Rebuilding a Vespa ET4 from the Frame Up - PART 2 - Disassembly

So we'll start with the seat. This seat does not have much salvage. Even the hook on the front of the seat is missing. The straps shot and the rest of it's made out of duct tape. So you need the key. This key is well worn. I don't even know if I'm going to reuse the tumblers but go ahead remove the pet carrier. I probably should have pressure washed everything before I started taking it apart but I'm already here taking it apart so that's not happening. You can take this snorkel out but there's a pair of phillips screws and in the interest of speed I'll just go ahead use power drivers for everything. So even these screws I'll probably save them for the time being. Make a little bin or bag but there's a couple things we do want to salvage off the seat. Right here is the clip that holds the lock tumbler. So you lift this little clip here and FYI if you ever had to break into this seat you could probably get in there and hook it. These earlier ones were pretty easy to break into and at that point usually you could pull the tumbler out and it's in there pretty good. So typically you get the clip out and it will pull the tumbler right out. Sometimes it needs a little coaxing to get it out. There we go it's just really really dry. I don't even know if it's worth reusing this but I'll save it because it is matched to the nice original master key it's never been used and these are coated to the immobilizer in the cdi box ignition box. So kind of round up that part. Don't forget about the tool kit. If it still has that pry that little thing open. So if you put a new seat you may not have the tool kit or the tool door. There's all the tools in there and oftentimes I'll just take a ziploc bag. Something like this is pretty you know if I put everything together I can kind of recognize it's definitely stuff for the seat. There's a tumbler the screw and so on. Missing the bump here but you could save some of the extra spare parts even this trim the hinge. Other than that if you're replacing the seat it's probably not really worth saving much of the seat. So for the time being that's just going to go in the trash. So I already removed this little plastic surround. You can see there's all these clips right here on the frame. I'll probably save all those little clips. Get the battery out of there. Looks like it was replaced just recently so it's still a good battery. I think the the prior owner before he gave it to the shop he put a new battery in it. So if say if you're restoring this over six months or a year you probably want to top off your battery charge with like something like a battery tender occasionally. We'll get that out of the way. Something that a lot of people seem to they seem to go missing a lot is the battery drain. It's pretty important it keeps the battery in place and a lot of these parts are just so grungy. I'll probably clean them all. A lot of times with plastic you use something like Simply Green or Royal Purple to spray it all down. If you have a pressure washer that will clean it up really well. Kind of like if you're cleaning plastic dishes and do it in the sink. Don't need heavy heavy duty solvent. Again a smart smart idea would have been to pressure wash everything before I jump to start taking it apart because I can tell you my hands are gonna be filthy by the time I get this all apart. So you got some of the wiring is starting to you know you have access to it from here but we want to get all the lights and everything off before we tackle the wiring. We're going to continue removing the bodywork. So this technically you could salvage this. There's no cracks in it. It would be a candidate the the repaint. You could pry this reflector out. We do sell the replacement reflector. Pick the sticker off. Probably even have that that sticker in stock. And again you'd pressure wash all that grime off this if you're going to reuse it. That left side skirt doesn't look so good. So reason being it's got chip and that's very difficult to repair. Unpainted replacement part is pretty inexpensive for a Vespa LX or whatever. There's a Silverfish running around. So obviously somebody put some tape on there that pulls right off and you know where that goes right into the trash can. So if you have an inventory list you're starting you know I would right I need the left left side skirt for an ET4. There's all this tape on here and it's probably because this whole thing's broken. We'll see if that's even salvageable once I get the tape off. Probably not is my assumption. I don't think so because normally this would have had two bolts that bolted to the scooter. There's a plate that's all cracked with the license plate on it. This stuff is so rusted. I do want to save the plate. I mean this is a valid registration. Probably get a replacement plate. This little chrome piece, believe it or not, it's pretty hard to find. That's a U.S. specific part so I probably will save that. It's got a pair of screws but normally you just don't pull this piece off but all the tabs are broken. It's completely trashed. So you're getting a new rear fender. And another way to kind of inventory the parts is actually a reflector. This might be a cool part to paint a different color same color as the body but I'll probably find one that's in better shape. You can put the screws back in place. You want to make sure they thread in. I'll tell you all this stuff is just really fragile on these now that the plastic's over 20 years old. But that's something you save. I don't know. How do I get the license off? The back plate, I'm going to put a new one of those. That's like the mounting plate. But I think I'm just going to have