It all went fairly smoothly; changing engine oil, tightening a few nuts & bolts here and there.
Anthony was well-supplied with snap-on tools as we got to work on our scooters.
All went well, except for with my Vespa PK..
That morning, Penelope started over-revving when she was in neutral. What I originally thought/hoped was just a throttle cable problem happened to be a little worse. There seemed to be some sort of air leak, and despite Ant trying his best to open up the carb and seal any gaps that we could notice in the time-frame we had, she was still a little worse-for-wear.
Ant working his magic on my Vespa PK
Today is round 2 of getting to the bottom of this problem. I'm just praying she's ready in time for our long scooter ride on Friday!
The fact that it this is the first time this scooter rally is taking place makes me feel like we could be playing a nice part of history in the scooter and mod scene. It's also great to know that this is the first big scooter rally we'll be off to this year!
Here's the route..
We'll be filming and documenting the ride up and the weekend in general (not guaranteed to be sober).
It will be a miracle if we- and our Vespas- make it in one piece.
We had the pleasure of leading the runners on our scooters at Brighton Marathon.
I had a right nightmare throughout the whole process of creating this video; I had a lot of footage to get through (2 cameras filming a 26.2-mile course)
The Marathon was 10 days ago - so I don't think we should leave it any longer to upload this video:
I wrote some quick words on Brighton Marathon last week, so make sure you have a quick peek at that.
Once again, congratulations to the organisers and all who ran for their charities.
I want to give a HUGE thanks to all those who came down to cheer the runners- and even us! The atmosphere was second to none.
@mylittlescooter love the Brighton marathon video, seeing you all go past was a massive boost! Hope to see you lot again next year!
— Nick Palmer (@palmerleggings) April 24, 2013
@brightonmarathn thought the channel 4 coverage was excellent. Nice to see elites & real runners! Be good 2 c bit of club runners 2 #nextyr
— ems (@emjs81) April 24, 2013
@mylittlescooter really great footage mate shame the weather wasn't at its best! Got me excited even more for getting my scooter
— Nathan Johnson (@natedawg_nj) April 24, 2013
We hope you came down to show support for all the runners!
We were there- along with 10 Harley-Davidsons and 10 classic Minis behind us- leading the runners that participated in Brighton Marathon 2013.
Here's a video of the lead procession: (There will be an edited video from our cameras in the next coming days)
What started off as a bit of a damp, grey morning soon turned into a sunny (the warmest of the year so far), jam-packed Brighton seafront with an extraordinary atmosphere to cheer the brave runners home.
One of the 13,000 runners was our good mate Ben, who only had 4 days notice that he was running the 26.2 mile course.
Congratulations to Ben and all others who participated.
Our thoughts go out to Sam Harper Brighouse - who tragically passed away yesterday after suffering a cardiac arrest near the 16-mile mark.
Hello everyone, Zaak here again and I'm just passing by to give the latest update on where Polly has got to!
Saturday 9th March was a big day for her, it was the next stage in getting her back to a ridable, roadworthy condition and it was a big day for both myself and Anthony in fact. Spent a total of 8 hours between us tidying her up, replacing nuts and bolts from head to toe and finally getting the engine into the frame.
We encountered a few issues along the way as you would expect. Firstly changing tyres took longer than they needed to. I'd changed tyres before on all kinds of push bikes, and seen it done on cars but never actually attempted to do it myself on the scoot. So a couple of days before I took a trip over to YouTube for some tips (always a risky option) and to be honest, it didn't pay off. The guy in the video had some decent tyre pullers which meant he didn't have to split the rims to change them over. Because I had seen this video I thought it'd be no sweat taking the same steps to my rims with a pair of extra long flat heads, wrong! I needed to split the rims and had no idea so I spent around 30 mins attempting to remove the tyres before I was greeted by Anthony's chuckle at my expense!
The second small issue we came across was attaching the fuel hose from the carb to the tank. In my last few months before she went into hiding, I'd replaced my fuel hose with one lined with string, and with a diameter only just big enough to fit around the tap on the tank. This took me about an hour to fit alone the first time round, and so I knew coming to it again would be a struggle. As it was taken off in the rebuild process, putting it back on became a definite 'two-man-and-a-pair-of-pliers' job! But after some grunting and wiggling it was all in place.
The final problem was mounting the exhaust. The current Leo Vince pipe that I have, doesn't quite match the low-revving new DR 102cc engine anyway, and so it will be going shortly, but because my old engine casings were knackered I replaced them with those of a primavera which fits perfectly into my PKXL frame, yet has a very different mount for exhausts. Nonetheless cable ties to the rescue for temporary mounting, which meant I was able to successfully have a lovely (illegal) test ride around the village.
She still needs a few tweaks here and there - adjusting of clutch and gear cables, respray of rims and the acquiring of a new tool box - but other than that she's in great shape and ready for the sno...sun!
Here's another short video I made of the day to show her off as she is now:
Me and Markie met 40+ other scooterists on Sunday for the Brighton Scooter Club RSPCA Charity Ride-Out.
A patch for the Parka
My day started to Markie knocking on my door and pretty much waking me up (like our last ride out). We then met at everybody at Volks, Madeira Drive by noon.
We arrived at the RSPCA, got a brew and unloaded the van of donations; we passed them along one-by-one - nice team effort.
A nice turn out which got me yet again buzzing for some rallies. The season has started and the team is growing! I have a good feeling about this summer.
Another plus- the sunshine appeared for a nice ride back!
Oh yeah.. I forgot to mention I added a touch of gold to my Vespa PK.
I ordered a meter of gold trimming for £4 and got a Vespa PK decal from This Retro - Scooter Decals to tidy things up a bit.
Most of the images on this post were taken by Michelle (Markie's sister)
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