Rockrant

In the Rear

When I bought the car I was told that the engine was in good condition. I looked at the engine closely and found that the bolts on the cylinder head were loose. Well, I took the head off and found that wasn't the case at all. I will get into the engine details when I start putting it back together. But tonight I was working on the engine compartment. I removed the oil injector and tank. I cleaned out the tank and found that I needed to make new cork gaskets. I found 1/8 cork gasket material by the roll at my local auto parts store. Using the cover and the oiling body itself as a template I made two gaskets that will work very well.

Something else that I found interesting with the oil injector. Was that a previous owner made spacers to go into the bracket and the whole oil injector was on the left side of the bracket. Basically moving it over to the left about 3 inches. The outlet for the oil meter also had a 90 degree bend in it so that the tube would be straight. I am going to leave it this way because, I'm sure the owner found this to be a lot better solution for putting oil into the tank. The car has 38,000 miles which is a ton for a micro car. Thinking that the car has a top speed of 55mph the minimum amout of hours spent driving the car would be over 690 hours.

Vespa 400 Getting Started

I have been fixing and riding scooters for almost 10 years. But I haven't done much with cars before. I have always been very interested in the Vespa 400, when I had the oppertunity to get one I jumped at the chance. The information about the 400 minimal. The 400 was introduced at the Paris Motorshow in 1957. And started production soon after from 1957 to 1961, 30,000 Vespa 400's were sold around the world before production was shut down. Although Vespa is an Italian company, none of the Vespa 400 cars were produced in Italy. Instead they were produced in Fourchambault by A.C.M.A. becuase of an agreement between Piaggio and Fiat.

So, only 5 years of production and very few cars produced makes for a difficult time finding parts, here and all over the world. But there are a couple of sources. www.microcarlot.com is the place were you are immediatly drawn to if you do any research on the internet. It seems like Larry @ microcarlot has bought up just about every spare part that was available in the US. He is also making some new parts that are commonly missing or broken on these 45 year old cars.

The 400 isn't the easiest car for my first restoration, but I feel after this other cars will be a lot easier.