to get some diagonals in there and just cut these off. And I don't even know if I can do that. I might need something even bigger because everything's just so rusted back here. So the muffler's out of the way. I already did that. So I have a wrench on the other side of the engine pivot bolt. Use the impact. Make it nice and easy. Then I still have that shock bolt that I loosened in an earlier step. I could pull the bolt right out just like that and probably keep the nut. These nuts, probably best to replace them with a nyloc locking nut because that's kind of the updated design. But at this point, you use a punch. You could send that engine bolt right out. Make sure the frame's supported like I have it with that jack. I could use a screwdriver you don't care for, which is definitely not this one, but I'll be really careful. So the motor's... Then we're going to go on the other side. There's going to be a spring that's hanging too that we'll have to unhook. I use a... Pull this bolt out all the way. There you go. Motor's kind of separated. Show you what's... So on this side, there's a spring that hooks to the frame. So make sure you're aware of all that set up there. And maybe we'll bag both the shock bolt, the engine pivot bolt, along with the spring in a separate little bag at this point. That motor just probably want to jack the frame up a little bit. Make sure nothing catches. That's the important part. The biggest thing you got to clear is going to be the shock. So usually you kind of pull it out a little bit and up. This was part of that bellow. Looks like it's ripped and rotted, so we'll replace that part if we can. It's not necessary for the operation of the scooter, but nice to have. The air box fell out. And we have our throttle cable kind of hanging with some of the other hoses, but separate that. And we're pretty close to having this motor out here. Leave the hoses with the frame. Wrap this back up. Keep these cables tamed here. Look at that. Gave birth to a motor here. Air box kind of fell to the side, but there's your motor. And as you can see, the spark plug caps right up against here. Once you have it out here, it's much, much easier to... This door is oftentimes missing. Pretty important for the cooling of the engine. The little tabs had broken, so somebody put a screw in there. That spark plug cap, we'll decide if we're going to reuse that. Did see that corrosion on there. Other things to look out for, look at your engine mounts. Yeah, I can see them starting to separate, so it's definitely worthwhile changing these engine mounts. I'll cover that when I do the engine overhaul video. Should probably be two or three videos just going through that whole motor. Just a lot of stuff gets worn. And to make it ride back to like new condition, you need to refurbish everything from the bushings to the engine, the suspension, and the brakes and more. So at this point, we have a lot easier access to start dismantling the rear body of the scooter here. There's a part of that rear fender. There's these little rubber buffers you probably want to take out. The turn signals, they're all exposed fasteners, so you just use a number two screwdriver. Again, probably replace all these. These aren't cracked, but they're just crusty and old. And this one's got a crack in it, so not really worth saving. And a bunch of duct tape holding it. So they have these little boots. A lot of times just keep the bulbs with the thing. Sometimes these lenses start separating away, but there's a crack on that lens, so not really worth saving. The amount of grit stuff coming off that. I see scuffs and cracks in it, not worth saving. Moving on to the taillights. So the way you get these taillights apart, start with a lens. And I see a lot of little crazing in this lens, you know, just from the age. It's got like little stress cracks in it. It's a little bit faded. You can buy a replacement lens. We used to have smoke lenses and other cool ones, but I think right now all we have is a red one. Then there's another pair of screws that hold this whole assembly to the body. And it pulls up just like that. So this plastic chrome, you could try to restore it with something like really fine steel wool and then mother's mag polish or some type of chrome polish. It's pretty fragile. A lot of times you just replace the whole entire taillight assembly. Another option is you could paint this, make it look nice. And they got a little connector, bulb stays with that. So I'll drop right through. This is your license plate lamp. There's not a bulb in it, but that's what that is. So at this point you'll see a fastener in here and that's for your fuel tank. So you could drop the fuel tank down and we'll do that next. So at this point I'll leave the cap in place. Hopefully the tank's not too full, probably want to siphon the fuel out. There's a screw right here. So kind of in line when you have the battery tray out that holds the fuel tank. You got a screw in the back with, it's got kind of a larger washer and then one last screw right here. So this is your starter relay and that pocket right there. And now the tank's starting to fall down, kind of support it. There's fuel in there, it's going to have some weight behind it. So the cap kind of, if you leave the cap in place, it kind of holds the tank. You don't want it ripping the wires because there's wires for the fuel level sender. Obviously a perfect time to replace that part if your fuel level gauge didn't work. You got the three screws, they're all identical length. And at this point you may want to also get the shock out. And there's two ways to go about it. You can put a flat blade screwdriver in there and like a little cross foot 13 