Rockrant

Halogen Conversion

Stopped over at MAS racing last monday to see if they had any parts that I could use on my car. Specifically, I was looking for headlights and some dynamat or something else that would work for sound deadening in the engine compartment and in the floor. Well I found some Toucan brand headlights for 19.99 per side. I bought them and then proceded to fit them to the car. The Headlight has a pliot in it so I had to drill a hole for it. Otherwise it fit in perfectly! I am happy that something has worked. I plan to make a new wiring harness to make the headlights work along with a few other things that I have planned.

Cleaning and Measuring

I am pretty low on funds for parts for the 400. But I still want to work on it so I have been cleaning and figuring out what I need. I started by pulling out the seat and pulling up the rubber floor mats and the insulation.

OH NO! Rust. When I first looked at the car I saw some surface rust on the floor, but now I found a soft spot on the passenger side that turned into a hole the size of a quarter. I don't know if I will fiberglass or weld the hole. I am leaning towards welding in a patch. After that I am planning on using a rust inhibitor/ converter like POR-15. After that I plan on putting down some dynamat or something and then finally the rubber mats.

I have been pretty scattered when it has come to working on the car, I have taken both of the engines i have apart. I have gotten the generator rebuilt and I have also rebuilt the oil pump.

I think one of the hardest things about restoring the 400 is that there isn't any company that is making parts for the car. So for the most part it is using parts that will work and refurbish or make new parts.

So in order to figure out what I need, I went around and measured many parts. Tonight I measured all of the control cables because I plan on having Motion Pro make me a set of cables. Or else use Vespa scooter cables where I can.

Here is what I found. The Emergency Brake inner and outer cable is the same as diameter as the Vespa scooter rear brake cable.

The inner is 2.4mm and the outer is 6.4mm.
The rear brake outers are 32" long or .8128m.

The throttle cable outer is 73" long or 1.8542m.
The throttle cable outer is 5.08mm in diameter.

I am going to look for after market headlights that aren't sealed and hopefuly halogen. Right now there are 7" GE sealed beam headlights in there.

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.