks amazing. I went for a fantastic ride to Twin Donuts, in Allston MA today, a very 50's donuts place. I took lots of pictures and will be posting them as soon as I get them developed. The scooter started first kick despite having been inactive for a month during the restoring! It ran beautifully for the 15 mile ride today. I felt such a terrific sense of accomplishment! It's like finishing a painting-- literally! 25.Nov.98 Got the last thing done yesterday-- putting the floor rails on, which proved to be quite a significant chore. It took about three hours to do all six rails and their rubber lines, too. I spent almost $7 on all the machine screws, lock/washers and nuts to do the job. I ended up using a bit of WD40 to ease the rubber through the metal rail track. I also found that slightly bending the track out with visegrips helped make the lining slide in easier. I will cap off the ends of the bolts with cap nuts. Please see my FOR SALE page for more information on my sale this restored Vespa. Thank you. The finished restored, repainted scooter. 25 Nov 98. THE RESTORATION 1978 Vespa P125X 4012 mi at begin of Restoration. Replacements and Purchases to date: Seat lock and ass'y, used $10 Tyre (for spare) used $10 Cable set (inners) $20 Cylinder Shroud $10 P125x badge $7 legshield trim, silver plastic $12 fuel cap gasket $2 centerstand boots $5 tire tube $6 10" rim, used $10 rear protection flap $16 fork cover plate $6 battery (used)$10 spare tire plate $16 paint/primer/gloss $80 misc. / hardware $40 Parts Total 24November: $260 Cost of Scooter 15Sept: $725 Total Investment: $985 Other Factors: -transport from PA to MA -labor work-- 60 hours List of Completed tasks: Transport Vespa from Coatsville PA to Boston MA Clean scooter thoroughly Lubricate all electrical and mechanical points, cables Replace centerstand boots Replace Seat Lock and pin Replace Cylinder Shroud Replace fuel cap gasket Purchase spare cable set (inners) prep, prime all bodywork paint all parts, body 3 coats gloss clear coat Replace spare shield/cover, assemble spare Replace legshield trim Attach floor rails and rubber Attach spare tyre Attach new battery Diagnose, repair electrics 1955 Allstate 125 - 1978 P125X - 1979 P200E - Booth&Painting JOURNAL OF THE REDHAUS Link to JPM Motorcyle page. 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