millimeter wrench. Otherwise the whole shock just spins. The quick and dirty way to do it is just with an impact and a long 13 millimeter socket. So if you hold the shock, have an impact right here, things are pretty handy. And then it removes the nut. There's going to be some rubber spacers, probably worth replacing the spacers, probably worth replacing the shock considering how many miles are on it. The springs don't wear out. It's not leaking oil, but it's done a lot of dampening over its, looks like 20 plus year lifespan. That's probably the original. This point, kind of support the fuel tank from underneath, pull the cap off, and we'll kind of drop the fuel tank down. Definitely have to have the motor out to do this job. So fuel tank's pretty grungy, probably never been out. So the first thing is you have this wiring right here, that's for your fuel level gauge. And similar to many of the other connectors, it's got a little tab on the top, push this tab in, and then you could rock it and remove it. So just like that. And the last thing is this hose here. And oftentimes is what I find with this hose is you could, you know, I'm probably going to replace these hoses. I see lots of cracks in it. No one's ever really serviced these hoses because it requires removal of a tank. They have a one-time use hose clamp, and we'll just use a diagonal plier to kind of cut that hose clamp. Make sure you don't break the spigot off. There's a little, little, little, if you have somebody else to help you with this, it'll definitely make the job a little bit easier. You could just cut the hose, but I kind of want to know the lengths of all these hoses. So there's the clamp, kind of pried it off. At this point, we can kind of get the whole hose off. It's really dirty up here. And if you still can't get the hose off and you don't want to cut it, you always put a slice in the hose. It's so rock hard. This hose is like way beyond its lifespan here. So if you make a slice in the hose, sometimes you could just kind of get it to start tearing and then pull away from the thing. Then the other two items you have here are the fuel line and the vacuum line. So they're kind of staying in place with this little plastic tube here. Pull these, pull them all out. All right. So the fuel tank's out. That was a pretty exciting and miserable job. Get right to it. I want to get the wiring out. So we have some of it kind of separated. There's a little grommet for this connector right here to push through. And a lot of times you just pull it through and there it is. So that's now revealed from the bottom side. There's little clips in the frame. I'm not going to show taking all the clips, but you could obviously ID where those all go. They're all specific little clips. We do have those available as spare parts if you ever need them. But moving on to the harness. So they have more of these little clips to kind of hold it to the tail of the frame. So I kind of use like a wire to kind of separate them. Right there's one. So squeeze them with a needle nose or a diagonal. And you can kind of see all underneath the frame. So that makes it kind of a little easier. You see where it all routes. There's another clip. You can see the plastic thing popping through right there. Just got to open that one up. That one's a little more difficult. Again, it might be just easier to pop it out of the frame just by squeezing the little tabs. It's got little wings on it. There it is actually popped right up. So there you go. Wirings kind of pulled away. You see some of these hoses. This is called the rollover valve right up in here. It's on the other side. I'll pull it down. So if the scooter tips over, it doesn't dump gas all over the ground. It's got like a little check valve in it. It's got a pair of screws that hold it to a bracket. So that's pulling away. So there's that rollover valve and it has a tube that crosses all these hoses are in bad shape. But you could even hear the little ball in there. I'll keep all the hoses all intact. So ideally you could replace all these lengths of hose. This is essentially a quarter inch fuel line. You can find on a local shop. There's a vent line that's missing, but you could usually bypass that. And it goes into the bottom of the canister over here. So the vapors are collected by that carbon canister. It's right on this side. That whole plenum comes out that had the little tube that broke off. The rest of it's all rotten as well. So it's not really useful. There's a little bellow right here with another little plenum that goes into the frame. The remove this engine buffer. These are usually pretty durable. There's this, you get an 18 millimeter socket right here. And then there's also a bolt that goes right from here through the bottom of the frame. There may be the rubber plug, which I see in there. And then you can pull this subframe out. I'll probably put a new subframe in because that does isolate some of the vibration. And I do see some of the rubber starting to deteriorate on it. Really not worth reusing. The grommets, like I suggested, you want to pull all those out clips. ID them so you know where they go when you put the frame back together. Back to the wiring. Let me get the carbon canister out of the way. So I get to the screws right here. And it's kind of behind some of the wiring. You'll find more zip ties that hold wiring. And one more screw. Just pull right out. Again, more hoses on it. These usually never have any problems unless they've just been severely flooded with fuel. There's the screws are all the same that hold these to the frame. And now we can easily get to all the wiring. So in here is more of those clips that hold the wiring to the frame. So you can bend them all back. And the wiring just kind of pulls away from the body just like that. And there's a couple grommets where the wiring passes through the frame. Another one of those zip ties. It's technically a reusable zip tie, but it's pretty crispy. And you know, a lot of this wiring will pull through the grommet and then you have the whole wiring out. And you also need to un- you have a ground wire right here. And you also have a ground up at the frame right near the battery. There we go. Got the wiring out. All right. So now all the wiring's out of the way. You can get the front fork separated. Pretty straightforward to do so. 17 millimeter socket on one side. You got an eight millimeter Allen. Big wrench. Here we go. It's pretty tight. It's your handlebar connection. Be perfect time to take the handlebars as long as they're not bent or anything. No reason to replace them. I know you don't see it, but you know, it's a little bit rusted. Could sandblast them. You could just wire wheel them. Put a little coat of spray paint on it. Just clean them up. Save the bolt. You got the little star washer. Typically, when I replace that star washer, put it back together, which I'll do when it's not expecting to fall into the scooter frame, but got the handlebar separated and you have this dust cap. Sometimes they didn't have this and that this prolongs the bearings a little bit longer. We'll clean that all up. All right. So you're going to need a tool SN, which is the standard steering nut tool that they've been using for years on the Vespa, all the way back to classics. You could do it with a punch, but you end up making a mess of it. But even you'll find that they're pretty tight sometimes, especially that upper lock nut. So make sure this is tight and hit it with a dead ball and you could free that up. Let's go ahead and spin upper, upper off. You got the, the, the washer that actually has a little guide key. And then now we'll move on to the lower, the CM061303 is the upper bearing is, I think it's the 04 is the lower bearing. We also sell them as sets, probably a perfect opportunity just to replace them. The frame is going to want to tip backwards. So I kind of keep some pressure on, you know, I still have that center Jack. It will spin this right off. Fortunately, these have been re-greased because if they had the original grease in here, it would be like this white grease that turns into like a plastic and it's hard as a rock. But at some point somebody has had this all apart. It's got some really fresh looking grease. Don't be surprised if, if it's never been greased and it's in pretty horrible shape. So at this point, you just need to grow some muscles and either get a helper or just lift the frame right off. So the forks are usually going to want to fall back, may have somebody hold it for you. So kind of grasp the whole frame and lift it straight off and make sure none of the cables. Say the frame weighs 60 pounds, something like that, 70 pounds. And you'd remove all the clips. If you're going to take it to a body shop, obviously I'd pressure wash this. You could leave the bearing races in place. Definitely needs to be cleaned. It pretty much can be all painted everywhere with the exception of where the bearings go. This little spacer just pulls right out. I always call this a nugget. This is the, the steering lock cam. You may want to just replace it if it's really heavily worn or this plate separated. This is can jam up and have problems. You know, take the badges off, kind of prep it the best you can for auto body shop just to do their auto body magic on it. They can, you know, if there's any dents, they can slide hammer those out. And typically the way you'd paint these, you'd put some tie wire through the holes here and maybe tie wire back here and you suspend the frame so you could paint all around it. Obviously the inside of the frame is not so critical. They could just use standard Audi auto body techniques to pop the dents out and painting all the plastic parts, no different than painting a bumper cover on a modern car. So that's kind of how you take care of it. There's plenty of other better videos than anything I've done on doing auto body work. If you want to tackle it yourself, don't recommend Home Depot spray cans. You're not going to really get that good of results. But if you're going to do it at home and don't have the spray equipment, look up Spray Max. It's like a catalyzed paint that you can get mixed up in a can. It can get expensive, but you can get near professional results with that kind of product without having a HVLP gun and a paint booth. I've used some of their products and they work really good. They're just rather expensive because they're catalyzed paint. So you activate the paint before you start spraying it. Next video, one of my favorite things to do is rebuild these forks. Kind of the classic design Vespa fork, not too much different than what you'd find on something from the 50s. The trailing link, obviously they've added a disc brake, still got a mechanical speedometer. We're going to completely overhaul and rebuild this fork. And of course, put those nice new wheels with brand new tires. So well, thanks for watching. Just like my winter project two years ago, I took apart a bike, but I can promise you I'll get this one back together quicker before I get my own winter project back together. Someday I'll get back to my GTS and get that all assembled as well. See you in the next one. Robot here from Vespa Motorsport and ScooterWest.com. I hope that helps you out. And again, if you have a Vespa LX, pretty much everything's identical. It's nearly identical to the D4, all the steps and how everything comes apart.